Vintage Journal: Heart-care and Earth-care

Journaling can be essential because It is a gateway into yourself, finding yourself, affirming yourself, and just being more aware of how your thoughts, feelings, what's going on with your life, and so on. It's just a lot that you can do with paper and writing.

One of the most common things that go on when you are struggling with mental health is that you feel like no one understands you or you have a hard time expressing yourself and that's why journaling can really be a great tool because it can give you a way to express yourself. Sometimes we don't talk about things if we are like "Okay, wait. I am not even sure if I feel this way. I don't wanna say anything and jump the gun". Well, if you have your journal, you can absolutely say whatever you want to say, it doesn't have to be concise, it doesn't have to be fully formulated yet. You can just write. It's okay. That's why journaling can help you manage your anxiety, reduce your stress, and cope with depression.

Journaling helps you prioritize your fears, your problems, and your concerns. When you've already designated the time for journaling and so you're one with your thoughts. Like, this is your time to you set apart to write. When you are writing, the first thing sometimes that we want to do was write about what we're struggling with. And so if you have that time designated all the time, it's a time for you to talk about your problems, your fears, your concerns because it's your time for yourself. You are not pushing it aside, you are not caring for others, you are not doing all the day-to-day tasks that keep us away from focusing on ourselves.
But other than that, journaling can also an act of earth-care. How is that? Let's find out.

This tutorial consists of 4 main steps:

1. Preparing the vintage papers

2. Vintage Decorations

3. How I made my nook (If you already have a notebook, you can skip this step)

4. Start Journaling

• notebook
• teabags
• scissors
• papers (receipts, newspapers, printed papers, etc)
• tray
• glue
• marker/pen

Materials: tea bags, scissors, tray, hot water, papers (printed, receipts, newspaper, etc)

You can make your vintage paper using tea or coffee. But I prefer tea because I am not a coffee person, and with tea, I can upcycle the tea bags.
The first thing is, whenever I make a cup of tea, I collect the tea bags and dry them naturally. The stain of the tea will show on the bags after one or two days. When the tea bags are completely dry, cut the bag and collect the tea leaves in a cup/jar. Save the bags for later.

Prepare hot water in a container, I recommend you use a rectangle tray so that that paper will fit perfectly. Then pour the tea leaves into the hot water, and stir it. I added 10 tablespoons of tea leaves into 400 ml hot water. Just make sure that the water turns brown. The amount of water and tea leaves depends on how many papers will you soak.

Usually, I soak the papers for 5 hours, but sometimes for a night. Then I dry the papers by hanging them (it's okay if the papers are thorn). It only took about 2 hours for the papers to completely dry (sunny and windy day). Your vintage papers are ready.

After the vintage papers are made, I usually let the water evaporate and then use the tea leaves in the tray to fertilize the plant, or compost the tea leaves :D

Materials: Teabags, marker pen, scissors, stamp

For decorating, you can use the previous tea bags and draw something on them. Usually, I draw leaves and flowers, sometimes I wrote some words on them, even use a silicon stamp to add various things. The teabags are my favorite because of their transparency and also the stain is really natural.

Other than that, upcycling the tea bags for journal decoration is a nice thing because several tea bag brands use polypropylene, a sealing plastic, to keep their tea bags from falling apart. This plastic is not recyclable or biodegradable. So, even when you put all your used tea bags in the food waste or compost heap, it can lead to plastic pollution, as not all of it will be broken down. A little care for the earth :)

You can also print, draw or write on the vintage papers, or just simply tear the papers to make a border on the journal page. Cut some pictures or words from the newspaper would be nice too.

I made my journal from unused paper. I folded the paper in half, and use the blank space (unprinted side) for journaling. I apply glue on the corner of the paper and stick them to other papers. I prefer to use non-water-based glue so that the paper won't get wrinkled. Maybe I should learn bookbinding :D.

Set a specific time for journaling. I prefer to write in my journal in the morning and at night before going to bed. Each time I would set a 15-minute timer for journaling.

What to write in your journal

• What I am grateful for
  I found that writing all the things that I am grateful for is a great way to feel blessed and bring peace to me. When I am grateful, I feel less sad and less stressed.
• My plans (daily / weekly / monthly)
  This is great for tracking your priority scale. Which one is urgent, which one is important, which one can wait, and so on. This will help you manage your time.
• Today, I am feeling...
  This is great for recognize your feelings, problems, emotions, and help you sort things out. And don't forget that this is your journal, you are free to get angry at people, complaining, be sad, just express yourself.
• Monthly evaluation
  I also added an evaluation space for each month to evaluate how I manage my problems and feelings. What are bad things that I did, what are the good things that happen in that month, and so on
  

That's all I can share about my kind of vintage journaling. For me, it's an actual act of heart-care and a little bit of earth-care. Thank you so much for staying until the end of this instructable. See you next time :D