Wednesday, November 22, 2017

A last peek at the Leuchtturm (a journal)

About a month ago I finished my Leuchtturm1917 dotted journal. I worked in it for about three months and I loved loved loved it! In fact I loved it so much, that when the end of the journal was drawing near I bought another Leuchtturm to replace it. That one is for another post, but it was the first time in my personal journaling history that I decided to let the next book be exactly the same as the previous one. That should tell you something about how much I love these notebooks.

Another thing that will tell you how much I love a book is how stuffed it gets with...well...stuff. When I look at the filled up book I can see it's well used, but it doesn't seem all that oversized. That is until I put it side by side with the new book, like this:


When it's not bound with the cover elastic it's even thicker! The new book still looks so pristine in this picture, but it has now been used for a month and is already getting that cosy look of a journal well used, so that's good.

Anyway, the first Leuchtturm is full. Before I fully closed it I still had to decorate the inside covers and decided to use some photographs of our local lighthouse to do that. Leuchtturm after all is the German word for lighthouse. Here's how that turned out:



And here is selection of spreads from the last part of this well loved journal. You can see the other two parts here and here. Enjoy!





















As you can see I did a bit of everything in this book, even some drawing and sketching. The paper is ideal for felttip pens and drawing pens and those are my favorite materials right now. I would however not recommend this book if you like wet media or mixed media, it's definitely not an allround sketchbook, it's very much a good quality notebook. The sketches above were done at an exhibit in Rotterdam about masks. 

This journal was also used as my travel journal in October plus I took it with me on a weekend trip to Amsterdam. Because the book is quite compact it is easy to take with you everywhere which I really liked. I think of a journal as a type of daily companion book and that is a lot easier to do if it's not too big. Still, I'm sure in time I will do huge books again, that's just my need for variation. For now I am just grateful for this newly filled up book that I enjoyed using so much.

I hope you enjoyed this peek into my daily journal and I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day.