Make Your Own Capsule Journal

Capsule journals are my love letter to a joyful, fulfilling journal practice.

They combine the benefits of journaling — seeing and understanding who we are, recognizing what’s important to us, and taking action that makes a difference — with playful moments of papercraft and creative making.

These tiny, handmade treats keep me coming back to journaling, even when I feel like I have nothing new to say, when I’ve been away for a time, and especially when I need a little inspiration and encouragement in the middle of a busy life.

Here are three delightful reasons to give capsule journaling a try:

1. Capsule journals are tiny — in both size and time commitment.

These journals measure 2.5 inches wide by 3.5 inches tall and use only one sheet of paper printed front and back! They can be made — and journaled — in just minutes.

This is why their name feels perfect to me. Capsule journals explore one idea from beginning to end in the tiniest of packages. And, as you cut, sew, and write, each one becomes its own rewarding, handmade object of self-expression and discovery.

2. Capsule journals put your creative and reflective energies to good use.

When you’re craving a few moments of creative rejuvenation, crafting a capsule journal gives you something to focus on: a tiny book you’ve made with your own two hands and a collection of lighthearted journal prompts to tickle your imagination and inspire your next steps forward.

And, since they’re printables, you can make new capsule journals to write about your days and explore your bright ideas again and again.

3. Each capsule journal becomes part of a growing library of your life story.

As it grows, your collection of tiny volumes tells the story of your days, your experiences, your memories, and the meaningful steps you’re taking toward the things that matter most to you.

If you’d like to try one for yourself, the printable template for my 12 Little Things About Your Day capsule journal and step-by-step instructions for putting it together are below! You’ll also find an ever-growing collection of quick and colourful capsule journals in my shop.

12 Little Things About Your Day

This cheerful little journal is all about noticing the tiny details of your day. It ends with an invitation to choose one idea or insight you’ll take with you into the days to come.

Step 1 - Download your capsule journal template

I’ve created two different files depending on which size paper you’re using:

• 12 Little Things Capsule Journal Template - For Letter-Sized Paper

• 12 Little Things Capsule Journal Template - For A4 Paper

Step 2 - Printing

Print just the first page of the template. Then, turn your printed page over, put it back into your printer’s paper drawer or feeder, and print page 2 on the other side.

The images below show the front and back of the single-page template.

Step 3 - Gather your other supplies

You’ll need:

• scissors (or a paper trimmer)

• something pointy for poking holes (I use my little red sewing awl)

• a sewing needle

• a 10-12 inch length of thread (I use embroidery floss)

• a pen, pencil, marker, or colourful pencil for journaling!

Step 4 - Check to make sure your pages are aligned

After you’ve printed your template, you’ll notice a blue dot in the upper right-hand corner on the cover side. When you turn your page over, there should also be a blue dot in the upper left corner. If you hold them up to the light, they should be back to back so you know your pages are correctly positioned.

Step 5 - Cut out your pages

Using the edge of the cover page and the grey boxes around the remaining pages as guidelines, cut out all four page sections. I like to cut just inside the edges of the cover page and grey outlines.

Step 6 - Fold and place your pages

Fold your page sections in half so the front cover and pages 1, 3, and 5 are on the top half of the fold (as shown below). Then, place the pages inside the cover.

Step 7 - Make three holes for sewing

Use your awl to make three holes in the middle fold of your stacked pages. I start by estimating the centre of the fold and poking the hole there first, then adding one hole below and one above.

Step 8 - Bind your journal

To sew the binding:

1. Holding the journal open in front of you, pass your needle and thread through the front middle hole, leaving a tail you’ll use later to tie a small knot and bow. (Image below, top left).

2. From the back of the journal, pass the needle through the bottom hole to the front of the journal. (Image below, top right).

3. Pass the needle through the top hole to the back of the journal. Ensure your tail is to one side of the long stitch you’ve just made (Image below, bottom left).

4. From the back, pass your needle back through the middle hole, this time coming through the front on the side of your long stitch opposite to the tail (image below, bottom right).

Step 9 - Complete your binding with a bow

Separate your needle from the thread and tie a knot in your thread on top of the long stitch in your journal’s binding. Tie a lovely little bow and snip the ends of the thread. As an extra step to keep the bow from loosening, you can add a tiny dab of glue to the knot.

