Pen & Paper: 13 Books for Journaling Inspiration

Welcome to this month’s Pen & Paper: Living Between the Lines written by the amazing Hope Wallace Karney. To learn more about Hope and the column, please check out the announcement post!

13 Books for Journaling Inspiration

I have a huge love for books, in fact, you could call me a book-nerd. I thought I would share a few of my favourites for use when journaling, both for writing and inspiration. The book titles have links that will take you to amazon.com and I added some personal notes for each book below it’s title line. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

For Inspiration

Creative Wildfire: An Introduction to Art Journaling – Basics and Beyond by L.K Ludwig
This book offers wonderful visual inspiration from multiple artists, as well as great resources and tips.

1,000 Artist Journal Pages: Personal Pages and Inspirations (1000 Series) by Dawn Sokol (who we featured on a previous installment of Pen & Paper)
Chocked full of visual inspiration – this book features 1,000 pages from all types of journal artists in big colorful photographs.

Doodling for Papercrafters by Leisure Arts
A great place to start for adding doodles to your journals.

Painted Pages: Fueling Creativity with Sketchbooks and Mixed Media by Sarah Ahearn Bellemare
I love the photos, writing and exercises in this book. It is sure to jump start your creative side!

Drawn In: A Peek into the Inspiring Sketchbooks of 44 Fine Artists, Illustrators, Graphic Designers, and Cartoonists by Julia Rothman
More sketchbook style for those who do not like to incorporate too many layers of paint and papers, this book is inspiring – I love seeing how a page can become some beautiful with just pen and ink and the occasional bit of ephemera.

Sharing Your Story: Recording Life’s Details with Mini Books by Ali Edwards
Dive into this well thought out book to discover great ideas for journaling as well as pages and pages of mini book inspiration (both making and filling them).

For Journaling Prompts & Writing Ideas

50 Moments: Scrapbook the Pages That Matter Most by Creative Keepsakes
A great place to start if you want to start adding meaningful prompts and text to your journals.

Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir by Natalie Goldberg
This book gives writing exercises to help you if you are composing a memoir… and what else is a personal journal if not your very own, one of a kind memoir?

Living a Charmed Life: Your Guide to Finding Magic in Every Moment of Every Day by Victoria Moran
This is a cute little book that contains “action-inspiring essays” that will “help you live a remarkable life.” The best bit about this book is that after each essay is a ‘Lucky Charm’, an exercise to accompany the thoughts put forth from the essay. These make for wonderful, thought provoking journaling prompts.

Rip the Page!: Adventures in Creative Writing by Karen Benke
This fun book is great for all ages – you can work directly in the book, or take the exercises and ideas to your journal.

You know how I feel about quotes (see past Pen & Paper post about it by clicking HERE) so having a few books with quotes on topics I like to journal about is always helpful, here are a few in my library:

The Quotable Intellectual: 1,417 Bon Mots, Ripostes, and Witticisms for Aspiring Academics, Armchair Philosophers by Peter Archer

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs by John Bartlett
A must-have book full of quotes on all subjects.

The Book of Positive Quotations by John Cook

The best part, and added bonus – is that most of these books also include a resources page in the back, offering websites, artists, writers and other books that inspired them – so be sure to check them out too.

I love finding new books, so are their any books you recommend?

Related "ripples" you might enjoy:

1. Pen & Paper: 5 Blogs for Journaling and Story Catching Inspiration
2. Pen & Paper: A Creative Journaling Exercise for the New Year
3. Pen & Paper: Journaling E-Course Giveaway!
4. Pen & Paper: Overcoming Your Journaling Fears
5. Pen & Paper & Proust: Volume Two with Dawn DeVries Sokol

Tags: Besottment, Hope Wallace Karney, Journal, Journal Prompts, journaling, Paper Relics, Pen & Paper, quotes

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2011 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Creative, Creativity & Inspiration, Guest Bloggers, Inspired, Pen & Paper, Random, When You Feel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Pen & Paper: 13 Books for Journaling Inspiration”

1. Francine
   Twitter: FrancineClouden
   says:

   08.22.2011 at 5:28 am

   This is a great list! I am bookmarking it for future reference. One book I’ve been rereading lately that is great from journaling prompts is poemcrazy by Susan Wooldridge
   Francine´s last blog ..{Shades of Blue} August Projects Revealed

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2. Roxann Shook says:

   08.31.2011 at 11:43 pm

   I highly recommend “Journal Bliss” by Violette, “Living Artfully” by Sandra Magsamen, and “Taking Flight” by Kelly Rae Roberts. And ANYTHING Keri Smith!
   Roxann Shook´s last blog ..Cutting Bait…When To Do It…

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