Ever since I can remember I have had a love of stationary, from my new school kit, all the way down to the colouring pencils I received for Christmases and Birthdays each year. Even as a 'grown up' I still love looking and buying stationary, something I have previously blogged about in 'Oh for the love of... stationary'.
So you can imagine my joy when I discovered Paperchase a few years ago with my best friend. I was immediately drawn in by the bright colours, quirky gifts, hundreds of pens and of course the books! Oh the books. Diaries, notepads, scrapbooks, photo albums, calendars, address books and of course journals, which is what this blog post is all about. I can still remember as a child desperately trying to get into the whole 'diary' craze that all of the other kids were hooked on but no matter how hard I tried, how many books I bought, I just couldn't find the style of writing I wanted without cringing at my words days later. In many ways I wish I had kept all of the silly things I wrote down just so I could stumble across them and smile, laugh, cringe, cry and just generally remember all of the things that seemed like the end of the world at the time, to give my life a bit more perspective now.
When I visited London with Naomi last month I took a stop off at Paperchase in Covent Garden and spent an inexcusable amount of time scanning through the various books on offer there. In the end I settled on their signature Kraft Exercise Book and this stunning Pilot V Sign Pen and hoped that this time I might be able to get into the spirit of 'writing my thoughts'.
I immediately knew I wanted to use this for my blog as a way of me capturing my ideas and planning the structure of the posts. I have had many different types of blogs, to date I think this is my sixth and I aim to make it a success. My other blogs have always been a way to vent, meet new people and just express the word vomit that comes to mind. However successful or unsuccessful I believe these to have been I have always wanted to make something more of my writing and ensure these were more well written and structured.
So has it worked? Can I finally scrawl something down that won't induce self loathing days later? Well, here are some extracts from my 'journal' and what it looks like now...
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| Here I used tickets and receipts to help map out the places Naomi and I visited in London in order to write a more accurate blog post. |
I continue to keep pieces that inspire my blog posts which is a habit I have from picked up from my scrapbooking hobby. Here I have kept the packaging from my Graze boxes to help me describe the products I have sampled.
Although I don't write down word for word what I will write, choosing instead to type it out and adapt it from there, I do jot down talking points in order to prevent me from going off a tangent (which happens 99% of the time in reality). The journal also acts as a visual reminder to me and proves a helpful point of referral when my sieve-like brain forgets things. All in all I think it makes me a more organised and structured writer which can only be a good thing.
So does this inspire you to grab your old diaries or at least go back to pen and paper? I sure hope so...
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