Your journal is now completely assembled and ready for journaling! I hope you fill it with oodles of observations, reflections, and memorable moments from your days.

Happy journal-making!

P.S. If you’d like to make more capsule journals, visit my hand lettered shop for more tiny templates!

How One Quick Journal Prompt Can Inspire Three Surprising Results

I thought I had today’s And Other Things journal page all figured out.

It was filled with all the things you’d expect, including colourful prompts about things that go together and afternoon treats, and a playful twist in the word search list.

Little did I know that one sneaky prompt held a triple surprise. I can’t wait to tell you all about it — and in a brand new way!

But first, if you’d like to download this page for yourself, you’ll find it right here.*

Okay. Now that you have your page, let’s chat about that sneaky prompt!

I recorded my first ever voice memo on that very subject and sent it out with my newsletter, where I first shared this page.

It's unscripted and off the cuff – a peek at the joy and inspiration that can emerge while discovering new things in your journal.

Click below to listen!

P.S. If you have any difficulty playing the audio file or would prefer to read my message, I've included a transcript of the voice memo below.

P.P.S. If you missed the first three pages in my And Other Things series and would like to try them, you'll find them here, here, and here!

* The pdf file includes two versions of this journal page (colourful and greyscale) and two page sizes (letter and A4). For instructions on printing one or more pages, visit my shop welcome page and scroll to the bottom.

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Voice Memo Transcript

Hi there, it's Christie.

Welcome to my first ever Newsletter Voice Memo!

Today I'm sharing a few thoughts about the newest page in my And Other Things printable journal page series where I'm taking a playful approach to the serious reflective work we do in our journals.

I hope when you see this page for the first time the playful part will jump right out at you. It's super colourful and filled with hand-lettered prompts that explore lots of different ways we can reflect on our days and get to know ourselves better in our journals.

If you'd like to download a copy of this page for yourself, you can! It's available right here in the newsletter. You just need to click the link above the image.

I wanted to chat with you today about one of the prompts on this journal page that really surprised me. And, of course, it wasn't the one that I thought was going to surprise me.

There were two prompts I was super excited about sharing. The first is at the top of the page. It's a new prompt called things that go together and I was excited to share it with you because it's one I haven't used before. I haven't used anything like it before in my other journal pages, so I was really excited to share it in this page.

There's also a word search. There are other word searches in this series, but this one has a bit of a twist. I've mixed up some of the words in the word list, so you'll have to put them back together before you can find the words in the puzzle.

But neither of those two prompts is the one that surprised me!

For a little bit of background: in each of the pages in this series, I've tried to include at least one prompt that reminds us how strong and capable we are, how much we do every day, what our strengths are. I try to do it in a way that's super specific because I think it can be really difficult – for example, if someone asks you, “hey, what are you good at?” – it's hard, on the spot, to come up with an answer. But if someone asks you something very specific about one of your skills, sometimes it's a little bit easier to reflect on the question.

The prompt that surprised me in this page is: When your day is super busy, one thing you're good at.

The prompt looks for you to imagine one of those super busy days where there are a million things happening at once and you're running in all sorts of different directions. And on those days, you know, what are the parts you're really good at?

When I answered this prompt, I came up with two answers. One was calming myself down when I get a little bit flustered during a busy day and the other one was finding perspective, finding perspective in terms of, what are my priorities for the day? What do I really need to get done? And making sure that at least those things get done even if the rest of the day is very difficult to navigate.

I wrote those two answers down in the prompt and finished the rest of the page. Then I sat back to kind of reflect on the page, review it, and think about what my takeaways might be. And when I looked back on this one prompt, it dawned on me that, yes, these are the things that I think that I'm pretty good at in the middle of a busy busy day, but they're also the things I need in the in the middle of a busy day.

When it's super busy, I need to find ways to calm myself down, I need to be calm in order to navigate it well. And I need to know what my priorities are. I need to have a good perspective on what I want to accomplish on that day. That was part of the surprise of this prompt. It turned out that it wasn't just a prompt about what I'm good at. It turned out to be a prompt about what I need as well.

And then when I took another look at it, I realized there's a third aspect to this prompt. It's kind of a how-to. I've kind of given myself, with those two answers, a little bit of a how-to on a busy day – how to make the most, how to get the most out of a busy day. One is to make sure that I'm calm, that I go into that day calmly and continue calmly through it as much as I can and the other is to make sure I have a good perspective on what I want to accomplish.

