In late June, I was talking with my good friend and creative pal, Rachel. Rachel is the fabulous host of the art retreat Handmade U and is currently gearing up for its third session in September! Rachel told me about an idea she had for a journaling project for the month of July. She described how we would put together two journaling supply kits, one to keep for ourselves and one to send to each other. We would then journal daily, using only the supplies that we have in our combined kit. I said YES to this project even before Rachel finsihed describing it to me! I love any excuse to journal and after hearing the words "journaling" and "ephemera swap," I was in!
I've been actively posting pictures of my July Journal pages on Instagram but just realized I haven't shared any pictures of it on my blog. To see my pages on Instagram, you can follow me here.
Rachel blogged about her July Journal here. To see more of her pages, follow her on Instagram here.
Here's a picture of the contents of the kits I put together for Rachel and I...

And here is a picture of the contents of the kit that Rachel put together for each of us...

Rachel even packaged up her kit in the cutest vintage chalkboard case! So much wonderful vintage goodness!
As for the base of journal, we each started with a French cahier. Rachel found a stash of these beauties (which she is selling in her Etsy shop!) on a trip to France and I was lucky enough to buy a few from from her at a previous Handmade U. Here's the front of the journal...

And some pages (click to enlarge)...




Rachel and I had so much fun working in our July Journals that we are doing it again for August. This time the base of our journals will be these little Bingo journals I made for Handmade U last year.
Our goal was to put together kits and have them available if anyone wanted to join us for an August Journal adventure; however, between our jobs and life, that didn't quite come together. The good news is that we are planning on making journal kits to sell at Handmade U and if there's interest, we will make sure we have them available to crafty friends who aren't able to join us at Handmade U!