New Bullet Journal Set Up & Hello September

Hello bullet journalers!

I had to start my third bullet journal. I did have several pages left in my 2nd bujo, but not enough to set up an entire month, so that means starting another one. I was thinking about what I could do to make it a little different this time round. As a paper crafter, I have a few different alphabet die sets, and thought I should use them more often. Since the names of the months are longer come the end of the year, I knew that I would have to use my tall and narrow alphabet die set.

Perhaps I should have taken a close up photos of 'September' because you can not see the gold pen lines traced around the letters too well in this photo. I am hoping that this bujo will go through to the end of December, but as I am not sure of that I left the last month blank to add the letters later.

Now, the next thing that usually goes into the bullet journal is an index. I setup my usual three pages for that, but ended up making a mistake. I had to get up out of my chair to get my black pen for the entry of items into my journal, but while I was away, the page must have turned because when I finished entering everything I had done so far and went to turn the page to enter my 'key' symbols, I was surprised to see that the 'key' page was already there! I had to chuckle because there was no way I was going to fix this. I would have to have my index a little mixed up.

So here is the third page of my indexed filled in as the first page should have been.

It wasn't until after I filled in the entire year calendar, that I thought how silly it was to include months that had already passed. So, next time I think I will leave off the completed months and find a way to set it up to include the months of the new year in their place.

Since I am hoping this journal will go through December, I decided I needed to include January 2019 in my 5 month 'future log'. Five being an odd number, the best way to include them all on one page was to ignore the meeting of the pages and use it as if it was only one page. I was able to fit it all in that way.

So now I have the journal set up, it is time to set up the month of September. I went to my washi tapes for inspiration and ended up choosing the ones with gold, purples, pinks, and beiges. I also wanted to see if I could use some stamps too. I found my 'hello' stamp and decided to try heat embossing it in gold. that ended up being a mistake. I share the reason why in the next photo. I found my old gold ink pad so that I could stamp in gold. 

Here in this photo you can see the gold stamping better.

Now, turning the page you can see why it was a mistake to heat emboss on the previous one. The heat on the thin paper brought the embossing ink and gold bleeding through.

I went ahead and set up my calendar over it rather than covering it up.

Next is my 'Brain Dup' page. I love using the dotted grid to create gold dots along the edges of my washi tape. I decided to use the gold gel pen for the lettering of the title, too.

I always have to have my 'future classes & kit' log. Last month I only set up three sections on one page, but I ended up needing more than that, so I made sure that I set up 6 this time. I used my gold gel pen for this as well. I think once the photos go in of each set, it will look great with the gold.

Now comes my 'finances' spread. I used my usual layout with just a few minor changes. Again the gold dots, but this time on a gold line for the border.

Now comes the real daily usage part of my journal. When I started my first journal, I used a page folded in half to fit my weekly view into a double spread view. Well, I have found that I need more width to my weekly columns and decided to try a variation of that idea. It means that I need to use two pages to make it fit, and instead of fold the page in half, needing more width, I cut the page and included a tab design onto these two pages. This way I get my wider columns and and see my week in one view.

So, the benefit of this is that I can get away with creating only one monthly mini calendar that can be viewed as I turn the partial tabbed pages, and can access my 'notes' section more easily.

The last part of my set up for the first week of September, is my 'gratitude log' and my 'weekly expenses log'. I decided to give myself two lines for each day's gratitude entry. I sometimes had to squeeze it in, so that is why the change. By cutting down the size of the heading to just one line for both of these sections, not only gave a new look, but gave me the space to do the change.

The next couple of empty pages are for my daily journal entries, and ends with a weekly review.

Well that's it for the start of my new bullet journal and the first part of September. Oh, I ran out of gold ink in my pen, so I will need to get another pen.

Happy journaling!

August Bullet Journal Set Up

Hello Bullet Journalers!

My apologies for not getting this up sooner, but I have been rather busy trying to get as many class samples going for a big event where I teach. So if you are looking for August inspiration for your Bujo, you may need to keep it for another month.

First I would like to say, that I have always been a person that has difficulty with keeping things real simple. I do succeed at times, but not that often. This is also true when it comes to setting up my Bujo. Because I am busy right now, and I love seeing all the beautiful clean and simple layouts out there just using the black pen, I was hoping I could dot that for myself this month.

