Free daily journalling prompts

I have collected all my journalling prompts and am offering them starting today as a free ongoing journalling class or daily journalling prompts to use as you like.

We'll be having themes, and the first week's is MUSIC.

The prompts are suitable for scrapbooking, blogging or art journalling.

Come along and join me! And if you'd like to be on the design team (occasional contributions not every day!), let me know.

Daily Journalling Prompts Blog

The new blog will have short helpful prompts.

I'll continue to add longer journalling inspiration and
techniques (and scrapping organisation tips) to this blog at least twice a week.

Journalling about people: try a kenning

What's a kenning then?

Here's Wikipedia's definition which is rather heavy on the ancient Scandinavian roots.

Kennings come from Old English and Norse poetry, and they describe something without using its actual name, e.g. 'mouse catcher ' was a cat, a sword was a 'skull-splitter' and a river a 'swan road'.

So a kenning "names something without using its name". They can be like riddle poems - what am I describing?

Kids learn them in school these days: here are lots of kennings from youngsters, on the children's writing website Kids on the Net.


You probably remember a Coke advert which did something similar. The advantage is you can do it to name anything, and it can be different each time. When you don't want to just put the same old word or name on a LO - why not embellish with a kenning instead?

Clines - get deeper into your journalling

When you're journalling, especially if you're using just one or two words, it’s important to find the word that accurately describes what you're trying to express. Common words such as "happy", "handsome", "cute", can be over-used: and once you've been scrapbooking longer than a year or so you start to be desperate for more! Here's a technique to explore a few different words to use.

For example: there are many words for degrees of heat in addition to the word ‘hot’. A cline is a graduated list of words to give shades of meaning, for example:

• Whitehot
• Red-hot
• Steaming
• Boiling
• Simmering
• Hot
• Warm
• Tepid
• Luke-warm
• Blood warm
• Body temperature
• Cool
• Chilly
• Cold
• Freezing
• Frozen.

Once you have your list of words, you can pick one that's perhaps more meaningful than the obvious!

Write it on Wednesday - Seasonal Inspiration

Seasonal inspiration

Last weekend the weather was glorious, cold but bright, sunny and dry. I took advantage by wrapping up warm and heading off on a trip to see some famous snowdrops. It really made me think - so I guess the way to journal is simply to write about how I feel...

The children were off on weekend trips of their own and it was one of those increasingly frequent times when my husband and I were on our own and able to do "grown-up" things. Although it is odd to do things without the children, it is comforting to realise that we still have things to say to one another and can enjoy ourselves as a couple.

The snowdrops are more than a sign of growth in the spring of a new year, they are a sign of our own new style of life. One in which we must let the youngsters poke their heads up out of the family soil into the light of their own lives. As parents we must feed and nurture their roots while allowing the buds to open into lovely flowers. Then, as parents, we become free to stroll quietly a while, view and admire the beautiful blossoms.

More Write it on Wednesday

Write it on Wednesday: Food traditions

Sometimes memories can be inspired by objects, people or places in what seems like a random way. In fact, smells can be some of the most potent connectors with memories.

Are there any smells that bring up a strong memory for you?

Are there any foods that have a particular resonance? At this festive time of year especially there are often very distinctive smells associated with family traditions.

Do you have any special foods or eating traditions associated with Christmas or any other festival or family event?

More Write it on Wednesday

Write it on Wednesday: text messages

You can get inspiration from almost anywhere in daily life - I was deleting texts from my phone and realised that they revealed a whole relationship between me and my two teenagers. There are a lot of messages with e wondering where one of them is...

Here's a typical exchange which I am now going to immortalise in a layout...

I'm in roman, my son is in italics...

where r u?
in town
ok
just out of cinema
r u eating?
goin 2 cookieshake
okeydoke c u soon

where r u?
on the bus

where r u?
Out of film. Are trying 2 decide where to eat. will come home with Melissa later x
ok
Im on the bus home nowOK

where are you?
told u i was working l8 2day - have u got ur keys?
yes

Can you get inspiration from your text messages?

