I made this journal for a dear friend for her birthday earlier this year. It started life as a blank, 3″-square acrylic album from Maya Road. I loved the challenge of the transparent pages and covered one side of each with 2-sided cardstock from paper designer BasicGrey.

Each page has a 2″-square pocket I made from coordinating papers in a combination of prints. I sanded the edges of both the background papers and the pockets to give them a soft, worn feel, then embellished with twill tape, stickers, paper cut-outs, and stamped text and images. As you can probably tell, I love intricate papercrafting, and my favorite projects are small, detailed pieces.

Inside each tiny pocket is an even tinier tag with an inspirational or humorous quote on it, and each tag is decorated with a stamped design and a loop of 1/8″-wide ribbon. This journal has a sort of “Old Lady Who Swallowed the Fly” quality to it. Altogether now: “She covered the acrylic so the papers would show, then folded the pockets to hold the tags, then sanded the pages to make them soft, then made the tags to hold the quotes that wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her…” :)

Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” One of the qualities I value most is a sense of humor — it’s what first attracted me to my husband; it connects me with friends across days and miles; and it gets me through times when no amount of tears would do the same.

Little did I know how much the words on the final page of this journal would come to mean to me just a few months later, and they touch on the heart of what this blog is about.

“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.” ~ Maya Angelou

Special thanks to Charity for the wonderful photography :)