Cricut Joy Xtra – Keeping it creative

Hi all! It’s been a while since I last shared my monthly BuJo pages, but, as I’ve finished my July spreads super early (I actually finished the last few bits over a week ago!), I thought I’d get the various pages photographed and uploaded to my blog so you could see my finished designs and chosen theme. Obviously I’ve used stickers but you could quite easily simplify the pages and hand draw and colour different strawberry (or other fruit) themed images.

The front cover

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping it Creative

I wanted to create a slightly thicker grid than the one above but I only had a Tombow pen in the colour I wanted so I used the bullet tip for it. I created strawberry stickers with no white border for a clean look and I was pleased with how well my Cricut Joy Xtra cut out the images. Overall, I think the page looks quite cute!

Monthly calendar

I already have quite a few things happening in July so I was glad to have my calendar ready early so I had a space to put them after initially adding them to my future log. I love how bright and colourful the spread turned out and, if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that strawberries are my absolute favourite fruit and so this theme was a great option for me this month.

The calendar is the usual six by six dot grid spaces as I find I have just enough room to write in all (or most) of whst I need to add.

Finances – income and expenditure

This month, you may have noticed that I appear to have forgotten to use a ruler. Actually, I did it on purpose and it made it sooooo much quicker to do the grid for my calendar and the finances log. And, to be honest, I think it looks okay, and I might do it again and again for the rest of 2026! I saw a tip on a YouTube video (might have been Shayda Campbell) about using two hand drawn lines to show that the wobbly bits are intentional and it certainly doesn’t look as messy if you’re ruler accidentally smudges things or if you accidentally move the ruler.

Reviewing the previous month and getting ready for July

I started creating this spread as a way to think about how things went the previous month including what went well, what didn’t go as planned, changes I might make the next month and anything that I needed to look into to help me going forwards. It’s also a space where I can record any actions I want to take before I start to work towards my monthly goals. For example, this month, I need to read information on the Brockbushes website to find out when the strawberry picking is, how much it costs, what’s on the lunch menu at the cafe there (we can’t just eat strawberries all day), how long it takes to get there and what photos I might want to take so I have a nice record of what we did and any displays they have.

Monthly goals and space for evaluation

I tend to choose about 4 or 5 goals each month, sometimes related to hobbies or experiences I want to have, usually at least one related to my blog or Etsy shop (not included this time as I did a lot of work in June and now, a personal curriculum aim. These fall outside of the time I spend at work and I’m mindful of how much time I will have depending on my hours. In July, I have quite a lot of commitments and I’m getting sessions through regularly (2 since I photographed my spreads) so realistically, I can’t made my goals too lofty or I’m setting myself up to fail.

Weekly plan

I made all of my weekly plans the same for July so I’m just sharing one of them as an example. I kept the decoration very minimal but I do have some spare strawberry stickers if I want to add some later.

Final words…

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my pages for the month of July and are suitably impressed with how early I’ve got them finished (ha ha!). I appreciate that not everyone has the time and inclination to create such highly decorated spreads but for me, it’s really one of my hobbies and something I find a fun, relaxing and mindful activity. I also think I’m more likely to use my planner functionally if it looks pretty! I check in with my bullet journal every day, and throughout the day if I’m at home, and it really works to keep me organised and on track to succeed in creating a life I love.

Wishing you a joyful July,

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.

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!).

Category: Cricut Joy Xtra

Setting up my Bullet Journal for July 2026 – Strawberries theme

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