Guess what? I couldn't keep it that way and ended up putting washing tape in my layouts. I did pretty much keep it to black and gray. Though at one point in setting things up I grabbed the wrong gray Tombow marker, and ended up with a soft lilac colour.

So why don't I get on with showing you my August 2018 set up pages.

Even though I have more than enough pages left for setting up August, I decided to see what it would be like to make a one page, rather than two page, monthly calendar set up. It is still new to me, and I see that there are some pros and cons to this set up, but I have not made a definitive decision yet. I think I will know better once I have used it for a while.

But let's go to the 'Hello August' page. I cheated a little on this page. How? Well I used a stamp for the 'hello' and an alphabet die set for the 'August' and glued the letters onto the page. Did it save time? I guess it depends on how you look at it. I think is did save me some time because I am not great and fancy lettering.

For my class & kit page set up, I have been so busy making many samples in July, I did not know if I would need two pages or not for August. However, I did not want to run out of space in case I did need it. So I just set up one page, leaving the second blank. This way if I need it I can quickly set it up, and if I do not need it, I can find a nice quote to put there.

Next is my Brain Dump page.

This is where I felt I needed something more than just the frame for the page spread, and added the quick and easy washi tape to embellish it a bit. See, I couldn't just frame the words, I had to add the washi.

Next I have my Habit Tracker layout. As you can see I went back to the way I had a couple of months ago. I did not like all the work involved in setting it up like I did for June and July.

Once again, I could not leave blank spaces and had to add some washi tape.

Next, is my August finances set up.

I had to add a little house on this page...

Now that is it for the August set up, but now we have the first few days of August.

Normally I like to view my entire week on one spread spread across two pages. However, when a week is split between two months, there lies a challenge. That challenge in my monthly finance spread. I like to include a weekly expense tracker, which I transfer over to my monthly spread. I do not want to include my expense and spending from two months in a weekly tracker. So I decided that I needed to split the weeks up for that purpose. That means the week you will see in my first August week is a partial week. What I ended up liking about this is that I could have wider daily columns. Hmmmm, have to think about that a bit.

Any way here are the first 4 days of August in my weekly spread.

Remember me mentioning grabbing the wrong marker? This is where that happened. You can see that, again, I could not just keep it simple and ended up adding some washi tape. Did you notice the change in my set up?

Next is my weekly gratitude and expense trackers. Following that is the start of my daily journaling section. I usually leave about 4 to 5 pages for this.

The last thing to show you is my weekly review.

I find this helpful in my goals, and what I may need to change or include in the next month's set up, as well as what goals to set for the next week.

Well that is it for this post. Happy bullet journaling to those that are doing it!

BUJO - Rest of July

Hello everyone!

Just a quick post today.

Even though the week is past, because I did not show you the layout for that week, I thought I would share it with you so that you can see how I fill my spreads out.

Here is this week's layout. I made a few changes, to see if it would help me just a bit more.

If you are a bullet "journaler", I hope you you found some inspiration.

Happy bullet journaling!

I Forgot to Post This! - Bullet Journal Week 28 - July 11 - 14

Because I was going to be away at the family reunion, I thought I had this post all scheduled and ready to go on the 9th. I guess I did not click on the post button to schedule it. SO now you get to see it after the week is over. I also do not have any photos to show you this week's spread because as usual, when you come back from being away somewhere, you have a lot of work to do when you get home.

If you are wondering about the shorter week, that is because I had a different set up for while I was away. Once home, I needed my regular layout.

Same for the Gratitude and Weekly Expenses; shorter for fewer days.

I love the colours of the washi tape, don't you?

And at the end of the week I have my weekly review. It has helped, but with being away, I did not end up using it this time.

I am thinking about what to do for August's theme. I have a few ideas, but trying to keep it simple is a challenge for me. I have been sketching some layout ideas, so we will see what I end up using.

My next post will be for a new card kit I am making for Scrapbook Essentials BC, that will be coming soon to the Studio.

Bye for now, and thank you for checking in for a quick peak. Happy creating!

Bullet Journal - First 10 Days of July - Family Reunion Time

Hello everyone!

By the time you are seeing this post, I will have headed off to the family reunion. You have seen my July bullet journal set up, and today I am showing what I have set up for the first ten days of July. Normally I would have a week at a time set up, but as I will be away for 10 days, I thought I would lump those ten together for this set up.

