Hello again crafty  friends! Leah here to show you how I am using one of my Doc-It journals as a gratitude journal. Did you know that gratitude boosts levels of dopamine and serotonin in your brain? Just the act of thinking about what you appreciate can trigger these “happy” chemicals in your brain, making you feel happier.  November is the month of the Thanksgiving (in the USA) and often inspires many of us to spend more time reflecting on what we are thankful for. This month seemed like the perfect time to start a daily gratitude journal.

In the past, I have tried to incorporate documenting gratitude into my daily routine, but I have failed time and time again with establishing it as a habitual practice. I am just recently realizing why that keeps happening. I don't know if any of you feel this way, but when I think about what I am grateful for, my brain immediately goes to BIG, general ideas, such as family or my health, or the roof over my head. While I truly am SO grateful for all of those more obvious things, thinking on such a large scale really limits my list. When you are trying to establish a daily gratitude practice, you start running out of ideas pretty quickly if you are too generalized. My dear friend Tiffany spoke to me a little about how she has been documenting her gratitude and I have found her method to be quite helpful for me.  At the end of the day, she reflects back on that day and asks herself, “what is the best thing that happened today?”  Then she writes it down. This practice has really helped me get more specific with what I am feeling grateful for, which makes the process a little more exciting because I now have more variety in my answers. This method has also become a wonderful way to document memories! You will notice how my daily pages so far have a scrapbooking vibe, which is making this project feel even more special, by including mementos and photos with each gratitude message.

For this journal, I started with the Posh Doc-it journal and covered it with one of my favorite 12x12 papers from the Hello Fall collection. I added watercolor to the background and then layered some gold glitter washi tape, tissue paper, a small square SN@P! piece, and a couple of those beautiful leaf die cuts from the Hello Fall collection. I used foam adhesive under the square to make it pop off the background.

The bottom is just torn pieces of patterned paper that I layered and inked to add a little dimension. In the corner, I inked a doily and added some Hello Fall stickers and twine.

The inside cover and first page of the journal act as a cover page. On the left side is an element from a page in the Hello Fall 6x6 paper pad. I felt it was appropriate because I am grateful for all of the things listed (which is why I love autumn so much)! I used some leftover paper scraps to layer behind the words. I inked the edges of the yellow paper to give it a burned look and added some string from my stash that reminded me of sweater material, which I thought gave the layers a “cozy” feel. Last but not least, I punched a tag out of some orange patterned paper and added twine and a clear sticker from the Posh collection.

On the first page of the journal, I used more of that paper I covered the front of the journal with, but I painted the leaves with different colors of watercolor paint. I also painted some of them with a gold shimmery paint. I drew a border around the paper with a fine point sharpie. On top is a Hello Fall SN@P! card and the letter and number stickers are from the Posh collection. 

 I then added a cluster of embellishments: a gold doily, enamel dots, a tab, word strip stickers and washi tape. 

The bottom part of the page has a picture of my entire family and the gather together words are fussy cut from a 12x12 paper in the Gather Together collection kit.

I am only documenting a couple of days from the end of October because my husband and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary over Halloween weekend. I wanted a chance to scrap those memories and express my gratitude on those special days.

The first layout in my gratitude journal is highlighting the date night that kicked off our wedding anniversary weekend! I documented the memories from that night with some photos, movie tickets and journaling. On this day, I was thankful for date nights! All the décor used in this layout is from the Happy Haunting Collection kit, except the washi tapes. I LOVE adding watercolor to my layouts because it adds so much vibrancy and interest! The paper in the Doc-it journals is very thick; it takes the watercolor so well and doesn’t bleed at all!

The next layout is from a trip to a Halloween event that my husband and I took with my youngest sister. Even though the event itself was not all that we expected, the spooky atmosphere and the company made this night a blast. On this day, I documented the experience and expressed gratitude for my sister’s wild, super goofy and amazing personality. She is one of the funniest people I know and we took so many crazy photos that night- this is only some of them!

All of the décor is again from the Happy Haunting kit. I fussy cut the date and the crossword pieces from the 12x12 elements pages to create die cuts. I added lots of watercolor to the background to allow the die cuts to pop off the page.

I really love how the crossword looks with the watercolor peeking through!

Instead of gluing the card at the top of the layout down, I stapled it onto the page so that I could add journaling underneath.

The next layout is really special. This one went a little against the grain in that I didn’t journal about anything from that specific day. We had to work on our actual anniversary, which is why we spent the weekend celebrating. So for this day, I printed out some of our wedding photos and journaled about how thankful I am that my husband challenges me and truly makes me a better person.

This layout understandably has a more romantic feel than the last few pages. I used the beautiful Posh collection for this one. I mostly used SN@P! pieces and die cuts from the collection and used several of my paper punches to punch different shapes out of the 6x6 paper pad to layer behind the photos. I used my scalloped edge punch a lot in this layout, which was inspired by the white doily that spans both pages underneath all of the photos. It is a large square doily from my stash with a scalloped edge. 

I really like adding ink to the edges of most of the layers because it adds dimension by creating some separation between the layers. In this case, it makes them stand out against the white background as well. I also frequently add faux stitching to my layouts, like I did to the vellum circle, because I love how it looks and am often too lazy to do the real thing.

How lovely are the clear stickers over the photos?! 

I really hope I am able to continue diligently with this gratitude journal! Many of my upcoming layouts are only going to be one-page, the two-page layouts will be reserved for special occasions. I hope you will follow along with me on this journey and try creating your own gratitude journal, or just use a notebook or your planner to write down something you are grateful for every day. Remember to stimulate those happy brain chemicals! Follow me over on Instagram to see my upcoming journal layouts!

With love and gratitude.