I make myself a Diary every year in December. To do that I buy an emtpy sketchbook rip of the Hardcover and cover it in 120 gram paper, so that it becomes more soft and I dont scratch myself on the hard corners. Also that give s me a white canvas to draw and stick things on. Obviously, it can become a little repetitive after a while, drawing 5 soft lines with Pen and writing down the dates, but really 365 days is doable and I love the end-product. I am always worried I forget a day or I mess up the 30th and 31st month, but so far I have been lucky and havent done that many mistakes producing my diaries.
I got the idea from a freebee, I once got from my Mum, who got a Diary send by a German Design agency and handed it to me. Using that for one year, doodleing, sketching and writing down everything I have done brought so much joy to me that I decided to continue making these.
I am now using my fourth one so I can actually go back to everything I have done in four years! Sometimes people ask me to have a look when something happens too, as most people know about my diaries as I carry the current once around in a normal day.
This is not just to show off, haha, at the back of my diaries I leave about 40 pages empty on purpose so I can use it as a notebook too. Sometimes, especially when travelling, I stick things in to it or put photos inside of them. It hardly ever happens that I forget to fill the pages, but sometimes it takes a week or so until I find time to doodle, when that happens I write down in pencil what I have done so.
It is nice to design a Diary yourself, firstly you can adjust how much space you want for every single day, plus you can fill it up with illustrations you actually like or have produced youself.
And I can leave bank pages where ever I know beforehand that I will be travelling so that I can use that space during my trips around the world.
Funny enough that I loose or brake everything I have never lost or forgotten my Diary, and i am determined to keep it that way.
The four images from top to bottom are:
An example of a normal doublespread page
A doublespread with an illustration I have drawn directly into the diary
The outside of my current Diary (still very clean and empty, well apart from that red wine spill)
The cover I made for a diary I made for a friend as a christmas present
