It’s another new year, and many people are beginning to realize the importance of starting their personalized journals. Journal writing is known to bring numerous benefits for one’s wellness. Your journal can be your safe space to vent your thoughts, feelings, memories, and opinions without being judged or ridiculed by anyone. Your journal can also help you keep track of your daily, weekly, or even yearly goals, especially since a new year means new plans. Most importantly, your journal can serve as a representation of oneself. It’s a book filled with everything inspired by you.
One way to boost your motivation to start your journal or write more often is by personalizing it. After all, most journals you find in the stores may look pretty basic and boring. To make your journaling experience more fun, colorful, and inspiring, you can personalize it in any way you want, as long as it reflects who you are.
Whether you’re new to journal writing or this is your sixth journal notebook, here are six tips and ideas to help you personalize your journal in 2022.
- Add General Contents
If this is your first journal notebook and you don’t know how to start or personalize it, you can begin by filling the first few pages with general contents. General contents may include your daily or weekly goals, monthly or yearly calendar, or your autobiography. Since it’s your journal, you can be as creative in adding these contents, such as using different colored pens or using various font styles to separate your goals from the calendar.
- Incorporate Colorful And Interesting Stickers
One quick way to personalize your journal is by adding lots and lots of stickers. There are plenty of stickers available in art stores, and they come in various sizes, colors, designs, and textures. Some are even scented to make your journal smell good every time you write on it.
Better yet, personalize your journal by using customized stickers from Stickeroo.com.au and other sticker stores wherein you get to design your own stickers. You can choose to create monogram stickers and keep them handy when you need to add them to your to-do lists, diary entries, and more.
- Create Decorative Edges
Plain, straight notebook edges are so typical. If you’re looking to make your journal’s pages feel like yours, consider creating some decorative edges. You can use textured scissors, border punches, or die cuts to make unique edges into the pages. You could also use textured papers or fabric strips and place them around the edges to make page borders. Now you have unique pages for every entry, which will surely motivate you to keep writing.
- Make Use Of Mod Melts
Many kids and adults alike love to use mod melts for DIY art projects, including personalizing a journal. If you’ve never tried making mod melts before, here are some craft materials you’ll need to start the project:
- Mod Melt sticks
- Mod Melt molds (make sure to buy different shapes (e.g., flowers, leaves, birds) for more variety
- A mini hot glue gun
Heat the mod melt sticks using the hot glue gun and fill them into the molds. Wait for a solid five minutes (or longer) until the melted resin is already cold and dry. Otherwise, touching or popping them out before they dry will ruin the shapes, and you’ll need to start again. Don’t worry if your first batches of mod melts are messy. After all, practice makes perfect.
Once everything’s dry, you can paint and decorate your melts with color paint, glitter, nail polish, and tiny gems. Now that you got the results, you can stick them on the front cover of your journal or within the pages.
- Bring Life To Your Journal With Decorative Paper
Transform your plain and dull journal into an original and artistic notebook using decorative papers. Many decorative papers are available in different textures and colors. If you find the front cover too boring, cover it up with decorative paper before sticking your melts and stickers. If you have multiple journals, you can differentiate each notebook by using different papers based on what they represent (e.g., teenage years, young-adulthood life).
Meanwhile, if you want your journals to be symbolic, you can go for green decorative papers if you want something close to nature and blue scented papers for something close to the ocean. You can also stick some quotes and motivational phrases in the front to make your journal more inspiring and personal.
Another way to use decorative papers in personalizing your journal is by adding dividers inside the pages. This will make it easier for you to flip on a certain chapter or section instead of just relying on your DIY table of contents.
- Make A Collage Art
The beauty about journals is that there are no rules on how you’d like to decorate every page or cover as long as it gives you satisfaction. For example, if you’d like to use your 2022 journal for your travel entries, consider creating collage art on the front cover filled with pictures of your past travels. Then, put some number stickers that assemble ‘2022’ to signify that this journal is for your 2022 future travels.
Wrapping Up
Your journal should represent nothing else but you. It’s not about personalizing it for the sake of impressing anyone who gets to see your notebook. Instead, personalizing your journal is about boosting your satisfaction, inspiring you to write more, and helping you keep track of your checklist or life goals. So, don’t just settle for that store-bought notebook you have and try out these tips when customizing your 2022 journal.
