Sunday, January 20, 2013

Referencing all those journals - the lazy way

A page of thumbnail shots from one of my wildflower journals
I recently had reason to refer to something in an old journal, and it took me only 3 minutes to find it.  Knowing you journallers as I do, you, too have many, many volumes to keep track of.  I know there are people who have the discipline to number pages and create indexes but that's not me, and that's not how I recall information.....I recall events by the pictures I drew of them.  So, upon completing each journal, I photograph the cover and all the pages and print a contact sheet with thumbnails of every page.  I label the pages and pop them into a binder, divided by category (regular journal, garden journal, travel, etc.)  I can flip through those pages and find what I want very quickly!
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4 comments:

  1. Well how cool is this?! I recently had to look through all my past journal pages (as how did I come to have so many journals?!) and it would have been absolutely perfect if I had done this.

    So far I haven't organized any journals at all. I do scan each page for posts or for future reference, and have even photographed some (but not all) of the covers. It's now going on my list of things-to-do for a slow day.

    Thank you for this idea!!

    P.S. Did you use Photoshop or something else to create the contact sheets?

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  2. I found your blog vis-a-via "Tales of Carmel...." and love what I read and see, but am totally confounded by these butter journals. I researched them online a bit, but still don't know exactly what they are (most are awesome and made by hand it seems). Not being a journal-type, have I missed something? Your one for Thanksgiving is really special and I'd love to know more. Thanks so much and I've booked-marked you.

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  3. Gawd this is a FAB idea!
    I wish I'd done this before I tossed or gave away so many sketchbooks..
    Wonder if its too late to start...
    Contact sheets...a thing of the past no?

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