One Line a Day Journal DIY

I mostly use this blog as a journal, so I have been terrible at keeping a journal ever since I started my blog.  Even though it is nice to keep track of my life on my blog I only write about "exciting things" and usually only things I take photos of.  I've seen a few one line a day journals and I thought it would be fun to make my own. Now I have no excuse not to keep a journal, because writing just one line a day is much less daunting than keeping a traditional journal. 

Materials:
- 366 4 by 6 inch index cards (don't forget one for leap year!)
- 12 photos for month dividers
- scrapbook paper for dividers (You can buy scrapbook cards that are also 4 by 6 inches, or cut paper down to size yourself)
- wooden or cardboard box
- stamps for dates on index cards
- paint for decorating the journal box
- paintbrush
- glue
- scissors
Step 1: Print photos for month dividers.  I wanted square photos, so I chose some of my instagram photos to print from the past few years.  Before I printed them I added borders and month names using A Beautiful Mess photo app.
I was originally only going to use photos as my monthly dividers for my journal, but I found cute scrapbook card stock at Target that was already 4 by 6 inches, which was the same size as my photos and index cards.

Step 2: Cut your photos into squares
Step 3 (optional):  Use a corner rounding paper punch to curve the edges of the photos.  I did this so my photos would match the scrapbook paper index cards.
Step 4: Glue photos onto scrapbook paper.
Step 5: Stamp away!  There should be one index card for each day of the year.
Step 6: Paint your journal box.  I wanted to keep mine simple so I just taped it off and painted triangles across the front, but feel free to be creative! 
Step 7: Place your month dividers and index cards in the box and get to journaling!  A great thing about this journal is that even when writing in it every day it will last you several years.  Each line on the index cards should have a new year written on it, so this year each card will have a line from 2014 and next year a new line will be added to each card for 2015.  I think it will be fun to compare what I did each day from year to year.

3 comments:

  1. This is such a cute idea! You should make me one ;) I don't think I would have the patience to stamp the date on every card.

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  2. SO stinkin cute! And such a good idea, I was thinking of buying one of those one line a day journals this year, but think I might do this instead...

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