Setting up my Bullet Journal for December 2022: Christmas trees theme

Last month, I decided really early on that I wanted to do a Christmas trees theme for December. I was debating doing a watercolour scene featuring real trees and snow for the front cover but knew this would be quite time consuming as I would have to find tutorial to help me and then I would have to paint all of the other trees throughout the month for a cohesive look. However, in the last few days of November, I took to YouTube, searching the videos for inspiration and found this fairly easy but pretty set up from Claire Marie Bee which I was excited to recreate and make my own. I’ve copied quite a few of her ideas and, although it took quite a while to sketch out the tree pattern it was simple enough to do and I love the result.

Front cover

I started the process of creating the front cover by sketching the outlines of the trees in a diagonal pattern. I then turned to the back of my bujo and spent some time practising different designs. The inspiration for the trees was taking from Claire’s video and also from images I found by typing in ‘tree doodles’ into Google. I used just two colours of Tombow ABT for the colouring – dark olive 158 and asparagus 192 and a red Pentel sign brush pen for the sparkles. The page was then outlined using a 0.,1 micron. I also used Claire’s idea of writing the word December on vellum and this meant I could practise a few times and pick the best one!

The monthly calendar

This is my usual 6×6 box calendar with trees dotted about in the background. I didn’t create a pattern with these two pages – I just chose some designs and placed them where I felt they would look good. Again, I wrote December on vellum, this time using a Tombow brush pen in poppy red 856. The Pentel pen and the red Tombow are very similar in colour and I don’t mind that they’re not a perfect match.

Finances

These pages are the same layout as I’ve been using for a while now. Again, I added a title using the Pentel sign brush pen. The words income and expenses are printed on green paper and stuck on because I messed up the writing on them first time. I wish the words were central on the page, but I guess I’ll just have to put up with it!

Final words…

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my spreads for December. If you like finding time to do something creative each week, I really recommend having a go at doing some tree doodles. My sketches are 2cms wide by 3cms tall, but you can make them any size you want. Sitting down and quietly drawing is a wonderfully mindful activity and a great way to destress during the very busy month of December.