More Write it on Wednesday

Write it on Wednesday: My favourite things

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favourite things

You've heard it before, right?

So what are YOUR favourite things? If you love them, then even making a layout about them is likely to make you feel happy, so whenever you're a bit down, this is the job to do.

I'd been meaning for some time to make a layout about one of my favourite things - my bathroom and the art that I commissioned especially for it - dragonflies by Jaq McCaughern. I love it!

So here's the layout - in colours to match the dragonflies and the bathroom, and journalling to enhance it.
More Write it on Wednesday

Definitions

Definitions were a popular trend in scrapbooking not so long ago. But don't discount them just because they aren't quite as "trendy" as they were!

Use definitions to expand and build on the words that you come up with for your titles or subtitles. A quick way to extend your journalling!

Pick up your dictionary for a classic definition in traditional style... write it or type it in a pretty font in your wordprocessor.

There also online dictionaries and thesauruses:

• Dictionary.com

• Merriam-Webster (American)
  

Here are some to use:

Adore (a·dore) 1. to worship or honour as a deity or as divine 2. to regard with loving admiration and devotion 3. to be extremely fond of

Admire ( ad·mire ) 1. to marvel at 2. be pleased by 3. respect

Abundance ( a·bun·dance ) 1. a more than plentiful quantity of something 2. large amount

Adventure (ad-ven-ture) 1. a daring, hazardous undertaking 2. an unusual, exciting, often suspenseful experience.

Accomplish (ac·com·plish ) 1. to succeed in doing or achieving something 2. reach point in time: to arrive at the end of a period of time

Beautiful ( byoot-e-ful) 1. pleasingly attractive physical appearance 2. lovely; fine to behold 3. delicate and favourable

Believe ( be·lieve ) 1. to accept that something is true or real 2. to have faith in 3. to put one’s trust in 4. to accept as fact

Bliss (blis) 1. great or perfect happiness 2. a state of spiritual joy

Bright (brit) 1. shining with light 2. brilliant in colour or sound; vivid 3. lively and cheerful 4. favourable; hopeful 5. radiant with happiness, smiling faces, moments 6. radiating or reflection light 7. of high saturation or brilliance 8. clever or intelligent

Celebrate (sel-e-brat) 1. perform as a ritual 2. to commemorate with festivity 3. to do honour 4. have a good time

Cherub (cher*eb) 1. a type of angel characterized as a chubby, rose-cheeked child with wings 2. a child with a sweet, innocent face

Chemistry (chem·is·try) 1. study of transformation of matter: a branch of science dealing with the structure, composition, properties, and reactive characteristics of substances, especially at the atomic and molecular levels.

Cherish (cher-ish) 1. to hold dear 2. to treasure, adore, value and love 3. to keep deeply in mind

If you can - add to the definition with a thoughtful extra that is more feeling than definition:

moth·er (mu-th-er) n. 1. A woman who loves, nourishes, protects and nurtures a child. 2. A creative source; an origin. 3. Respected for her wisdom and age. 4. Maternal love and tenderness. 5. A son’s first and best friend. ♥ moth·er-in-law n. 1. The mother of your spouse. 2. A second mother or friend. ♥ nan·a (nä’nä) n. 1. Endearing form of grandmother 2. The mother of your father or mother. 3. Sweet smile, warm hugs, bedtime stories, treats and kindness, heart of gold. 4. A person with time for their grandchildren. ♥

moth*er: \'me-thar\ n 1. compassionate supporter, giver of warm hugs 2. a woman generous of herself and her love 3. a dedicated listener 4. a woman who gives selfless tender affection without expectation 5. inspiring, dependable; all caring

fa*ther \'fath-ar\ n 1. protector and guardian 2. source of strength and support 3. guide through life; honest advisor 4. person always ready to help 5. person whose tolerance and pride are unlimited 6. ready taxi-driver

Write it on Wednesday - 7 random facts

Nickibee tagged me last Wednesday - and no I'm not going to play by the obvious rules, because this is a scrapping blog - and not only that, it's a journalling blog.

So let's use this as a journalling challenge!