So, you know, when I started answering this prompt, it was super simple. It was just trying to reflect on the things that I'm good at. But when I saw it on the page, when I sat back and really looked at it, I saw there was so much more to it.

It reminded me what I need so that I can remember that on busy days and it gave me a little bit of a an action list of things that I can do when I'm in the middle of a busy day and find myself flustered or overwhelmed. 

I wanted to share that with you. I'd love for you to journal this page for yourself and see which prompts surprise you. I hope you'll love journaling this page, and I hope you'll let me know how it goes for you!

How to turn colourful prompts and puzzles into meaningful journaling

I like to think of my journal work lately as a playful approach to serious work.

Playfulness in journaling, for me, means colourful layouts, lots of free association in my prompts and writing, and following my curiosity and intuition wherever they lead.

The serious work is what happens along the way, including:

• Knowing ourselves better.

• Thinking, dreaming, and discovering what works and what doesn't.

• Capturing important moments, figuring out what they mean, and taking purposeful action.

• Connecting the good stuff out there to our everyday lives – so we can access it easily and often.

• Seeing challenges and their solutions from new perspectives. (Because if we always reflect the same way, we'll always see the same things.)

• Developing our voices so we can advocate for ourselves, others, and the issues we care about.

I've made three hand-lettered pages so far. (You might notice that they look a little different from my usual printables!)

Each page is filled with prompts and puzzles inspired by meaningful reflective practice. Some sections are quicker than others, but they all count.

I hope they'll show you that there are as many ways to reflect as there are words to reflect with!

I'm sharing the first page with you today and will follow up with the next two in future posts. Before I do, if you're wondering where they might fit in your day, here are a few thoughts.

When to use these pages:

• When you want to journal but need a place to start.

• When you're in a journal rut and want to shake up your practice a little.

• When you need a quick pick-me-up in the midst of it all.

• When you want to play with the words and ideas around you.

• When you want to joyfully connect with the things that matter to you.

How to use them:

• Just print and write. I keep my pages in my favourite binder. When it fills up, I move the older entries to bound folders.

• If printing isn't an option, try typing or writing your reflections onto the page on your tablet or in your PDF reader.

• When you have more to say about a prompt or when it leads to new ideas, you can write on the back of the page or start a new page in your notebook or note-taking app. But don't stop there! Share your ideas, follow up on your discoveries, and, where you can, delight in the serious work of embracing a full life with all its gifts and challenges.

If you'd like to play with this page, click here to download it now.*

Next time, I'll share more of my thinking behind this little project – including its title! Until then, I wish you oodles of colourful inspiration in your journaling!

* The pdf file includes two versions of this page (colourful and greyscale) and two page sizes (letter and A4).

Daring adventures and exhilarating escapades

Over the years, I've experimented a lot with finding ways to explore our days from new and noteworthy perspectives. My aim, as always, is to start right here, where we are right now -- our to-do lists, our everyday issues and routine activities. But no matter where I start, I always seem to arrive at the idea of adventure. I can't help it. When I look at daily living, even the most mundane parts, I almost always see adventure.

Now, I'm not talking about fun-and-games adventures. No, I mean the kind of adventures that require courage and perseverance, where success is not guaranteed, where you -- the intrepid* adventurer -- will almost certainly stumble along the way, but you'll also grow in strength and skill in ways you might not have previously thought possible.

Lately, more than ever before, I've taken to telling myself, when yet another daunting challenge presents itself, like planning for the weeks and months ahead, reaching out to new people with new ideas, or returning to activities after long absences, "Well, I'm sure it will be an adventure!" It always gives me a little boost of courage and helps me focus on each step forward and not feel quite so invested in the outcome.

I see a lot of potential for some exciting, perspective-changing journaling in this approach, so I set out to create a set of journal pages that explores our days from a variety of big picture perspectives. Another adventure!

First came the titles for the pages, as exuberant as I could imagine them.

Next, I dove into the nuts and bolts of our daily adventures with the goal of capturing the memorable, momentous, perspective-bending aspects.

The final result is a set that I hope will encourage you to see yourself and your days from surprising perspectives -- as an adventurer, explorer, thrill seeker, storyteller, risk taker; you know, the stuff that reminds you to go out there into your days with courage and confidence and make them count.