You will be familiar with this set up because I used it before when I went to Alberta and Phoenix to visit family. I like to set up a daily layout when I go away. The top left box is for my photo of the day, the little box just right of it is for recording the weather. The wider column under the photo space is for my daily journaling or highlights of the day. The boxes in the narrower column on the right are for scheduling and 'to do' lists with a section for 'gratitude' and 'expenses'. at the bottom is my food & water tracker.

Even though each day is set up the same. I wanted to show you how I made each day just a little different by using a different washi tape for each day.

More different washi tape...

At the end of the ten days I made a spread to add additional highlights of the family reunion and a place to evaluate the best and worst parts so that I can work them out better for the next one. I also have a section to record suggested ideas for the next reunion.

Well, that is it for this post. I will have four days after these ten days to create a weekly set up and will show that to you some time in the next 10 to 12 days.

Thank you for stopping by to have a look, and I hope that you are inspired to start your own bullet journal or create a different set up in your own bujo.

Happy creating!

July Bullet Journal Set Up

Hello everyone!

I will be at a family reunion in a week from now, when I would normally post the next month's set up in my bullet journal. For that reason I had to set up the month of July earlier so that I would have a bullet journal to use during those first 10 days of July. I did some different things in setting up the month of July, not so much the layouts, but what I used to create the July theme.

July 1st is Canada Day, and I chose that as my July theme. I used a stamp set I have had for a few years and finally used for the first time, and for those of you that are scrapbookers and card makers will see that I also used a couple of Spellbinders dies to create paper die cut stickers. I used a 5" x7" card envelope in a beautiful red to cut into 3/16" strips to use for some of my red lines and borders. I did not want red marker to be seen through the paper and wanted them to look straight, and for that reason chose to do this. It worked pretty well. I must, however, apologize for the slight blurriness of the photos in today's post. I am not sure what transpired to make them so. I believe it happened in the editing of the photos. But, I believe you can still see everything well enough.

So as you can see in the photo below, the left page is all stamped onto a piece of paper. I did this so that the stamping would not show through the paper to the other side. It works well. I even found an older silver metallic ink ad to use for the fireworks. I was actually surprised that the ink still worked well and had not dried out. I then took my metallic silver gel pen and traced around the edge of the paper I stamped on to create a silver border.

On the right page, above, I stamped the Mounted Police and coloured it with markers, cut it out and attached. The banner/sign is a layered die cut, and the maple leaf as well. I used the silver pen to draw in the veins of the leaves. I love the extra wide washi tape with the watercolour scenes that go so well with the theme. In the western part of Canada, this could so easily be what you would see.

I decided to see if I could give a better look of the silver inked fireworks in this next close up.

And next, a closer look at the right page showing you the glitter washi tape, the red paper strip, the narrow lines and dot washi, and the wide scenery washi.

Next in my bullet journal comes the 'month at a glance' or monthly calendar set up.

Here is a closer look at the July lettering. Hopefully you can see the silver metallic outline of the letters.

The next spread is my monthly 'brain dump'. For the month of June, I did not fill my brain dump pages as much as I normally do, but it is still nice to have that space.

Here, I have made a silver line border with maple leaf corners, and used that wide scenery washi tape framed in with faux stitching and silver lined border.

Wanting to keep track of cards created for classes and card making kits, I like to include a space to put in a photo, name and date of the project or class, and list of things I need to for the launch of the kit or class to mark completed when done.

Next comes my monthly finance tracker. As you can see, I added a family reunion spending section for this month.

The next photo is my monthly habit tracker. However, as you can see it is incomplete. I still need to complete numbering the days in the boxes and add the list of things I will be tracking. But, I needed to get this posted as I am getting busy preparing and packing things for the reunion over the next few days. Who would have thought there was so much to prepare to take with you when you are in charge of organizing the reunion! You do get the idea of the layout despite the lack of it's incompleteness, however. You can also see that it is a little different from June's habit tracker seen in this post.

Well, that is it for the July monthly set up. The next post will be for the first week set up. It will be different, however, in the fact that I will be setting up for the 10 days of the reunion, rather than the usual weekly spread.

I would love to hear what you have to say about my July set up, or any questions you may have that you would like me to answer for you. If you have a bullet journal, I would love to hear if you have chosen a theme for July.

Happy creating everyone!