Last month, I made myself a grimoire. A grimoire is kind of like a silva rerum, a commonplace book, an every day matters book, a daily notebook, a gratitude journal; all of this but with a witchy/spiritual twist to it. My grimoire will hold special recipes passed down from my ancestors, tarot spreads that have impacted me, favorite crystals and moon phases. To make it, I used a book called The Widow’s Broom. It is a strange format, really tall and narrow.

Because of the unusal format, I had to build my pages from scratch, combining papers that I have had in my stash for years. Making this grimoire became a full on obsession – of the happy kind. I gathered all of my witchy papers, old ledger pages, transparencies, wallpaper, watercolor paper and sewed them together so that I could get the right format to bind them into the covers using the coptic stich. Before binding them, I added vintage photos, postcards, stickers, cards, paintings by my great great-aunt, wrapping paper, etc. A few people have asked about these papers so I thought I would share the base of my grimoire here.

A lot of these papers are scrapbooking papers. Some, like the moons below, are from past Studio Calico kits.

I also bound some of the more intesresting pages from the original book.

Some of the themes from the papers are florals, butterflies, bones, sacred hearts, natural history, star charts…anything that I am attracted to. Just like it was mentioned during the Find Your Style Webinar, I used every piece of paper or ephemera that made me happy.

The result is a book filled with pages that are already so very appealing to me. It’s a joy to write on them, collage on them, sketch on them.

Some of the other scarpbooking paper collections I used are: Maggie Holmes, Graphic 45, Pink Paislee and Prima Marketing.

The butterflies below are from a 1910 dictionary. I bought this in Paris with Caylee in 2016. I am so happy to have it in my grimoire now.

I also added vintage wallpaper pieces, ephemera from Mexico and photos from my ancestors.

This book is already so precious to me and will only become even more so. I have curated a kit with all my favorite stickers and ephemera pieces to add into its pages.

I was hard not to show you every single page! Most of what I put in here will stay private. This path I am on feels like something I want to keep for myself, at least for a while.