While at TRF (Texas Renaissance Festival) yesterday I came across the BEST hand made journal that I have seen in quite a while. Which is actually saying a lot as I have quite a few very nice sketchbooks and journals in various stages of use on the art shelf.
The booth was occupied by the Poetic Earth Journal company (this link will also be found in the Artist’s Corner) . They even had a large sign that read “Poetic Earth Handmade Journals” which is what caught my attention. So, in I went, and, much to my surprise, I saw several journals hanging out on the shelves that were made by Courtney Davis. I love his work, and have looked on Amazon on several different occasions for journals with his work on them. In fact, over the summer, I even purchased one from Amazon. It was a toss up between this Mother Earth Journal and this Moonlight Fairy Journal. The fairy journal won out (which turned out to be a good thing since I haven’t seen it offered since, while the Mother Earth Journal was sitting on the shelves in this booth yesterday). I haven’t used the fairy journal yet, even though the paper is very nice, because the person selling it on Amazon didn’t take care of it, so I have been reconditioning the leather so that it won’t crack when I open it. That said, I have been dying to use it ever since I got it.
Poetic Earth also had smaller journals set with cats eye and other precious stones, with a variety of little catches to keep them closed. All of them were made of leather and all of them had the same cotton paper inside. They were very lovely, and, I have to admit, being the connoisseur of papers that I am, I went into a mild form of ferret shock, but the thing that I saw that I loved the most were these rolled up journals. (That I later learned were being marketed as Poetic Earth’s Antique Deckled Edge Parchment Scrolls. The price on the link is NOT what I paid, I paid much less. It pays to go in person on the last day of the faire…).
They had them in black and brown. I almost picked up a black one, but the man selling them showed me a nice brown one that he had just finished making, so I took that one instead. It is, if I had to guess, with no ruler, roughly 10-12 by 16-18 when flat, and rolls up into a convenient carry bundle.
unrolled.
Rolled.
Open.
I can’t wait to use it, it makes me happy. I may order some of the small ones later, as well, but I think that I will definitely wait until I can buy the larger ones in person again.
The front flap of my bag, that has an external large pocket and a large clear pocket on the inside when you flip it up.
A close up of my robot.
A close up of my pocket. The butterflies came in a package of twelve, four of which were pink, two light and two dark (the rest were various shades of blue and green). I was going to use all of the pinks for something for my niece since she LOVES pink and I tend to think of pink as a faded red (and red is a glorified pink, so there you go. Not my favorites), but, looking at my bag, EVERYTHING was green, or blue, or black and white (with the exception of a guitar, which is a play on words, to be explained later), and so I decided I needed a warm color to off set all the cools. So I chose one of the darker pink ones. I think it came out nicely, AND I still have three more to use for my niece.
This is the guitar on the pocket on one side of my bag that I use to hold my cell phone. I got this one because I LOVE music, but I can’t play guitar (I was trying to learn and then got my hand mauled by my cat [which is a LOOONG story that you can read about 
These are the butterflies on the strap of my bag. I LOVE them. I am just having a hard time tacking them on. They are iron ons and, after I iron them on, I sew them on, but these are not cooperating. Worst case scenario I will use fabric glue, but I think I have it figured out.
