bullet journal – Page 2 – Keeping it creative

art, bullet journal, Bullet journaling, Cricut Design Space, Cricut Joy Xtra, planner girl, planner lifestyle, Planning and journaling, watercolour painting

Setting up my Bullet Journal for February 2025: Valentine’s love hearts theme

Posted on Jan 31, 2025 by Laura

I tend to do some kind of love theme for February’s theme and this year is no exception. I already knew I wanted to use my watercolours for my cover page, but I also decided to opt for stickers to decorate the rest of the spreads to make it quicker to set up. I’m really pleased with how my pages turned out and I hope you like them too. The photos aren’t wonderful as it was another dreary day here in Sunderland, so I apologise for that but I hope they inspire you anyway.

For this month’s front cover, I opted to use the watercolour bleeds technique with a range of red, pink and purple hearts. I watched some tutorials on YouTube to remind myself of the basic techniques and discovered that one of my favourite watercolour artists, Emma Lefebvre had just shared a video called ‘easy Valentine’s ANYONE can paint’. And she was right, her techniques were all super simple and totally do-able. Also, one of the techniques was watercolour heart bleeds – such a good find! I’d already filled my palette with reds, pinks and purples, but in her tutorial, Emma used gold paint as well. I didn’t really need an excuse to get out my metallic paints, although I knew they wouldn’t show up properly on the scanned version that I could stick in my BuJo. Anyway, it turned out okay but I couldn’t fully saturate the colours as it ended up printing with a strange blue background tone which looked just awful! I wish someone would invent a watercolour paper which is super thin but works just as well as the high GSM ones that are available now.

February front cover

Here’s my original watercolour piece as a flat lay and raised to, hopefully, show the metallic gold, followed by my front cover. I again turned the digitized watercolour image into a sticker with an offset. This was easy to do in Cricut Design Space and means that the image looks nicer than it does on standard printer paper.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping it Creative

Monthly calendar

February finances

My usual set up, this time with some pink Tombow to add another colour element. I made the Love is in the air sticker design myself using fonts found in Cricut Design Space. I really like how it turned out!

February goals page

I intend to create a blog post for next week on how I go about choosing goals and how I make them ‘SMART’, so to actually read those, you’ll have to visit by site again! I’ll attach the link here when it’s written so it’s easy to navigate to.

Weekly plans

I spent a long while perusing images on Cricut Design Space and came up with 4 different subtopics for the 4 weeks – mini wreaths, cupcakes, postage stamps and Valentine’s drinks. And look at all the hearty content I found!

Final words…

Thank you for visiting my blog to look at my February Bullet Journal set up for 2025. I hope you enjoyed seeing my pages. Many of the sticker images could easily to drawn directly onto the page using black waterproof fineliners and coloured markers. I know some people choose to create watercolour images straight into their bullet journal pages but I find that the paper in Notebook Therapy journals does not take this medium well. The paper is plenty thick enough to hold watercolour with minimum buckling but the paint just doesn’t behave in the same way as it does on proper cold pressed paper designed specifically with that in mind. Perhaps with a better scanner and printer, you can get a printout which looks the same as the original, but I can’t afford to buy a more expensive one and the true cost really comes from the very pricy cartridges. Despite this, I will continue to explore the medium of watercolour as much as I can in the future, but I might not use my art to decorate the pages of my bullet journal as regularly.

Have a wonderful February and I’ll see you back here with more BuJo content next month (which, at the time of writing, starts tomorrow!).

bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, goal setting, Home cooking, intentional living, planner girl, planner lifestyle, Planning and journaling, productivity, watercolour painting

Setting up my Bullet Journal for January 2025: Bare winter trees theme

Posted on Jan 27, 2025Jan 28, 2025 by Laura

Following on from my winter foliage theme for December, I continued taking inspiration from nature and chose winter trees as the focus for my January spreads. With being ill at the beginning of the month, I simply drew up the basics of my layouts and added the decoration later when I was feeling much better.

So, although January is nearly over, I thought I would do this post to show how my spreads turned out and some of the ways in which I use them. Obviously some of the information needs to remain private so I’ve covered a few bits up.

Front cover

As I enjoyed doing my watercolour painting so much last month, I thought I’d give it a go with my front cover for this month. Again, I used cold-pressed watercolour paper but this time, it was from a new paper pad I picked up in Hobbycraft which has quite a pronounced grain to it. As my BuJo is getting very bulky, I needed to scan and print my finished art, but, although it doesn’t look exactly the same as the painted piece, it’s quite close, with the tree looking slightly paler. I also like the fact that you can see some of the grain in the sky. My inspiration for the background was from a photograph which I took early in the month, although I wish I’d had the photo in front of me when I did the sky as mine looks a bit bland in comparison! I opted for a dark brown tree and created a muddy grass ground effect using my fan brush, rather than painting snow.