There was a great Cathy Zielske Big Picture class with a template for a LO about 5 random facts. So this is a bit of a scraplift of that template, which you can find examples of all over the Web, e.g.,

5 random facts
(UKScrappers Gallery)

This time I didn't even write facts about myself - I interviewed my son. He came up with a few phrases, which I then fleshed out with him. I "tag" you to have a go! Scraplift this, by all means :)


More Write it on Wednesday

Journalling the acrostic way...

Everyone has subjects that feature in layouts again and again. With me it's my children - it might be your pet or a particular place you have lots of photos of... When all you can think of is to put their name on the LO - think again!

Firstly, don't forget the where, when and who.

And here's an idea - use an acrostic of their name to describe them or the situation.

Adventurous
Intelligent
Demanding -
A typical teen!
Not a quiet moment...

If you have a difficult letter in there (if you have a Max or a Zak!), it can be easier to try a mesostic version - that means the letter can be anywhere in the line.

 A mAture
fun-Loving
   sEnsible
   eXceptional young lady

Free time - what would you do?

In her August blog as Scrapbooker of the Year 2006 for Creating Keepsakes, C D Muckosky suggests that "free time is a state of mind" (check out 30 August) .

She mentions that time in infant class when the teacher would say "it's free time" in other words, it is a time when you can freely choose what you want to do - to play, to experiment, to get dirty if you want, to play with things you wouldn't at any other time - because it is free time.

What if you had free time? What if you had permission to have free time?

What if I were to say to you... "This half day - this morning (or afternoon, or evening) - is free time, and you not only don't have to but MUST NOT think about anything else!"

What would you do with that time?

And it doesn't have to be scrapping - in fact for this exercise I'd like you not to think about scrapping, and to let your imagination go - transport and money are no problem - what would you choose to do? You're not allowed to do nothing, either, no sitting on beaches or going to sleep - assume you are rested and relaxed and raring to DO something - what might it be?

Jot down what you'd like to do: e.g.,

Go out on a bike
Play with paint
Swim in a river
Play guitar
Bake butterfly cakes

See how many things you can think of to take up your free time.

Two possibilities for the LO now:

First LO - find a picture of you - preferably a bit thoughtful - and do a LO entitled "I wish I were...." and make sure the words "Free time" are somewhere on the LO as well as the journalling you just did....

Second LO - go DO one of those things and make sure you get a photo of some kind either of you doing it or (if it's not possible - a picture representing the activity).

No longer around (step by step)

When I saw Becky Fleck’s August RoundMaps I knew I wanted to try out the round format for a LO.

So obviously – “round” became a theme. What pictures did I have with something round in them? I was immediately reminded of my guinea pig, Button, now no longer around (!), but whom I miss when I’m chopping (usually round!) vegetables. He had a round white crest on the top of his head.

I haven’t got very good pictures of him – the rest of him was black so contrast was always a problem – and guinea pigs aren’t good at keeping still for the camera! But nonetheless I wanted to scrap my feelings about how surprisingly much I miss him and his brother Blaze.

So this time – I just started with “I miss …” and continued to write down how I felt.

I miss our guinea pigs Blaze and Button most when I am chopping up vegetables for cooking. I used to put the cauliflower leaves and the broccoli stalks to one side for the piggies. They did love their veg. We even bought organic carrots so the pesticides wouldn’t harm them. I miss their squeaks in the morning too. They used to recognize the noise of the kettle going on and start squeaking madly for their breakfast vegetables.

For the second LO I used the same sketch, but I used my experience from the first one. Firstly I chose less brightly coloured papers because in the Piggie LO I thought the colours distracted attention from the photo. I also picked papers that continued the circle theme.

This time I used a photograph of arches – again that circular motif. And in my journalling I asked the question: what was significant about those arches?

Andy Goldsworthy’s Arches were a feature at his exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. J and I have been interested in Goldsworthy’s work for some time and Easter Monday 2007 was an opportunity to actually see many pieces (although we couldn’t photograph most of them because photos of the pieces are also his art). The [others in our party] enjoyed it too.

