Journaling is hard. Journaling after the fact can sometimes be even harder. I’m always on the lookout for ways to make it easier, more natural, and more effective. One of my favorite tips for quick and easy journaling is to print out my Instagram Stories photographs with my journaling already written right on the photo.
There are so many stories to tell, it’s impossible to remember all the important moments when you’re thinking back. Journaling can be a daunting task, especially when trying to put together pieces of a story. Personally, it can be one of the things that make me procrastinate hard on a project. So using IG Stories to add a little bit of journaling directly to each photo makes it so much more fun, and more fun = more authentic stories.
In our most recent Hangout Video Chat (June 2nd), I finished up my 2017 Garden Travelers Notebook insert with some huge help from the Instagram Stories journaling I did at the time.
Even just the few little words on the Instagram Stories journaling really helped me finish up this book and provide a lot more context and detail to the story. Without these snippets of journaling from last year, written down at the time, there’s no way that my book would be as full and deep as it is.
I like to think of it like this: If a picture is worth a thousand words, using a few words to anchor your story is going to make coming back to it so much easier.
It also put SO much less pressure on me to think about all of the things that happened last year. I didn’t need to think about what plant was what, or what story went with what photo — that hard work was already done for me. It made it much easier for me to just worry about getting it done and having a fun time putting it all together.
That’s one of the things I love most about creative projects when you can just sink into the making of the project and enjoy reminiscing on the memories themselves.
Tips for Using Instagram Stories for Journaling
- Make sure to change the settings to save your Instagram Stories to your camera roll
- Take pictures that give you a little bit of extra room/white space for your journaling
- Use the background text color tool if you want your text to pop more
- Keep them in a separate folder on your phone for easy sorting/uploading/printing
Here are a bunch of pages from my 2017 Garden Travelers Notebook insert. I kept this book super minimalist and so the digital IG Stories journaling fit in perfectly with the aesthetic. It also helped keep the TN insert slim and without any added embellishment bulk. If you have any questions about this project, leave them in the comments below.
Definitely check out the Hangout video where I put the rest of this TN together, I chat a bunch about how much I love the journaling I wrote on my IG stories photos. I expand on each of the photos and the stories a little bit more. I really do think that IG Stories can be a really really great memory-keeping tool to keep in your arsenal.
Have you used Instagram Stories in your memory-keeping?
Share links in the comments to something you’ve created or love.