Gorgeous winter sky. Photo credit: Laura Jones

Monthly calendar

I wanted to create a watercolour background effect again for some mini tree images to surround my calendar, so I selected some relatively thin paper from my stash and did some trials with it. I also had a go at painting mini backgrounds in the back of my bullet journal but I didn’t like the effect with the coated paper of my Notebook Therapy journal. The paper I opted for was a cream coloured drawing paper which the paint sat nicely on and didn’t cause buckling. When my simple backgrounds were complete, I used four sizes of Pigma Microns in 0.4, 0.2, 0.1 and 0.05 to create different tree shapes. I’d watched various online tutorials on You Tube and the key teaching points were to create lots of y shapes and make the branches thinner the further you went out and up from the trunk. I’m really pleased with the different effects that I achieved. They’re not based on particular species of trees but I did spend a lot of time this month looking at bare trees on my various walks (okay, it turned into a kind of mini obsession ha ha!).

January finances

I kept these pages really simple because I wanted to spend time on other things. Obviously, I’m not sharing information about my income and expenses.

Monthly goals

I tried to create heart stickers in Cricut Design Space but the cutting was so off that I ended up having to spend hours talking to a representative from Cricut to get it sorted. I found these mini hearts in my stash and used tweezers to try to get them relatively straight!

If you want to see my evaluation for the month, let me know in the comments and I’ll do a quick blog post about it.

Weekly plans

The first week of my weekly plans is a bit sparse and I couldn’t resist making some feeling like poo stickers to show why the first half of the week is pretty much blank. Some of my dailies are more busy than others and sometimes I run out of room. I also usually do a rolling weekly for general, none day specific tasks.

Meal planning

My husband and I have now got into the habit of doing one of these each week. We peruse our cookbooks, recipe files and magazine cuttings as well as looking online. Then, I write up the plan whilst my husband makes a shopping list and checks ingredient availability in our cupboards. It takes quite a while, but it’s well worth it.

Final words…

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my January spreads, including how I fill them out. I’ve almost finished my pages for February now so I will no doubt be sharing them very soon, hopefully before the end of the month.

Until next time,

bullet journal, Bullet journaling, Christmas, planner girl, planner lifestyle, Planning and journaling, watercolour painting

Setting up my Bullet Journal for December 2024: Winter foliage theme

Posted on Dec 5, 2024Dec 5, 2024 by Laura

This month, rather than doing a full on Christmas theme, I’ve taken inspiration from an artist whose content I follow on YouTube. In a recent video, she shared some easy watercolour cards featuring winter foliage, and one of the designs was a bauble shape decorated with red berries, leaf stems and pine branches. I had a go at creating my own on watercolour paper and loved how it turned out so I used it for my front cover (even gluing in the thick paper directly into my notebook). For the rest of my spreads I used felt tip pens and foliage stickers using designs found on Cricut Design Space, plus gold paint to create shine. I can’t wait to share the results with you.

Front cover

Usually, I scan and print my watercolour designs but, on this occasion, the finished result was so disappointing that I decided to stick the original straight in. It’s made my journal super bulky, and I’m only on my second month, but I’m so happy with how it looks. I added some gold sparkly paper behind it and I think it makes it really festive (unfortunately, it doesn’t show up too well in the photograph).

Monthly calendar

This is my usual calendar with leafy sprigs, berries and pine pieces created using an array of pens including my Tombow dual tips, Papermate flairs, Pentel brush pens and a couple of American Craft precision pens. Rather than sketching the designs, I went straight in with the colour and I think the pages turned out okay. The December title is backed with another glitter paper, this time in a lovely green colour.

Finances

For some reason, the camera on my phone has made the grid appear a horrible yellowy colour, but it is, in fact and a pale green with just a hint of yellow to it. I would love to know how to correct this so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know in the comments. I might have a play with the photograph settings and see if I can improve it at all.

Monthly goals

Most of my goals for this month are taken directly from my winter bucket list and relate to Christmas. The stickers were made in Cricut Design Space and I used vinyl sticker paper which really easily ripped so I had to be super careful.

Christmas related pages

I created pages like these last Christmas and found them really useful so I’ve done the same again this year. Now that I’ve shared them on here, I can start filling them in!

I also have a Christmas packing list page to set up nearer to the time too.

My first weekly plan

Final words…

Thank you for visiting my blog to look at my Christmas bullet journal pages, I would love to know what you think to them, especially the front cover which I had great fun painting. If you like playing with watercolour, I would definitely recommend checking out the YouTube video that I drew inspiration from.

Wishing you a wonderful Christmas time and all the best for 2025,

bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, goal setting, planner girl, planner lifestyle, Planning and journaling, productivity

Setting up my Bullet Journal for November 2024: Autumn plaid theme

Posted on Nov 8, 2024 by Laura

This month, I’ve moved into a brand new bullet journal and again, I chose one from Notebook Therapy. Part of the Maple Journey collection, this one is a soft burnt orange velvet cover featuring a gold moon design to the front and pearl gold gilded edges to the pages. I’d forgotten how long it takes for notebooks to arrive from there, so I didn’t receive it until almost the end of October, hence me being so late sharing my pages.

