When it comes to journaling, there are no rules on how you wish to note down thoughts, memories and, reminders in your journal. When I started this hobby, I was looking through many other art journals online and wondered if I would ever achieve that level of creativity in my own journals. I really love stamping, cutting and pasting, sketching, painting, colouring, and every other thing arts and craft. Which is why I decided to take up this hobby because I can do all of the above in both my travel journal and monthly journal! 💖💖💖

As I don't travel often to fill up my travel journal, I started a monthly journal in July where I note down on the events that I will be attending as well as important dates to remember. As you can see above, I started the journal a little later in July which explains the large spaces that has been taken up by a sketch of a potted plant I was staring at while waiting for my car to finish its servicing session. I wasn't really satisfied at this particular month's layout because there were too many white spaces and it seemed like I was very afraid of over decorating it. Ironically, I wanted my journal to be much more colourful and vibrant yet I was afraid that my journal will be overly decorated with similar washi tapes and stickers because I don't really have a variety of them.

Somehow I remembered about the stack of fashion magazines piled up in my room collecting dusts. I thought why not, make use of it, cut out some of the visuals that I like from the magazine and have it as some of the art resources for my journal! Saves me some money and time because I can't always be going to the stationery shop to buy a ton of materials for the journal (because I love cute and pretty stationery and cannot control myself when I see them). 

In August, I started to become much more aware of receipts, stickers, or any other thing that can be used in the journal. If you see on the lower left of the journal in the photo above, there is a sticker with Korean characters on it. This was one of the postage stickers on my package from Korea where I bought a Nishika N8000 from Chris Da Canha, a South African photographer based in Seoul. I noticed that there are more colours this time around but still, there were a lot of white spaces here and there. 

I've also started sketching in August, as you can see in the middle section of the left page. I doodled some of the lomo cameras that I was thinking of getting. For the next round, I really need to watch out on my writing which can be super messy at times and taking up a lot space, creating more white spaces.

As usual, I feel that I do not have sufficient washi tapes and stickers as well as rubber stamps even though my art box is currently full and needs extra force to shut it close. As of now, I am finishing up for September and also patiently waiting for my stationery for my journals to arrive (yes I bought some more).