Write it on Wednesday - the secrets of stress-free journalling

A weekly series to kickstart your journalling

First: The principles of stress-free journalling:

• Keep a notebook or file of journalling or, better still, journal in an online document or blog that is searchable (or transfer written notes to online)
• Journal when you haven't time or space to scrap
• Keep your journalling notebook with you (it can be a mini notebook in your handbag!) and journal when you take photos.

It's Wednesday and it's sunny:

Journalling prompt for 1st August

What was the best summer you ever had?

Where were you? Where did you go?
What activities did you take part in?
Who else was there?

I remember the summer of '76 - the hottest summer in my lifetime. I'd just finished Lower Sixth and life was good. We spent a lot of time lazing around the outdoor swimming pool in the park in a nearby town, and planning the next year's holiday - after our A-levels - when we were going to backpack in Europe.

Colouring-in your life. 4: Colour me a layout!

Colouring-in your life

This is the fourth and final in the series of journalling inspiration based on colour (see Thinking in Colour, Sunday 14 January, for the first one; Exploring Colour on Saturday 20 January for the second one, and Colour in Scrapbooking earlier today for the third one.)

4. Colour me a layout!

You have now collected some monochrome stash, and a photo or two.

On this layout, your journalling is going to be BIGGER than the photo!

Now take an appropriate pen and shade of paper and pick one or more of the following exercises. You might click with the first one you try or it may take longer, but keep trying until you have something to work with: to end up with 1 or 2 paragraphs (100-130 words).

• Why did you pick that colour for your monochrome LO?
  I picked purple because Sharon sent me purple and it’s one of my favourite colours – it’s one of the colours in Basic Grey Fusion that I like so much. I had a purple bedroom when I was a teenager ….etc.
  
• What does that colour mean to you?
  Purple is a royal colour, very sophisticated in the seventies. Mary Quant and the hip generation.
  
• What else do you have that is that colour?
  I have a pink dressing gown, it’s fleecy, comfortable and warm, but was given to me by my mum so it isn’t really mine… I wish my dressing gown was my own choice…
  
• Find an object that is that colour and handle it – what does it feel like? What texture is your colour?
  The vase is blue – it feels smooth and cold. I didn’t like it when I got it as a wedding present but in fact when yellow and orange roses and lilies are arranged in it, it looks beautiful. And I actually like blue flowers like irises and bluebells …
  
• What has that colour meant to you in the past?
  Green reminds me of my school uniform and how I hated wearing those thick woolly tights, even though they were warm in the winter. My schoolmates used to turn over the waist of their uniform skirts to make them more of a miniskirt… (N.B. the colour green got me reminiscing about school uniform, and I developed that theme.)

· Write for 10 minutes without stopping – doesn’t matter if you write absolute rubbish, just don’t stop – starting with a colour. When you’ve finished, pick out anything meaningful and develop that theme.

Go with the flow! When you’ve got about two paragraphs go back and polish them – write it out again and improve on your wording or your spelling if you need to (or not!). End up with 100-130 words.

Practice this bit on scrap paper if you’re not sure: Pick an appropriate light coloured paper/cardstock about 5 inches wide (and as long as possible!) and collect as many pens of the relevant colour as you can (e.g., purple shades). Draw light lines in pencil if you don’t think you can stay straight. Leaving about half an inch either side, write out your piece of journalling, changing pen colour every few words, or using a special colour for special words. You’ll carry on until you’ve finished the piece, then trim the bottom edge of the journalling card to suit the size of your journalling. Ink round the outside.

You can computer generate your journalling if you like – this is about what you write rather than how you write!

Now put your LO together. You can scraplift mine, or create your own. The only rule is to make the journalling the feature.

Colouring-in your life: 3. Colour in scrapbooking

Colouring-in your life

This is the third in the series of journalling inspiration based on colour (see Thinking in Colour, Sunday 14 January, for the first one and Exploring Colour on Saturday 20 January for the second one.)

3. Colour in scrapbooking

How do you choose your LO colours?