I decided to try something different for November and picked out some digital papers with autumn plaid designs to use as a background for my different pages. Although printing on full sheets of A4 paper used up almost all of my ink, I was really pleased with the quality of patterns and the way they were all different but matched together perfectly.

The front cover

I kept the front cover really simple so that most of the plaid pattern is on display. I made a page of stickers for all of the titles I needed for the month, including the month and year to place centrally.

Monthly calendar

This is my usual size of monthly calendar but to ensure the plaid design was seamless behind it, I used my dot grid paper pad from Claire Fontaine, to draw up the grid and then trimmed it using my paper cutter and some scissors. Again, I left the rest of the page untouched so plenty of the patterned background is displayed.

November finances

Again, I used my paper pad to draw up the tables and stuck them over the top of pages covered with a plaid design. The titles and the small autumn sticker were made using Cricut Design Space my Joy Xtra. I haven’t used a Tombow brush pen to separate the lines this month as it’s so time consuming and I didn’t want the washi I use to damage the printed plaid paper.

Monthly goals

I enjoyed using my monthly goals spread in October so decided to do another one this month. The tiny heart stickers were made in Cricut Design Space and printed on white vinyl sticker paper.

Weekly plan

I’ve only had time to set up my first weekly for the month but I’m going to use the same layout for each week. I find that this set up gives me enough space to write in any events, plus a few to-dos each day.

Final words…

I’ve kept today’s post relatively short but if you have any questions about my November spreads, I’ll be more than happy to answer them. I was hoping that, by using pre-made papers, setting up for the month would be super quick, but, I spent ages searching on Etsy for different digital plaid designs before I settled on my favourite!

I hope you all have a lovely November and are able to make the most of the final month of autumn,

bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, goal setting, planner girl, planner lifestyle, Planning and journaling

Setting up my Bullet Journal for October 2024: Autumnal Vibes Theme

Posted on Sep 25, 2024Sep 30, 2024 by Laura

Welcome to another blog post where I share my bullet journal set up for the month. For October, I went for an Autumn vibes theme with lots of stickers featuring autumnal leaves, fungi, hot drinks, squashes, woodland animals and colourful trees. I hope you like my pages which took me a good while to complete!

Front cover

I decided to do an autumn wreath for the cover and was going to do a watercolour design but I decided to look for something on Cricut Design Space in the end. My thought was that creating stickers would be less time consuming than mixing autumnal watercolours to make my own wreath shape and the colours would be more intense. I was certainly correct about the lovely, bright designs but I spent ages sizing images and making sheets of stickers for all of my pages and subthemes. At least I’m pleased with the effects I’ve achieved.

I selected about 4 different wreath designs in Cricut and asked my husband to pick his favourite and here it is with an October 2024 title added in the centre and a few leaves dotted about in the spaces at the top and bottom.

Monthly calendar

As is usually the case, I wasn’t happy with my lettering on the first attempt so I practised on dot grid paper and stuck in the title I was happiest with. The paper is from Claire Fontaine and I’ve been using it for years to cover up little mistakes in my journals.

I’ve gone back to my usual 6 dot space grid calendar layout this month as I missed it in September. As you can see, I added tonnes of stickers which are mainly from Design Space but a few are from a mini Carpe Diem book I’ve had for quite a while now.

Finances

My finances spread is my usual layout with a few autumnal colours, a cute little fox design as some tiny leaves. I like to record my income and spending for each month to keep an eye on my purchases and to check I have a few low or no spend days.

Monthly goals

This is a fairly new spread for me and it’s a great way to set myself some small goals which contribute to my longer term goals for the year. This month, I split my goals into personal and business. I’ve got a few more on the list than I wrote last month so lets hope I haven’t taken on too much.

On the adjacent page to the monthly goals I’ve created a bright and colourful evaluation space so I can journal about the progress I’ve made and then summarise at the end of the month. I’ve purposely kept the box quite small so writing isn’t such an onerous task.

Weekly spreads

Preparing all of my weekly spreads took quite a while but I’m sure I’ll appreciate the effort I’ve gone to every Monday morning when my pages are ready to write in. I enjoyed choosing a different aspect of autumn for each week but it was a challenge searching for images that I liked which would be suitable for small stickers to decorate each day.

The autumnal border strips that I used at the top of the pages were from The Range and were a cheap, quick and easy way to add decor above the weekly boxes. The stickers have a transparent background so were easy to align with the dot grid.

Final words…

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my spreads for the month of October and they provided you with some inspiration for your own bullet journal planner. In addition to the ones I’ve shown you, I also create a meal plan each week which I photocopy and attach to our noticeboard in the kitchen. Writing the plan in my bullet journal gives me something to refer back to at a later date and it’s a wonderful record of all of the delicious dishes we’ve enjoyed throughout the season.

Let me know in the comments if you have any exciting plans for the month of October or autumn activities that you’re looking forward to trying.

Happy October everyone,