So now we have a journal just the size we want it, and paper inside that is ideal. It’s time to create our journal entries.

This is a personal art form and you have only yourself to please, but if your self is like my self, that’s not so easy. I am much more picky about my own art and writing than anyone else would be.

Because, this is personal art, there are many who say there is no right or wrong way to do it, but I want to be pleased with my pages - now and in the future when I revisit them.
Maybe there is no such thing as a “perfect page”, but because of my background in graphic design, I like to feel an underlying unity in my layout. We used to work on a grid system that gave balance to all the page elements. Not only does a page that is organized this way look better, it also helps you to sort the components of your design into some kind of meaningful presentation. You can still use wild colors and freestyle writing and drawing, stamping etc., but if it’s all arranged according to some kind of plan, it will all look like it goes together.

I wanted a modular system of some kind to set up an endless variety of page layouts - something for anything I wanted to do. I would be drawing, painting, writing, and visually thinking on these pages and I wanted them to make visual and conceptual sense. I am not a fan of the hodge-podge art styles - can you tell? I love art that clearly communicates.

So I designed the Artist Journal Stamp Set (see below) for my own use, and when I found that it worked really well, I decided to make it part of my product line so you could use it too - if you are one of the many folks who would like some kind of blueprint with which to build your pages - maybe not perfect pages, but perfectly set up for what you intend to do with them.
The illustration on the right shows all the stamps in the Art Journal set, but it is not shown actual size (the page would be 8.5"x11").

The style is sketchy and casual and the set contains lines for writing, boxes for drawing, large punctuation marks for emphasis and use as design elements, plus many headings that might serve you as prompts for thinking things through in your journal.

There is also a stamp for every month and day of the week and three sets of numbers.

The Art Journal Stamp Set is unmounted and comes with a storage board to keep everything in its place - just like our Red Letter Alphabets do. And there is a matching Red Letter Alphabet called Sketchy which can be used to set up additional headings, prompts, comments or anything you might want to say.
New, modular design stamps for journal page layout.
On the following pages, we will explore a couple sample layout possibilities and some techniques for customizing the lines to any size block you might need for the written part of your page. The picture frame stamps can be rotated to look like a variety of drawn boxes, so the fact that they are stamped images need not be obvious.

Both this set and the Red Letter Alphabet that matches it come with heavy duty sheet protectors to hold their storage boards, so they can travel easily inside a binder and go wherever you do
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