Antiquaria Journal Club | The Best Tools For You

Choosing your tools wisely is the #1 KEY to success! Believe it or not, giving yourself parameters can help ignite more creativity than if the sky is the limit. So...let's figure out our supplies!

Before anything else, let's decide what your favorite tools are. With these, we will begin to put our journal plan together!

Think about the things that you like to do first:
-Pen & Ink? Calligraphy?
-Graphite?
-Watercolor? Gouache?
-Fountain Pens?
-Colored Pencils?
-Felt Tipped Pens? Brush Pens?
-Rubber Stamps?
-Stickers?
-Bits of Ephemera?
-Other cool stuff?

Give a good hard think about the things that you really use often already. Your journal will be unique to YOU, so combining the things that you already LOVE is important. Having these as parameters will help keep your journal cohesive throughout it's pages.

Disclaimer: It's super duper easy to go overboard with ideas and inspiration when you look around at what other people are doing. Believe us, it happens all the time and is a key reason that we've not gotten to this project yet. Being frozen from TOO MUCH INSPIRATION is totally a thing. 

To make it easy to start, pick 2-5 things to incorporate. Maybe it's (1) pencil and (2) watercolor and (3) rubber stamps, maybe it's (1) pen + ink and (2) bits of ephemera or maybe it's (1) fountain pens and (2) stickers and (3) brush pens and (4) rubber stamps. THERE IS NO WRONG COMBO!

Build your toolbox:

Take the items that you figured out above and put them aside so they're easy for you to access. (Or if you're like us, put them in a cute pencil pouch). You can definitely limit yourself to just this selection-totally fine. But here are a few additional general tools that are helpful to add to your kit as well to assist in your journal journey:

-a small ruler
-washi tape
-a pencil and eraser (even if you don't plan to use a pencil as your tool of choice, it's good to include       for making layouts or guidelines
-a binder clip (to hold your current page open)
-double sided tape or stick glue (in case you want to paste something into your journal)
-shape templates (i.e. circles, squares, ovals)
-folder for storing mementos
-anything else you may find helpful!

Once you've compiled your toolkit, you're ready to move onto finding your journaling personality! We'll tell you how tomorrow!! In the meantime, we want to know...what's in your toolkit?

xoxo
Emma, Bailey and the Antiquaria Team