May of us, including me, have always understood journaling to be based in writing. Maybe you’ve looked up “journaling” and found something with mostly images rather than words.

It isn’t surprising that art-based journals are popular online. The spaces between “journal”, “planner” and “scrapbook” are fading and evolving into one.

Art-based journals became popular once bullet journals (a custom planner system) took off and people started sharing content surrounding making and decorating their bullet journals. Check out this short documentary on bullet journals. Which featuers the BuJo founder, Ryder Carroll. I included a small clip below.

Journaling is what you make it.

If you are somebody whos trying to figure out how to journal, you might feel intimated or overwhelmed by the artwork. Social media has that effect on people. You see something amazing online and then you think what you do is is supposed to measure up to it.

But that isn’t true.

If you can’t seem to allow yourself to have a plain journal, then try using stickers. That’s an easy way to make your journal look nice. You don’t need to go crazy with them, just popping a few stickers in the corner of the pages is a good way to please your eyes while still having plenty of space for your internal exploration.

No matter how you decide to keep a journal, (written or artwork) what’s important is that your practice serves you. ❤