creativity – Page 7 – Keeping it creative

bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, lifestyle, Planning and journaling

Setting up my Bullet Journal for August 2023: ice cream and ice lollies theme

Posted on Jul 28, 2023Jul 29, 2023 by Laura

Today, as I write this blog post, I have the window in my craft room wide open and a large bottled of iced water on my desk to sip from. The weather has finally improved after days of rain, and the sun is peeping out from behind the clouds. I was beginning to think the summer was over but it appears to be back, for a brief time at least judging by the forecast! August is almost here and it is one of my favourite months as my niece and I share our birthdays on the 3rd (which coincides with factory shut down week so my husband can take some well earned time off from his office job), plus we celebrate our wedding anniversary (17 years on the 11th!). As we will be busy making the most of holiday time next week, I started working on my spreads super early, this time, choosing a seasonal theme of ice cream and ice lollies.

Cover page

Once I had decided on the theme, I spent some time searching Google for pictures of bullet journal spreads that others had shared, doodles of ice creams and lollies, plus photos of some of my childhood favourites and different types of cones. I then printed off lots of examples for inspiration for my spreads.

For the cover, I opted for some brush lettering in the centre of the page with just a simple hello August. I wasn’t happy with my first attempt, so I practised on my pad of dot grid paper then cut out the title when I was happy with it. The slim border around the cut out is created using mint green ink on a finger sponge dauber which I lightly pressed all around the edge. One the lettering was sorted, I then penciled in a range of ice creams and ice lollies before using a 0.2 Pigma Micron to outline and a 0.05 to create the cross hatching for the cones. Finally, I used Tombows and Mildliners in pastel colours to complete the doodles.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative

Calendar page

The calendar pages features my usual 6×6 grid spaces boxes with a pop of colour for the dates. I enjoyed creating the doodles for these pages and I’m pleased with how they turned out. I messed up once so I covered the mistake with a sticker I created using a Google image.

Finances and habits pages

Although the beginning of August is likely to be expensive for our joint finances, I’m hoping to keep my personal spending relatively low so I’ve made my outgoings table even shorter than last month. This left a big space at the bottom of the page, so I filled it with some habit trackers. Recently, I’ve started going to bed really late and by the time I’ve read my Kindle for a bit, it’s gone midnight. Because of this, I’ve been sleeping in and not getting as much done with my day. So as not to put too much pressure on myself, I’ve set myself the target of being up by 8.30am for August which will still be a bit of a challenge but hopefully doable. The rest of the habits I want to instill are related to my goals for 2023.

Final words…

That’s all of the pages I’ve created for August so far and when I draw up my weekly plans, I will probably keep them fairly minimal. I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my designs and I look forward to seeing other creations and theme ideas as they are shared.

Wishing you all a fun-filled August with lots of opportunities to create happy memories,

art, bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, Planning and journaling

Setting up my BuJo for July 2023: Summer holidays theme

Posted on Jul 3, 2023Jul 25, 2023 by Laura

This month in my bullet journal, I’ve cheated with the décor again and bought a couple of sets of stickers to make things quick, easy and colourful. I was so impressed with the quality of the gardening themed set, that I chose to purchase from the same shop LunarLucie on Etsy. I ordered in plenty of time so that they arrived before we headed off to Norfolk on holiday. I managed to create the cover spread which I shared on Instagram but the calendar and financial pages had to wait until we returned which is why I’m only getting around to sharing them today.

Front cover page

The style of this month’s cover is very similar to the one from June but I used all of the stickers from the tropical summer holiday sheet and a few from a tropical flowers set which complemented the others beautifully. The designs are so lovely and I’m really pleased with how the page turned out. I wasn’t happy with my lettering so I used some dotted grid paper to practise, then cut it out to stick in the centre.

Calendar page

I had plenty of tropical flower stickers left so use these to decorate and then filled in the spaces with sparkles.

Finances

I want this month to be a low spend one so I made my expenses section shorter. This left me with room to add a few financial affirmations in the space at the bottom.

Final words…

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my spreads for this month. I haven’t drawn up any weekly spreads yet but they’ll be pretty minimal in terms of decoration. I might just create a running task list as the only events on my calendar for this week are my usual exercise classes.

Wishing you all a lovely and fun-filled July,

bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, gardening, Planning and journaling

Setting up my Bullet Journal for June 2023: Gardening theme

Posted on May 31, 2023May 31, 2023 by Laura

At the moment, my husband and I are busy working on our garden to get it looking neat, tidy and full of colour for the summer. I’ve recently started keeping a gardening journal which includes before photos of the front and back gardens, lists of jobs for the weekend, planting plans and records of seeds set and plants added to the borders. I wanted my theme for June to be bright and cheerful, with easy to set up pages so I decided to order some deco stickers from Etsy for the month. So far, I’ve picked out one sheet of watercolour garden related images and have used them to decorate the cover page and my calendar. I also used some icon stickers for my first weekly spread and will decide if I want to order further stickers to decorate or if I want to do some basic sketches for the rest of the weeks.

