Creating your own dream journal!

I shared this idea in a comment on you tube and @kikorangi 8 inspired me to share it here as well, so here it goes:

The background story:

So for the course of this year I have been using a calendar as my dream journal. It was very nice because everything was divided into sections and I could track my lucid dreaming progress very efficiently and easily. There was however one major problem, being the amount of space given for each day. From Monday to Friday it was a full A5 page and during the weekend half a page.

Ironically the weekend, being the best time to perform technics and focus more had less space in the calendar.

This was really problematic for me as I had to glue in extra pages to get more space. Later because of laziness I switched to writing my dreams down on my phone, which was much more comfortable and private but on the other hand it lacked that tactile element.

I wanted to find a way to have a dream journaling space that wouldn’t take too much space in my room and could serve its purpose for a very long time. I did not want to have tons of dream journals lying around, especially that I want to keep many of my dream experiences to myself. (Actually a digital journal would be perfect but I just was not satisfied with it. It lacked the tactile element, and felt kind of abstract. Also regular journals are just much cooler).

So I started searching for a very thick journal with a simple design which could last for a sufficient amount of time.

I had trouble finding the right one on the internet, though. All of the big notebooks were with patterns but what I really wanted was the blank one. I also did not want to wait for shipping.

Finally I decided on creating my own dream journal by hand!

Tutorial:

The journal is made of desired amount of segments each made of six pages twice the size of the page size you want.

In my case one segment was made of six A4 pages, which allowed me to get an A5 size journal.

Now, you could use more than six pages if you are lazy but you have to remember that the more pages you use the less even is the edge of the journal going to be, also you need more strength to pierce through then, which can get dangerous or just simply uncomfortable to do.

You fold each page in half separately to maximise precision, then put all of them together to create a segment.

You make holes along the fold using a needle to make sewing easier and more precise. You pierce through the entire six pages at once ( as I did ) but you have to make sure that they are completely even.

Then you sew everything together. The more times you go, the more solid the construction will be. I went once in each direction and tied a knot to prevent the thread from going out.

Remember to tie a knot at the back of the segment rather than inside. It will look better.

Every segment gives you 24 pages. You choose the desired amount of pages, or rather segments.

In my case it was 384 pages. (16 segments)

I thought it was a nice amount. I could have done 400, though…

When you are done you can put all the segments next to each other and then connect them with hot glue. Just make sure that everything is tight. The glue will stick to the paper and cover the thread nicely which should make the connetion pretty solid.

When you are done with the glue you can add a layer of white tape to cover it.

Now you have to come up with a way to add a cover.

What I did was connect two A5 pieces of black paper to the side of the book using tape but then it was sticky, so I just covered it with brown paper which finally satisfied me.

Unsatisfying cover:

I would recommend doing the same thing, as it makes the cover thicker. If you have a piece of leather or old jeans you can use it to make a nice looking cover. I might consider doing this in the future.

Finished journal:

And inside! (notice how precise it looks!)

This is a great idea to keep your brain accompanied with lucid dreaming as it takes quite a bit of time to do. My journal took me around four hours. That was a valuable time spent without instant gratification, showing my brain that lucid dreaming is of great importance to me.

I highly recommend anyone who is willing to put the effort in to create their own dream journal. It is great fun and allows you to make it look exactly as you want!

You save a lot of money too. I think the materials I used costed between one and two dollars.

I know that the design is simple but to be honest, that is how I like it the most.

If you like more colorful designs the beauty of this is that you can do whatever you want!

If you find this interesting and want to do your own journal you definitely have to share a photo of your creation in the comments. I am very curious about the end result and the design you choose!

Good luck!!!