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Journal Jar: A Unique Gift in a Jar

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Creating a Journal Jar: Step by Step Instructions

Creating a beautiful gift your loved one will cherish couldn't be easier: give them a journal jar. Find an attractive jar, add a beautiful tag, and fill it with folded pieces of paper, each one containing a journal prompt.  You can pair it with a pretty journaling book and a unique pen. 

Gifts in a jar are becoming more and more popular. They can be filled with ingredients to make a meal or bake a cake, ornaments to decorate the Christmas tree, daily blessings, or almost anything else you can think of. In this lens you'll find lots of ideas on how to create a journal jar, as well as prompts you can use to fill the jar with.

Make your first journal in a jar, today!

(inspiration jars is courtesy of snarledskein).

Step One: Choosing a Jar

Journal Jar - A Unique Gift in a Jar

The first step in creating a Journal Jar is to find a great jar you can use. Do you keep jars used for preserves at home? Those often make beautiful journal jars.

If you don't have any suitable jars at home, you can go to a discount store and look through the glass jars until you find one that appeals to you.

However, your journal jar doesn't have to be a jar at all. It can be a fabric covered hat box, a basket, a ceramic box, a coffe can, and so on.

(Photo from Creative Commons, courtesy of louis.ian.riley.)

Pretty Jars on Amazon

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Step Two: Choosing the Prompts or Questions for Your Journal Jar

Journal Jar - A Unique Gift in a Jar

When creating the prompts to be placed in your jar you can decide which topics you would like to address, such as remembering your childhood, likes and dislikes, dreams for the future, spirituality, relationships, and so on. Then come up with questions for each topic.

For example, if "childhood" is one of your topics, you can write down questions such as the following:

  • What was your favorite toy as a child?
  • What games did you like to play?
  • What was your favorite subject at school?
  • What did you dream of becoming when you grew up?
  • Did you have any favorite Sunday rituals growing up?
  • Who was your best friend growing up?
  • Who was your favorite teacher?
  • What's your earliest childhood memory?

119 Journal Prompts for Your Journal Jar

Fabulous Writing Journals

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Important!

You Can Use Quotes Instead of Questions For Your Journal Jar

Use these quotes: creativity quotes, happiness quotes, gratitude quotes, or success quotes.

Journal Jar for a Child

A journal jar is a great gift for a child to spark their interest in writing. Create a beautiful, colorful tag for the jar and include prompts such as the following:

  • Do you have a hobby?
  • What's your favorite cartoon character?
  • What do you like best about school?
  • What don't you like about school?
  • Who's your best friend in the whole world? What do you like doing together?
  • Have you been blamed for something you didn't do?
  • List ten things that make you happy.
  • If you could meet any character from a book, who would it be?
  • Would you like to play a musical instrument? Which one?
  • What's your favorite meal?
  • What has been the happiest day in your life so far?
  • What is your favorite game?

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Great Pens for Your Journaling

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Step Three: Creating the Prompts

Journal Jar - A Unique Gift in a Jar

You can type the questions or quotes into a Word document, print out the document, and cut the questions in strips. An option is to play around with the font types and colors to make your prompts appealing.

Use different colors of cardstock to print out your prompts. Cardstock holds up better than regular printer paper.

If you have beautiful penmanship, you can also create handwritten journal prompts. In addition, you can even choose to include some illustrations.

(Photo from Creative Commons, courtesy of Mike Willis.)
Important!

Journal Jar Poem

Preserve your memories,
Seal them up well.
What you forget,
You can never retell.
But a journal that's kept fresh on the shelf,
Will help someone through rough times,
Maybe even yourself.

(Source).

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A common way to get started with this task is to gather a list of memory prompts to help you remember people, events, and emotions from your past. In this article you'll find 175 memory prompts, covering several life areas, to help you get started on your memoir or autobiography.

(Photo from Creative Commons, courtesy of Michael Swan.)

Step Four: The Finishing Touches

Journal Jar - A Unique Gift in a Jar

You can create a tag for the jar with a title such as "My Journal Jar", "Questions to Get Me Thinking", or words to that effect. Use a wide strip of clear packaging tape to affix the tag to the jar. You can also make a tag with instructions on how to use the journal jar:

    "Every day take out a strip of paper and use the question you find on it to start writing in your journal. Add facts, feelings, memories, and anything else you want."
Fold the pieces of paper with your prompts written on them in half, and place them in the jar. Try to fill the jar to the very top with prompts. And that's it; once you follow these steps you'll have created a journal jar which you can either give away to a loved one or keep for yourself.

Labels on Amazon

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Add a Scrapbook to Your Gift

Instead of giving your journal jar with a journal and pen, add a scrapbook. That way, they can include pictures and other memorabilia.
Pioneer 12-by-12-Inch Embroidered Black Leatherette Scrapbook

Pioneer 12-by-12-Inch Embroidered Black Leatherette Scrapbook

Amazon Price: $13.01 (as of 02/17/2012)Buy Now

“Journal Jars are just one type of gifts in a jar you can make. Below are many more ideas.”

Gift Jars Can Be Filled With Just About Anything

Gift jars can be filled with just about anything. What does the person you want to give a gift to like? You can fill your gift jar with cookies, cake mix, blessings, Christmas spirit, soup mix, ornaments, sea shells, bath salts, candy, and on and on. Get creative!

(Jar full of thanks is courtesy of D'Arcy Norman)

Gifts In a Jar Ideas

Gifts In a Jar
I absolutely love gifts in a jar because they are budget friendly, easy to make and fun to do with the kids. Why not try out one of these for Christmas gifts this year?

Gifts In a Jar

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Gift in a Jar: Chicken and Rice Casserole 

Photo Credit

Gifts in a jar: chicken and rice casserole is courtesy of jgrebedw

More Lenses on Gifts in a Jar

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Links for Homemade Gifts

A Do-It-Yourself Christmas: 34 Great Homemade Gifts You Can Make
The popular blog "Get Rich Slowly" has 34 ideas for Christmas homemade gifts. There's lots of good ideas in the comments section, too.
Homemade Gift Series #1: Vanilla Extract
Trent from "The Simple Dollar" has a whole series on homemade gifts. This is part 1.

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Hi, I'm Marelisa Fabrega. I blog over at Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online.

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