If you’re looking to create decorative but quick pages for your bullet journal, stickers and washi can be great options but obviously do incur an extra cost. They’re also great choices if you’re not keen on drawing or need to save time. You can literally type your chosen theme into Etsy, filter to UK sellers only if you need the sticker sheets quickly, select a design sheet which suits your personal style, and then, as soon as they arrive you can get to work planning out where to put them in your spreads. I found that the most frustrating part was creating my grids and lettering and then having to wait for what felt like ages for delivery but the sheet was made to order so had a lead time of two weeks.

My front cover

I used one of my new Tombows in 991 to add the title to the centre of the page and then created a loose border using a 0.4 pigma micron pen. I then added stickers around the title and placed washi plus some circles to fill in the spaces at the top and bottom.

Calendar pages

This is my usual 6×6 grid space calendar layout and I chose four Tombow Dual Tip pens which I tried to match to the stickers. I knew that the colours might not be exact as they can differ on your screen to IRL but I didn’t mind as long as they were close. As I was running short on stickers by the time I’d finished the cover page I added a quote on some kraft grid sticker paper and matched it with a strip on the edge and then used various sparkles to fill in the gaps.

Finances

The layout of my finances spread works really well for me so I use the same design each month. There was a little space at the bottom to add a small amount of decoration using a piggy bank sticker from EllenBeeMakes on Etsy, a hand drawn little calculator and some words which I printed on sticker paper.

Weekly calendar and rolling weekly to do list

I decided to do a double page weekly for the first calendar page as I have quite a lot planned and needed more room to write. This means that my rolling weekly task list is over the page but I don’t mind flipping back and forth.

Final words…

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my spreads for the month of June. I don’t regularly use stickers to decorate my pages as it would be fairly costly but it is an effective way of setting up quickly and painlessly. I still managed to mess up a few times – once by smudging pen (the joys of being a leftie) and again by dripping cherries and berries squash on one of the pages (planning is thirsty work!) but my white Posca paint pen and some washi fixed those pretty well. Overall, I’m pleased with how everything turned out and I’m looking forward to using my pages.

My lovely stickers which are now all used!

Wishing you a lovely June,

art, bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, Planning and journaling

Setting up my Bullet Journal for April 2023: Kite theme

Posted on Mar 24, 2023Mar 24, 2023 by Laura

This week, as my craft room is very chaotic due to my decluttering, I decided to bring my laptop downstairs and work at the dining table. This has given me the chance to open the patio doors on warmer days and listen to the birds in the garden. As well as it being milder, we’ve also had sun and rain creating rainbows and quite a few windy days. Just outside, we have a bright windmill stuck in a plant pot and it’s currently spinning round so fast the colours are merging! Although the wind here tends to be cold, at the moment, it’s not too bad – making me think that it’s perfect weather for kite flying. It’s this thought that gave me inspiration for my bullet journal theme for April. I’m excited to share my pages super early – it was certainly time consuming to create them so I hope you like them!

My cover page

Before designing my spreads, I like to have a look on Pinterest, YouTube and Google to see if my chosen theme has been done before. I found relatively few examples but my pages were inspired by the beautiful work of Claudia Joseph and her set up video. I’ve made it my own by choosing a different colour palette of primary and secondary colours, an alternative combination of art supplies and a number of pages which I know I’ll make use of next month.

I had the idea of creating a mixed media cover page with a pale watercolour wash and inked kites filled in with felt tip pens. For this, I decided to use my masking fluid on the kite shapes and then create a pale blue using cerulean blue and chinese white watercolour. Ask I hadn’t used masking fluid in my bullet journal before, I decided to test it out in the back of my notebook. I’m glad I did, as, although the watercolour itself looked good, the masking fluid pulled the coating off my page in several places and looked a mess. I also tried using my Tombows to colour in the kites and wasn’t happy with the results of that either!

In the end, I decided not to colour the background as sky and settled for ink and coloured pencils for the kites. I had used them in the past in my bullet journal to good effect with the only problem being colour transfer to the opposite page when completing later spreads. In an attempt to solve this, I popped to The Range and picked up a small can of Winsor & Newton Fixative to spray on my pages. This seems to have worked well and although it has an awfully strong chemical smell to it which permeates the air, I’m glad I purchased it.

