Thursday 21 March 2013

Make a Letter Journal

Do you have a penpal, or can think someone you'd enjoy penpaling with? Yes, I know, email is easier, and I too send tons of them every single day, but be honest that feels more like work, doesn't it? Urgent and necessary. Whereas there's nothing like a handwritten letter (and even better when it's a parcel and there's goodies being exchanged!) Well my best friend and I have been writing each other letters for years, since we were 14 to be exact. Sometimes we'd send each other 2 a day (one through the mail, and another we'd sneak into each others bags as a surprise!). Well that's all well and good but 15 years later it kinda leads to this:
Boxes of letters, none in order (and given that I've moved house MANY times during that period I still find long-forgotten letters in unlikely places). 

So I came up with a plan: Make A Letter Journal! 
It solves a whole lotta problems; like the messiness of thousands of envelopes, and the confusion of not having them in chronilogical order!

 It is a simple one signature book. You can make one using any of these tutorials:

The idea is simple: send the journal back and forth, each filling in the next page.

Here's some of our pages:
It means in the future not only is everything in chronological order already for us, but that we will each have our own letters (as well as the other persons) to read back on...and this aspect I LOVE. It makes it much easier to know what on earth we were talking about and what was going on at that time in our lives. The person to fill out the last page in the journal just needs to remember to send a photocopy to the other is all. 

We even use the same jiffy bag to send it backwards and forwards, with whatever other goodies we also decide to send:
meaning all we really have to find room for after a ton of letter writing is one (non-confusing, chronically sound) journal, yippie!!

Go ooooooon, make a letter journal....I know you want to ;)

much love, Jennibellie xoxo

19 comments:

  1. What an interesting idea! :D

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  2. I love this idea!! I'm going to see if my best friend would like to do this as we live on opposite sides of the country.

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  3. Great idea!! I think I may start one for my dear friend and university roommate!!! She lives very far away !!! Great idea!

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  4. Really love this idea so cute especially for keeping things nice and organized

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  5. Wouah! Me and my best friend got the same kind of Letter Journal when we were in high school!
    It was the first time we were not in the same school, and we had to keep up with our constant chatter... At the time, her sister and my brother were still in Junior High together, so we used to seal to journal, and pass it through them! And all their friends were making fun of them, persuaded they were hitting on each other, where actually they were just sneaking our packages from one familly to another every other day... ;) I still have a bunch of these filled notebooks close to my desk, and she has the other half! ;)

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  6. What a brilliant and charming idea! Leave it to you, Jenny, to come up with something so wonderful for friends to do together! Love it! (((hugs)))

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  7. Wow you have been very busy. What an awesome idea. I
    would love to have a pen pal in the UK. I am from Georgia
    in the US. Any takers?

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  8. Brilliant idea. LOVE LOVE LOVE this!

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  9. Very nice idea...maybe it's suit for me who forgetful about what I've wrote for my penpal >_<

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  10. Interesting idea! Only PenPal I have is an artist friend that I met on Facebook (but she is no longer on there) so we've kept e-mailing for the last couple of years but she lives in Sweden and I'm in Florida so it's quite cool since we can attach photos, etc... when e-mailing. Hmmmmm...maybe think futher!

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  11. What an awesome idea! I'm a big time letter writer and crafter so I LOVE this idea. Wish I had thought of it or read about it on your blog years ago. Ha! Ha! :) I'll see which of my pals I can do this with. Thanks so much for posting about it. :)

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  12. I've been doing this with my little 7 year old niece (she lives far away) for a little over a year. We just use an inexpensive composition book. It's so much fun, and we both get so excited when the book arrives in the mail.

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  13. The only thing that confuses me, is who ends up with the finished journal?....since you are sending it back and forth, it stands to reason that only one of you will keep it.

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    1. Hi eej713, as I put in the post the person to fill out the last page in the journal will send a photocopy of the completed journal when they send along the next journal in the process =)

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  14. Oh, great....I read that as sending a photocopy of the last page, not the entire journal.

    It does give me an idea, being a little selfish, I'd like to keep the original. LOLs. I use to write very long letters complete with photos when I moved from AZ to PA to a friend. She went through and copied all of them and sent them to me. She did it in B&W, so I need to go through my disks and find the photos and print them out to glue to the B&W ones, but it documents the emotional moving to another state, details that are long forgotten to me now after 20+ years. I think I'll bind all those copies together along with some other blank pages for me to add some comments to and add a section of my moving back to AZ two years ago. It will make a full circle of the journey.

    I'm new to this Art Journal, mini-books, just got started on this journey earlier this year. I've watched dozens of videos, bought tons of new art supplies I didn't know I needed, and have done a few small workshops. I'm getting ready to sign up for an online workshop to push me a little more in the direction of this type of Art. I've only done cards and scrapbooks up to now, so this will be a fun new direction for me. I do love all your videos you make, so many fun new things to try.

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  15. This is such an amazing idea! Both of my daughters are moving away to college this fall and I think this is a fabulous idea to keep up with them. Of course, like you said, there are emails, texts, & phone calls, but this would be a permanent record. Thanks for sharing!

    God bless.
    Tricia

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  16. What a great idea! .....did I read 'I could do with less penis pictures' in one of your letters?! Lmao

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  18. I love this idea! Too bad I don't currently have any pen pals, but I'll keep it in mind.....

    I appreciate all your great ideas and have lots of fun following you!

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