As you might know, I moved houses last year. I live in an apartment in Middelburg for a year now and I set up my atelier here last August… it looked all nice, clean and organized back then but after 10 months of creating in my atelier the ‘mess’ has overtaken me. People who visit my blog on Wednesdays to see my desk-photo (the so called WOYWW-posts) all comment how neat and clean my desk looks and I guess that’s true – I cannot create when there’s all kind of stuff on my desk. But to keep my desk orderly and neat, I have to store all materials and tools somewhere else. In boxes, files, closets, drawers… and those bulge by now! Only yesterday I spend hours looking for a small tin of paint that I know I have somewhere… and I just couldn’t find it. I was getting more annoyed with every drawer I opened, every bag I looked in… it’s time to unclutter! Time to clean and re-organize my atelier – starting next week!
However, something good came from the hours I spend on looking for that tin of paint… I came across all my journals! There were some in one closet, some more on a shelf, some standing on the window sill… I put them all on the table and my-oh-my… it’s quite a stack of paper! With Tammy’s “Taking Stock” blogpost in mind I decided to photograph my own stock*** again. (I just checked and last time I did that and posted photos of my journal stack was in 2011.)
These are just my Chronicles art journals… look how high this pile is!
I love how the spines look after the journals are filled… all kinds of colors (ink, paint) shimmer through, awesome isn’t it?!
These are the other journals. Mostly hand bound. All kinds of books: big ones and small ones… (which make me think I forgot to add the tiny journals, oops.)
A photo from up close… I love it! This is my life, my world on paper guys!
How do I store these books, you may ask.
Well, NOT in a box, that’s for sure!
I like to be able to see this bunch of chunky art journals, to remind me how important it is for me to keep on creating. To remind me to keep on capturing “my world” on these pages because me and my life are worth it! For now, I put some on a shelf in the living room and some on the window sill in my atelier… I will think about a nice way to store/display them all when I re-organize my atelier next week. I may need some extra shelves maybe?
How big is your stack?
How do you store your finished journals?
I would love to see your photos! If you post a photo of your paper stack, please leave a link in a comment so I can come over and have a look!
***Before I started art journaling, I was a scrap-booker… those albums, eight of them, are stored in a closet – I did not photograph those.
Oh these look wonderful! I want to parooze each and every one!
You are way ahead of me. In my case, I am still evolving with journaling. First it was words like a diary. Then I started to add art to the pages and I saw how it made the page look more significant. Now there are no words and I am missing adding those regular entries about what happened on a particular day. I think it just means there will be more journalling and it will be a mix of different types of journals. I like being scattered this way. I can’t put all my efforts into one book. I need the stimulus of working on different things in different books. I have not learned to bind my own journals. I love the way there is so much more to learn.
Art journaling grew on my Wendy… I started a diary when I was approximately 10 years old and it evolved (via preserving memories in scrap books) to art journaling. I use my ‘Chronicles’ as a (weekly) art journal and journal about what happened on particular days. However, most of my art journal pages do have text, I just find them ‘not finished’ when there’s no journaling. In this guestblogpost (at Julie Balzer’s blog) I posted about my journey from diaries to art journaling…
oh wow, I would so love to spend some afternoons browsing through all these! Amazing how many you have! I don’t have nearly as many, I still know what to find in which one ;-). I have them all stacked together on a shelf, so I can easily find them when I want to look up something. Have a great Sunday!
I love how the color has seeped through your journals. Wavy, wonky pages with bits of this and that hanging over make me happy. I have my books on a built-in shelf next to the fireplace. I love how they look and beg you go go pick them up. I stacked them all up a while ago…and I know for a fact the stack has grown by at least 5 books since then.
🙂
http://www.halleshobbies.com/stacks-and-stacks-of-books/