Here’s the result using Staedtler Ergosoft Coloured Pencils, a Derwent colourless blending pencil, a 0.1 Pigma Micron (which broke on me halfway through but luckily I had a spare in my stash), a grey Zebra mildliner and the small tipped end of a Tombow dual pen for the writing.

To make sure my kites were neat and symmetrical, I folded a piece of thick paper and cut out designs in different sizes. I then drew around the stencils lightly in a 2H pencil. I’ve always used a HB to sketch out my designs but a 2H is much lighter – you just have to make sure you don’t press on too hard and it easily dents the paper (I’ve realised to my cost!).

My double page calendar page

I decided to try out a slightly different set up for my calendar boxes this month with individual 5×5 squares. I drew it up lightly in pencil first and then used the bullet pointed end of some of my Tombows. Creating the squares was made much easier by using a Helix metric squares template which I remembered I had as part of my supplies. I mostly love how the double page has turned out – it’s so bright and colourful and I think it will be a joy to see each day. The only thing that’s annoying me about it is that I pressed on a little too hard with the colouring in on front cover and it has dented the paper and caused it to be raised on the left hand side of the spread. I tried ironing it flat but it didn’t work as the paper has been stretched. Looking at it positively, I’ve certainly learnt something and hopefully I’ll remember this next time.

Finances for April

If you’re a regular here on my blog, you might notice that I’ve made the expenses section shorter for April. This is because I’ve had very little work at the university in March so my income will be a lot less. For this reason, I hope to have a low spend month. This has also meant that I had some space to do a little more decoration.

Final words…

Just like watercolour painting, drawing and colouring in is are great mindful and meditative activities and both provide a wonderful way to relax and de-stress. Although the pages for April were quite time consuming, it was nice to try something a little different and I like the way they’ve turned out. I might even use the bright coloured Tombows to draw out my weekly plan for the first full week of the month, rather than the usual fineliner.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my spreads and I look forward to seeing the work of other bullet journalists on social media over the next week or so.

Wishing you all a wonderful April,

art, bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, Gouache painting, Planning and journaling

Setting up my Bullet Journal for February 2023: Valentine’s Love Heart theme

Posted on Feb 3, 2023 by Laura

January seems to have flown by and we’re now into February. I’ve only just got my spreads for the month finished as I’ve been busy setting up my new STM notebook and have also had quite a few sessions at the university this year so far. I did a hearts theme before (back in Feb 2021) and I enjoyed using my watercolours to mixing various shades of red and pink so I thought I’d give it another go but this time I used gouache for a more opaque finish. The design for the front cover was inspired by a Caroline Gardner mirror compact that I got for Christmas which features heart outlines.

My pretty compact mirror from Caroline Gardner

The front cover

After practicing painting heart shapes in the back of my old bullet journal, I created a template and lightly sketched the outlines with a pencil. I then mixed a shade of pink and then used a number 2 round brush to paint a small number of hearts. I repeated the process with various reds and pinks and also added 3 gold hearts using my Finetec metallic watercolour paints. After leaving the paint to dry thoroughly, I created a small cream label for the month and the year using a gorgeous brush letter font which I recently downloaded called Northern Lights Script.

Calendar page

For the month on two pages calendar, I mixed similar colours and painted a range of filled hearts in different sizes. This time I used a size 0 round brush as the shapes were smaller. This time I very lightly hand sketched the heart shapes with a 2H pencil. When I’d finished, I realised that I hadn’t done any gold hearts so I decided to add some sparkle using a Uniball Signo gold gel pen creating dots, stars and curved diamond shapes.

Finances

I’ve been enjoying using this format of financial tracker for a while now and I just change up the colours each month.

Weekly plan and rolling weekly

This is the first time I’ve done a week-on-one-page spread but now I do a rolling task list for the week I don’t need as much room as I’m only recording events, gym sessions and days out. The hearts for each day were inked using a heart outline (made using a punch), a gorgeous red/gold ink and a mini finger sponge. You can’t really see the iridescence in the photo but it looks really pretty when the hearts catch the light.

My future log for my new Bullet Journal

I created my future log for 12 months, starting in March 2023 and I’m really pleased with how simple and effective it is so I thought I would share here. It makes use of a Dutch door set up and I added little tabs for ease of use. Using a Dutch Door means that you create one title which can be seen from a number of pages.

Final words…

I’m really pleased with how my pages turned out and I hope you like them too. Doing some painting in your bullet journal is a super relaxing and mindful activity which I really enjoy. As long as your pages are a good weight and you don’t use too much water or add too many layers of paint there should be no bleed through or page wrinkling.

Wishing you all a wonderful February,