I hope these pages inspire you to turn your experiences into memories you can look back on for years to come, including:

• the adventures that inspire you to grow in new and unexpected ways,

• the exploits that bring out the very best in you,

• the shenanigans that make your days interesting and unique,

• the bloopers that move you forward,

• the escapades that bring you joy, and

• the encounters that connect you to the people and places in your world.

You'll find this set right here in my shop.

In the meantime, if you're up for a chat, tell me about one of your adventures that requires courage and perseverance in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you and can't wait to cheer you on!

*I've always had a vague idea of what the word intrepid means. Brave, strong, determined, laughs in the face of adversity -- that sort of thing. I decided to look it up, just to be sure. I find I'm doing that a lot lately, making sure I know the precise meaning of the words that have snuck** into my vocabulary. According to the folks at Merriam-Webster, intrepid is "characterized by resolute fearlessness, fortitude, and endurance." I like that fearlessness is preceded by resolve in the definition. In my own adventures, I would say that I'm almost never fearless, but in order to move forward, I have to resolve to act as if I am. How about you?

**The spell checker is trying to tell me that snuck isn't a word, but I looked it up too and it's fine

Everyday Journaling - How to Make Ripples

I think we’re making ripples all the time. They’re in every word of encouragement, every effort to build something lasting, and every smile directed at someone in the middle of an ordinary day.

Here are 8 quick journal prompts for thinking about ways you can make ripples.

1. One person you can check in on:

2. One thing you can leave better than you found it:

3. One local organization or business you can support:

4. One next step you can take on a project that matters to you:

5. One meaningful issue you can learn more about:

6. One way you can encourage one person you adore:

7. One way you can share your knowledge or skillset:

8. One good thing you can put out into the world:

How will you make ripples today?

P.S. This page is part of my Everyday Journaling series, in which I create on-the-spot journal pages inspired by everyday experiences. If you’d like to create your own blueprint for making ripples, this printable journal page is available in my shop.

Everyday Journaling - How to Listen

I feel like good listening can be hard to come by. Even so, I think we know it when it happens. To be truly heard — to be gifted with someone’s full attention and encouraged to say what you think without interruption or dismissal, even if it doesn’t quite make sense yet — is deeply validating.

I know I can be a better listener. It’s something I think about all the time, mostly after I’ve sucked all the air out of yet another conversation. I can be impatient, distracted, and sometimes more in need of validation of my own perspective than interested in working to understand someone else’s. Often, I don’t recognize that I’ve missed an opportunity for a deeper, more meaningful discussion until the discussion is long over. All of which prompted this journal page — to give myself a dedicated spot to think about good listening and hopefully generate some helpful insights about how to put that thinking into practice.

I found it really helpful to consider elements of good listening in lots of different circumstances. I started to see different layers of listening, one on top of the other, that could lead to better understanding. Going forward, I’m working on giving conversations my full attention and a chance to unfold without jumping straight to conclusions about where they’re headed or what they mean. I’m working on asking better questions about another person’s perspective and experience rather than assuming I already know. I hope it will lead to more understanding and engagement and also more fascinating discussions!

P.S. This page is part of my Everyday Journaling series, in which I create on-the-spot journal pages inspired by everyday experiences. If you’d like to jot down your own thoughts and observations about how to listen, you’ll find this printable journal page right here in my shop.

Everyday Journaling - Even the Stuff that Feels Silly

I can’t decide if this is something I should share. I’ve gone back and forth a hundred times in my mind. I’ve written it up and deleted it twice. I may delete it again. (Regardless, I’m already imagining a whole new page just to sort through the misgivings I’ve had about this one.)

Is it okay to admit that all I want to do is watch TV? That lately I have this distracting urge all day long to stop what I’m doing, find a screen, and disappear into someone else’s story? Do I write about that sort of thing here?

The thing is, creating and journaling this silly, ridiculous journal page dedicated to the things I could be doing instead was really helpful. It generated lots of new ideas and resulted in a huge, handy list of better things to do for those moments when I can’t think of better things to do.

It also cheered me up. It reminded me that I can journal about anything. And that even the ideas that don’t at first feel worthy of serious consideration can lead to something good.

P.S. This page is part of my new Everyday Journaling series, in which I create on-the-spot journal pages inspired by everyday experiences. If you’d like to jot down your own handy ideas for things to do other than watching TV, you’ll find this printable journal page right here in my shop.