Craft Journaling + Supplies

I had some fun things arrive in the mail earlier this week from JetPens.  I love art and paper craft supplies as much as quilting supplies (if you haven’t guessed by now).  When I was a kid we use to have a local office supply store, JK Gills, and that was my FAVORITE store to go to.  I loved everything pens and journals and organization.  What 8 year old loves that?!  Yeah, me.  It was a very sad day for me when they closed.  I’ve been searching every since for an office supply store to love just as much.  JetPens is the closest I come to that kid-in-a-candy store (i.e. office supply store) feeling I’ve had since then.  I seriously fill my cart up with hundreds of dollars on a weekly basis and then make myself par down big time. So this last shipment included some SUPER cute kitty paperclips.  I’ve been eyeing all of their fun paperclips for awhile, and finally decided on these kitties.  But I think I need the penguins, too.

I like rounded corners on photos and notecards, so of course when I saw this 3 way punch I had to add it to the shopping cart.  When I’m sending orders out from my Etsy shop I always like to include a handwritten thank you, and usually I punch the corners to be rounded.  I have a nice little corner punch, but it kind of sucks.  This one rocks! If I accidentally put the paper in a little off and punch it, and it doesn’t work out to be exactly rounded (which I’m good at doing, even though there are handy guides to not have this happen) I can stick it back in, punch again and I’m good to go.  I can’t do that on my other corner punch.  I pretty much have to start over again.  So this was worth every cent.  Plus, who can pass up three different sizes of rounded corner in one punch!

I do a lot of journaling and like to add in bits of paper, so mono-adhesive is always on hand.  I really liked these little Pit Slides by Tombow (same manufacturer as my covet mono adhesive) so of course I had to order it.  Cute being the main factor here.  Well, it’s fantastic tape.  It’s different than their mono adhesive, and dare I say it, I think I like it better. 

So that brings me to my idea for July.  One of my favorite journals is my craft inspiration journal.  I have one for home/garden ideas and one for sewing/quilting ideas.  I paste all sorts of things in there, from ideas from ads to magazine articles on artwork and hand drawn sketches.  Anything that catches my eye gets saved and taped in.  A real-life Pinterest, if you will.  So I’m thinking we need to do a journal-along of sorts.  Maybe a prompt a week to get everyone thinking about creative ideas, thinking outside the box…  What do you think?  Let me know your thoughts on that and if you have anything specific you’ve been wanting to explore.  I think we’re going to approach it from a few angles I use myself.  I don’t always have the urge to sew in the summer, because it’s so nice out and I just want to enjoy what little sun we get, but I still like to be creative.  I spend a lot of time in my journal in the summer.

Supply-wise, you’re going to need a journal, scissors and probably some mono-adhesive of some kind (this Pit tape is great).  And a great pen.  Can’t forget a great pen.  I’m going to use the journal you see here, because my other one is pretty much full now.  My last journal was blank pages, but I’m thinking the grid will be nice for when I need to sketch ideas in, especially quilt block ideas.  Also, start saving up some magazines you might normally toss out.  I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

♥ Sun-Star Kadomaru Pro Corner Cutter
♥ Exacompta Forum Journal
♥ Midori Index Clip – Cat
♥ Tombow Pit Slide Adhesive Tape Roller
♥ Pig Novelty Eraser
♥ Uni-ball Jetstream 0.5mm Pink Ink (love!)
♥ Uni-ball Signo DX 0.28mm (still my favorite pen)