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

Setting up my Bullet Journal for June 2023: Gardening theme

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.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative

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.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative

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.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative

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.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative

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,

Posted in art, bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, lifestyle, Planning and journaling

Setting up my Bullet Journal for June 2022: Summer Fruits theme

Hi all, hope you are well. Today I’m going to share my bullet journal spreads for June. I’ve chosen a theme that I did a couple of years previously in 2020, but this time, I’ve hand drawn all of the fruits straight into my notebook, rather than create stickers from my own illustrations. I hope you enjoy looking at my pages for this month.

Front cover

For my front cover I wrote the ‘hello June’ title in the centre of the page and then added a range of fruits in different colours. Lightly sketched pencil drawings were filled with Tombow ATB brush pens and Crayola Supertips, then outlined using a Pigma Micron Fineliner in 01. Detail was added using the same fineliner and a sepia 0.5 UniPin for the decoration on the pineapple.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative blog

Positive message for the month

On the previous page I created a TV series spread but I made a huge mistake with the title, so I covered it over by sticking on a simple message I printed from a website. Unfortunately I can’t credit the person who created it as I’m unable to find it online again and I didn’t save it to my computer!

Monthly Calendar Pages

My calendar pages are my usual six by six dot boxes. I find that there’s just enough space for me to record a couple of events or gym bookings each day. As you can see from the above pages, I made a bit of a mess with the banana so this time I printed one from Google images and traced it! I’m sure you’ll agree, it’s a big improvement.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative Blog

TV series record

This is a page that I started doing from last year. It’s a simple record of all of the different TV series we’ve watched, whether it’s a one off or part of a number of seasons and the particular genre. It’s great for referring back to so we can see all of the great stuff we’ve watched. We can also recommend series to family and friends.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative blog

Activity Tracker

I really enjoyed keeping a record of my walks and workouts last month so I’ve made a similar tracker for June. The only thing I’ve changed are the motivational messages and quote.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative blog

Final thoughts

I’m really pleased with how my pages for this month turned out and they’re certainly nice and colourful. Hopefully in the future, I’ll continue to be brave with drawing things and brush lettering straight into my notebook without practicing on paper first. Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of June.