How I create my friendship journal

Hi everyone!

First of all, you might be wondering what I mean by a Friendship Journal and I'm thrilled to tell you about it.  :-) Christine Hiester shared a video on her YouTube channel last year where she talked about the journals that she and Heather Mattern had started creating and sending to each other.  I absolutely loved this idea and when an on-line, art acquaintance of mine reached out to me asking if I would like to share friendship journals with each other I was so thrilled and honored to be asked!  We only knew each other from Instagram and Facebook posts but there was definitely a friendship building between us and by sharing these journals with each other, our friendship is growing each day.  Art has brought us together....our miles apart doesn't matter, our age difference doesn't matter (I'm sure it's more than I want to believe! lol), none of it matters....just growing as friends does and sharing our lives with each other through our art.

You can watch me create the next friendship journal that I am going to start working in here.

You can find Christine's video about her friendship journal here and you can read her Journey to  True Friendship series here.

And Heather's video about her journal here. 

There aren't any rules to how you do your friendship journal.  We are both so busy that we work on ours and then mail it off when it's done, but you could easily set a goal to send yours to your friend at the end of each month, or every other month, whatever works best for you.  Since it's easier for me to express my feelings in a visual form through collage I tend to lean more on those types of pages in my journal so it's all collage and found word sentences.  If I do have more to say, I like to type it up and then either slip it in a pocket of the journal or adhere it to one of the pages. 

The best part of this for me is that I can work on it bit by bit and sometimes it almost feels like a diary.  I love having this safe place to share my feelings and know that I have a dear friend there to listen to me....even though we live so far away from each other. 

I like to use 9"x12" manilla envelopes for the cover of my journal.  Then, I fill the inside with random pieces of paper and scrapbook paper that I have collected just like a junk journal.  Just whatever I have on hand in my stash can make it's way into my journal like: calendar pages, small paper sacks, envelopes, etc.  Since I focus on collage work, I try to make sure that I am using thicker papers so that I can collage on their easily.  Thin paper is a lot harder to do collage work on.  I also add pieces of mixed-media paper torn from journals.

I hope that you enjoyed this and that it inspires you to reach out to someone and ask them if they would like to start sharing a friendship journal with you.  It's such a wonderful way to learn about someone, build new friendships and strengthen old ones, get your art on and creatively share your life with someone who wants to listen.

Thanks so much for stopping by and take care,

Dianne