Resolve to improve your journaling

While Steph and I were planning what we want to help you learn during this new year, I couldn’t help but come back to the importance of journaling. Now, please don’t go away if you don’t like to journal! Rest assured, that there are many who struggle in this area. Even someone like me who enjoys writing still has a hard time deciding how to put my feelings onto a scrapbook layout.

Although there are many amazing ways to make your memories meaningful (we have 4 years of archives here to prove it), I honestly believe that nothing will improve your photos and scrapbook pages like great journaling will. Words are a powerful tool! Pick a journaling related skill you want to work on and check out these resources to help you get started.

I’ve never met anyone who loves photos who doesn’t want to know how to do this. Whether you’re a blogger, a paper scrapper, or a full out digi fanatic, adding text to a photo is a skill you will want to have.

All you need to do is open a photo in your program (I use Photoshop Elements 11) and then select the type tool.

Choose your font, size, and color

and then you have a photo that can speak for itself! Be sure to save the file with a new name so you don’t overwrite your original photo.

Here are some resources to help:

• write on your photos
• fonts don’t float or tip for adjusting opacity in PSE

Adding journaling to a scrapbook page is as simple as putting text on a photo, but you will need to consider spacing, placement, and general design to make it look it’s best.

When using your text tool, pay attention to the font you use, what kind of spacing and leading look best, and how sentences wrap to the next line.

Here are some of our favorite tips and ideas:

• where to put journaling
• text size matters
• designing word focused pages
• accenting journaling
• fonts dos and don’ts
• favorite free fonts for journaling
• favorite free fonts for titles
• typewriter fonts and tricks
• more than you want to know about type
• terrific text tips
• Photograph your journaling
• titles don’t have to be on top
• reflected text
• title techniques in the tutorials section

This is the one that seems to scare most scrapbookers, but I promise it’s easier than you think! If you take the effort to write from the heart, the page will become a true treasure.

Here are some favorite tricks to use when journaling:

• scrapbooking a conversation
• questions you should ask your family
• Make a list of stories to tell and then start telling them
• Conduct an interview to get journaling material
• Start your journaling with Dear fill-in-the-blank
• Try journaling from blog posts, emails, & status updates
• Try lightning round journaling
• Get help from others with your journaling
• Listen to a conversation & then write about it
• Write a short story to use as journaling
• Journal this day in history
• Answer questions to get your journaling
• Use the calendar as a journaling tool
• Gather up some journaling
• Borrow your journaling from the internet
• Use a meme or a quiz for journaling
• Exercise your journaling muscles
• Use bullet journaling
• Try a “standing over the shoulder” or “bet you didn’t know” approach
• Journaling standouts
• Journaling inspiration
• Something is missing

Whatever your new year’s resolutions are, I sure hope that increasing and/or improving your journaling will be a focus for you. I can tell you from experience that the layouts that mean the most to me and to my family are the ones with journaling on them.