If you love flipping through handmade journals just to see what's tucked inside — a hidden pocket here, a little envelope there, a scrappy booklet clipped into the spine — this video is a quiet hour well spent. It's a flip-through of the journals and matching journal-and-purse sets I had listed in my Etsy shop at the time, and it covers six pieces in total: three standalone journals and three matching sets made in collaboration with my mum.
What we cover
Six handmade pieces get a full flip-through: the Home is Where the Heart Is hardcover journal, the Floral cereal-box journal with its scrappy signature booklet, the Grateful journal with lace closure and vellum pages, and three white-and-silver journal-and-purse matching sets — each bag hand-stitched by my mum with seed beads, chain detail, and upholstery fabric, and each paired with a journal I made to complement it.
What you'll learn
How I build up a journal's interior with removable, rearrangeable elements — pockets, clipped-in tags, tucked envelopes, hidden paper clips, and scrappy little booklets. The idea is that you can pull things out, move them to a different page, and put them back wherever you need them. I don't want someone to feel locked into a layout the first time they open to a blank page.
Why I clip rather than glue most elements, including:
- Hidden paper clips that hold ephemera flat but release cleanly when you want a full writing surface
- Tags and loose papers tucked into pockets so they sit flush but aren't permanent
- Appliqué and fixed embellishments used sparingly, only where they're meant to stay
How stenciling on most or all pages ties a journal together — this was actually the first time I'd done full-journal stenciling and I was really pleased with how it worked. It gives each page more visual interest and makes a collection of different paper types feel intentional rather than random.
How a cereal box becomes a journal cover — the Floral and Grateful journals are both made from cereal box board. Sturdy enough to hold the structure, light enough to work with, and something most of us have on hand. The measurements for each journal are in the Etsy listings, but the construction approach is the same one I use across my tutorials.
How I think about a journal's process start to finish, including:
- Cover first, then paper selection
- Cut to size, then sewing, stamping, stenciling, inking
- Binding
- Clipping in the loose elements last, after the book is bound
What a journal-and-purse matching set actually looks like in person — my mum makes the purses and I make the journals, and the pairing is closer than it might sound. I show how the journal fits inside the bag, how the closures and trim on the journal echo the fabric and detail on the bag, and what "matching" means in practice across three different colourways.
Why I use journaling for memory keeping and working through problems — this comes up during the Grateful flip-through. I talk about what I actually do with these journals: I write about what's happening, what's overwhelming me, what solutions I'm finding. It's not a prescription for how anyone should use a journal, but it's honest about how I use mine, and I think it helps frame why I put so much into the interiors.
Tips & gotchas
Include extra elastic when you sell or give away a journal with an elastic closure. Elastic disintegrates over time — it's just what it does. I always pack a spare length with any journal that has a removable elastic closure so the recipient can replace it when they need to. If you're making journals for yourself, keep this in mind: the closure that looks perfect today may need replacing in a year or two.
Be gentle with bag fasteners and zippers on handmade purses. These bags are beautifully made, but the internal fasteners and zip pulls are still the points of wear on any bag. Open and close them with care rather than yanking, and they'll last.
Clip elements in so they can be moved. I've bought journals from other makers where everything was glued down, and I always found it frustrating — some days you want a full clear page, other days you want that little tag right there. Clipping gives the person using the journal the flexibility to make it their own without destroying anything.
Stenciling across most pages is worth the time. It felt like a lot when I was working through it, but the result — where every page has a little more visual texture and the whole journal reads as coherent — made me a convert. It's especially useful when you're working with a mix of papers from different sources, because it gives them a common thread.
If this style of journal-making is new to you, the tutorials linked in the video description go deeper on the closures, the hidden paper clips, and the scrappy booklets — each of those is a technique worth spending an afternoon on.
