Time for round two of our brief, short and simple Mini Journal Project….

Just One Word

If you’d like to, you can remind yourself of what we set out to do HERE in part one of this Mini Journal Project

You might now like to read through what I’m suggesting for this 2nd part of the project before going and rooting out your ‘words’ from where ever you’ve kept them safe.

So at some point over this weekend I’d invite you to schedule yourself 15 minutes of ‘me’ time. Of course if you have more to spare even better but 15 minutes should nail it.  Then gather the following

• one piece of paper (A4 or A5 sort of size) The piece I used was sort of in-between.  As long as it’s rectangle shaped, you’re good
• pen/pencil/any mark making implement is good in fact the more variety the better so why not raid your offspring’s pencil case
• if you have it…a pritt stick or small amount of pva glue but this is not essential
• your piece of paper with your words on from last weekend
• pair of scissors or a rule for tearing a straight edge

Some of you might have two words on your paper, some might have 20, 30, 40 !!  I have no idea and the number really isn’t important.

Take a minute to read the words you wrote, and think about…

• do you want to add any new words now ?
• which words stand out to you ?
• do you want to use all of the words?
• do you want to select just a few of the words to use?

Again don’t over think this… I did this exercise myself with my list.  I instinctively circled the words that stood out to me, as I say, without agonising about it.

So right now you may have any number of words….from 1 upwards

Now I’d like you to take your new piece of paper and fold it into 8…simply

1. fold it in half lengthways long edges together, then open out
2. fold in half the opposite way, short edges together, then open out
3. fold one short edge into the centre crease, then open it out
4. repeat for the other short edge, open it out

It should look like this…

If you’d like all your words to be the right way up when we finally fold our piece of paper then you’ll want to follow this instruction (if you really don’t’ care about that, then you can ignore this and write them however takes your fancy !)

• Think of your piece of paper as being divided into two halves along that long fold where you will eventually cut
• image that fold is the top of your piece of paper
• now comes the fun part…start to write out your chosen words
• get as creative as you like
• how many different ways can you find to write out the words
• At some point you’ll want to turn the paper and carry on writing, again imagining that the long crease is the top of the page

It’s great if you can spend some time over this…this is the ‘creative’ part of the journaling.  As you spend some time finding new ways to write out the words, use different pens/pencils/colours, different script, change of direction, maybe you’ll want to add something or join some words together.  Anything goes.  For me it becomes a bit of a writing meditation

This shows how the division works….

Once you feel like you’re ‘done’, we can fold it up.

Cut or tear along the long crease 3/4 of the way…

Describing the folding is harder than the doing !!..  With the short joined edge on the right, start folding from the bottom left.  Your going to alternate, folding forwards and backwards to create a concertina.  Page 1 will face page 2, page 3 will face page 4, etc.  (The back of page 4 will face the back of page 5)

your concertina booklet structure should look this…

What you can do now if you like is glue those 2 centre pieces together…

I decided to add some paper to the front and back pages, partly for decoration and partly to give it a bit more stability to stand up.  I used some scrap brown paper that was heading for the recycling bin  but you could use anything to hand.

Done….Finished !!

One Mini Journal Project

‘Just One Word’

One simple Concertina Journal

I’d love to know how you got on

Even better share a picture in our FB group

What did you think of this Mini Journal Project

Any surprises along the way ?

Where will your words lead you next ??