• From the picture – pick out colours very closely related to the colours in your picture?
• Choose papers you like and then find a pic to match? Or even adjust the colours of the pic to make them fit (making them black and white because they’d otherwise clash with the paper falls into this category). Choosing to wear or even buying clothes because they match your paper also fits into this category!
• Pick the photo first, then choose papers that don’t clash with it.

Some other way?

Take a sheet of coloured paper – any colour or colours – use as many coloured pens as you have to write down as many words/phrases/sayings/quotes as you can think of/look up/collect that are related to colour.

You stop me feeling blue

Colourful language

Colouring between the lines

He led a colourful life

Rose-coloured spectacles

Why not share a few of your phrases as comments on this blog? Or capture them on your own blog - these could be titles (of blog entries or LOs!) for the future…

NEXT: go collect some stash for a monochrome LO (size of your choice).

Cardstock, patterned paper, brads, ribbons, embellishments, pens, etc. Whatever you like.

Now find a small photo or photos with toning colours or adjust one in a graphics program – preferably of yourself but it doesn’t have to be! You could - if you wish - wait until AFTER you’ve produced your journalling in step 4 before you choose a photo…

When you’ve collected your stash, move on to number 4 in this series.

Colouring-in your life: 2. Exploring colour

Colouring-in your life

This is the second in the series of journalling inspiration based on colour (see Thinking in Colour, Sunday 14 January, for the first one.)

2. Exploring colour

Jot down the answers to the following questions:

a. What colour(s) did you have at your wedding? (Bridesmaids dresses, bouquet & flowers, accessories, etc.; your outfit, if it wasn’t white)

b. If you had a party with a colour theme and a white church hall as a background, what colours would you use to decorate it – banners, tablecloths, flowers, crockery?

c. What is your favourite flower colour?

d. What colour car would you ideally like (or maybe you have it…)

Now:

e. Look up dictionary definitions of colour – eg

“a visual attribute of things that results from the light they emit or transmit or reflect; "a white color is made up of many different wavelengths of light"”

f. Colour mixing is different depending on whether you are mixing light or paint…..

Naming colours is important in naming paint, lipstick and eyeshadow, lingerie, wool, cardstock… Look at the names of the colours in the Bazzill range, for example, and jot down your favourites (names of colours rather than the colours themselves).

g. Get out your colour wheel – or print out this one - http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~psyc351/Images/ColorWheel2.jpg

Explore some interesting colour illusions
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/col_lilacChaser/index.html

Colour is important in clothing/fashion, interiors, make-up and grooming. It’s even thought to have healing properties
http://www.colourtherapyhealing.com/colour_fun/

Colour is not an property of what we are looking at – it is something created in the brain as a result of the way your eyes interpret wavelengths of light. Colour is an invention of the human brain. Without our eyes, there is no such thing as colour – so everything must be in the equivalent of greyscale. Were there aliens, colour might not be one of their senses and they might have an additional sense or completely different senses from our five…

Colouring-in your life. 1: Thinking in colour...

Colouring-in your life

Here's a journalling exercise on colour that was part of our Team Cybercrop in 2006.

Part 1: What do colours mean to you?

There’s a condition called synaesthaesia in which people have their senses mixed up – they can “see” sounds and “hear” smells, “taste” colours…

Here, for example, is my take on colour:

blue - the moment just before waking, but also the pain of pulling my hair
red - the sharpness of cooking tomatoes, and heels stumbling on cobbles
yellow - Yorkshire cheese, the sound of a ship's horn in the muggy fog
brown - mother-love, buttered mushrooms and Guinness
white - the sound of silence, nothing but the ringing pulse in my ears
black - proud and strong, the tautness of chain, a clear bell chime
midnight blue - velvet to touch and deep knowledge of a lover
green - breezes gusting, and squirrels jumping from tree to tree

Take a colour – think about what it represents – jot down a few ideas…
Write down each of the following on a separate line and complete it as I did...
Post it here as a comment if you like. (Note that comments are moderated to avoid thiose horrible people who leave comment spam so it might take a little time for your comment to appear.)

blue
red
yellow
brown
pink
white
black
green

So what does this have to do with scrapping? Aah - more soon!