planner girl – Page 3 – Keeping it creative

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).

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative

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 journaling, goal setting, intentional living, lifestyle, planner girl, planner lifestyle, Setting goals and intentions, sticker making

My Winter 2024-25 Bucket List: Maximizing the Season’s Potential

Posted on Nov 25, 2024 by Laura

I started creating seasonal bucket lists in autumn 2023 and earlier this year I shared a short guide to them in a blog post, where I discussed exactly what a bucket list is, the benefits of making one and some tips for deciding what to include so it is tailor made to you. Over the last week, I’ve been working on my winter 2024/5 bucket list and it’s quite different to my previous winter season one which I’m really pleased about because I want to make sure I plan new opportunities for myself and my husband.

Today, I’m sharing the two page spread I created in my bullet journal where I add the bucket list items, small illustrative stickers to go with each and a few snowflakes and sparkles to fill the gaps. Although it was quite time consuming, I had so much fun making most of the stickers using Cricut Design Space, my Cricut Joy Xtra and a couple of sheets of matte sticker paper and then planning their positions over thew two pages with an icy blue background. I also found a few extra tiny stickers in my mini Carpe Diem ‘Season’s sticker book.

My finished bucket list pages

I think the result is so aesthetically pleasing that I’ll be sure to keep checking in with pages, selecting goals for each of the winter months (obviously doing the Christmas ones in December), then deciding on one or two to complete or start to work on for each week across the season. As I finish them, I’ll be adding little tick stickers that I also made with my Cricut Joy Xtra.

Final words…

Creating a seasonal bucket list is a great way to maximize the potential of the coming months and it’s so much fun too. As you can see, I love getting creative with mine in my bullet journal but you could simply make a list and tape it to your fridge or add your own cute little doodles to show what you want to achieve.

And, if you don’t achieve it all, it doesn’t matter. You may find that your priorities change or that other opportunities present themselves that you want to do instead. You might run out of time or decide that you simply don’t want to do one or more of the items. For example, I had on my list for this season to create an autumnal quote page in my bullet journal with hand drawn elements, but, by the third week of November, I’ve still not done it and it seems pointless to spend the time drafting one out and decorating it when my focus in now on winter and what I want to do over the next three months.

I hope that seeing my bucket list for this winter has inspired you to have a go at creating your own. You’re quite welcome to use some of my ideas if you have similar interests to me and Pinterest has a good number of lists too, but I recommend taking your time and really thinking about what you love about the season, activities you’ve done before and want to make time for again, or things you’ve always wanted to try, either on your own or with loved ones. Let me know in the comments what your top three are!

Wishing you a fun filled winter season,

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,

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

Setting up my bullet journal for September 2024: Night sky theme

Posted on Aug 31, 2024 by Laura

For my September bullet journal pages, I was inspired by a set of washi tapes that I found and purchased from TKMaxx (even though I have literally hundreds of rolls already – you can never have too much right?) They were all in similar shades of purple with some featuring tiny stars, crescent moons, Saturn, the moon phases and text saying ‘the stars shine for you’. In addition, the set included complementary patterns, a watercolour effect design plus a ‘to do’ tape for my running task lists. I wanted to use my paints to create an original piece of art that I could use for my front cover and, after spending a while perusing various night sky tutorials on YouTube, I finally settle on this one which explained the techniques really well and discussed use of colour and contrast as a key teaching point. I decided against adding dark tree outlines to the bottom and chose to add some stars and a moon using white gouache.

The front cover

As always, I used cold pressed watercolour paper and a wet on wet technique to ensure the colours blended seamlessly and there was no buckling of the paper as there would be if I’d painted directly onto my bullet journal page. This gave me a nice, clean design which I could photocopy using my printer and stick in. I wish I’d chosen thinner washi tape as a border because the finished piece ended up smaller than I wanted but I also didn’t want to scan and enlarge the piece as the stars would have ended up too big.

My original watercolour galaxy painting – Laura Jones

Monthly calendar

I decided to do a different calendar this month and opted for the style originally used by Ryder Carroll who is the creator of the bullet journal system. This involved writing the day numbers and the days of the week down the left hand side of the page, leaving space to write events and or happenings in the space to the write with one horizontal line for each day of the month. This allows the use of just one page for the entire calendar. I’ll let you know how I get on with it next month and whether I’ll continue to use this style or go back to my usual 6×6 dot spaces box calendar.

Finances

The one page calendar meant I ended up with a spare page to the right so I started my finance pages and then continued overleaf. Again, I’ve been making stickers for this month’s theme to decorate my spreads more quickly than drawing.

September goals

In order to not lose sight of what I want to achieve in September, I decided to create a goals page to refer to throughout the month. I opted to have two types of goal – health and fitness and business as this is what I want to focus on throughout September, aside from my work at the university.

Weekly layout

This is my first weekly, before the pen and I wanted to keep it simple so there’s plenty of room for events and a few to-dos each day. I’ll probably do a running task list for the week over the page but I intend to add some day specific tasks to the weekly calendar.

Final words…

Thank you for visiting my blog today to look at my bullet journal pages for September. I would love to hear in the comments what you think of my art work, my theme and set up.

Wishing you a lovely September filled with lots of fun autumnal activities,