DIY JOURNALS

Get creative and make some personalized DIY Journals with some fun stamps and colorful paint.

I’m so happy to get to share these fun new stamps with you from Craffiti Direct, designed by my friend Mark Montano. They just launched on March 16th, so they’re brand new. All the stamps have a cool vintage or retro vibe that are perfect to add to most any project.

TOOLS & MATERIALS:

• Craffiti Direct Stamps by Mark Montano – Similar here.
• Composition books
• Ink
• Paint
• Brushes

step 1
You’ll want to paint over the covers of your composition books first.

I recommend using gesso or (water base) white house paint or acrylic paint. Pretty much whatever you have on hand will work.

Paint one or two coats over the covers of your composition books. Let the paint dry in between coats.

step 2
Before I started painting I added some stamps to the covers.

These stamps are clear and rubbery and they recommend using a clear resin stamp base with them. I didn’t have one so I worked with them as they are and it was pretty much ok, but if you can find a stamp base to use I recommend that.

For the vintage card stamps I used ink.

For the sacred heart stamps I used black acrylic paint for the covers, it gave them more of a woodblock effect.

Experiment with your inks and paints to see what works best for you. Practice on some scrap paper.

Let dry before painting.

step 3
Start painting! Try different techniques, mix up different colors. In this photo you can see the Sacred Heart stamp where I used paint.

I mixed up lots of different shapes and colors, mixed with flowers and stripes, to give them an unexpected look.

You can add text, dots, whatever you feel like. Have fun with this.

Let your paint completely dry.

step 4
Inside your books add some stamps to your pages.

Flip around to random pages and add small stamps, large stamps, lots of stamps. What ever you want.

I think adding the stamps to the inside pages really helps to make your journal more personal and a lot more fun to write in.

The stamps I used for this post are:
Vintage Cards
Sacred Heart
I also have Hotlips, which are oh so cute! I’ll be using them for another project.

I really do love to journal, but I have to admit that I’m not so good at doing it every day. Enter cool DIY’d journals that may just inspire me to change my habits and start doing it everyday.

Do you journal? What keeps you motivated to do it everyday? Leave me a comment and let me know how you keep it going or if you’re not so consistent like me, let’s motivate each other.