Sometime early in December I discovered the art of bullet journaling (I’m pretty I’m a little late to the parade on this, no?) and I got super excited (nerd alert). So between all of the holiday excitement I researched bullet journaling and grew more and more interested. I decided that at the start of the new year I would give it a try. I made it through January and have been doing much better with February so I decided to share what I’ve learned with you guys!

For those of you who don’t know what bullet journaling is a fun way to create your very own customized and organized planner, to do list, journal, diary, notebook etc. You can put whatever you want in it, you can organize and decorate however you want. It’s basically a fun and creative way to organize your life.

There really are no definitive rules to bullet journaling but I do believe that there are a few key things to keep in mind as you go through the process of bullet journaling:

• Have fun
• • Enjoy the process, don’t stress or get overwhelmed
  • Be as creative as you want to be; this is your journal so do whatever feels right to you.
• Create a KEY at the front of your bullet journal
• • You don’t have to do this but I would highly recommend it. It makes life a little easier so that if you need to refer back to a specific page you don’t have to flip through your journal forever- just find the page # in your key and you’re good to go!
• Remember that this is YOUR bullet journal so you don’t have to follow anyone else’s ideas or systems; you want to do what works best for you.
• It’s okay to make mistakes, this is why we have whiteout and erasers.

I’m not going to make you guys suffer through looking at my January bullet journal because it was pretty chaotic haha. I learned a lot from my January bullet journaling experience. It helped me to decide how to set up my February spread in a more effective way.

You’ll see through my February spread it’s decorated with watercolors and markers- unfortunately the bullet journal that I purchased has rather thin pages so almost anything “inky” bleeds through to the other side. For the pages that I highly decorate such as the quote page and the month page I use a piece of blank paper that I decorate and then paste into the bullet journal.

Cover pages:

Before even beginning this process I knew I wanted at least one quote for each month. I wanted to put it somewhere that I would see it when I opened that month and I wanted something that would be inspiring and/or uplifting. For February I chose “There are many beautiful reasons to be Happy” and I used watercolors to paint it onto the page.

On the February page I had decided to use roses and hearts with various shades of pink because…well…it’s the month of Valentines Day haha. I really really like the way the roses turned out, this was the first time I tried to draw roses!

Monthly Overview:

I keep a planner along with my bullet journal because I usually have SO much going on in a month…even in a day’s time…that I could potentially fill the entire bullet journal just trying to get one month filled in haha. I just make sure to add any key details that I’ll need for the month in my bullet journal. So things like birthdays, bills, appointments, notes, and Etsy orders. I have the “events” color coded so that when I open the journal I have a quick glance at my day..it’s sort of my way of ensuring I have an extra reminder of what needs to be done or what is coming up. The only thing that I don’t like about this spread is that I didn’t really give the number of days in the month much thought until everything was written in ink and couldn’t be erased. I didn’t want to use whiteout on an entire page so I just rolled with it. This is okay! If you make mistakes don’t stress because you can easily white it out, erase it, or learn from it and make do!

Brain Dump/Etsy Goals:

I’ve seen a lot of suggestions about using a brain dump page for ideas, random thoughts, and doodles and I thought that this would be a really good idea. However, as you can see I have yet to use this page for this month and even for the month of January I don’t think I had written in the page either. I’m not sure if I’m going to bring this back for future months but we’ll see. It’s a great idea if you use it though!

Our Etsy shop is one of the bigger things that I want to try to keep organized and keep track of. I essentially want to watch my Etsy growth and see where I can improve and where I’m doing well. This was really helpful for the month of January so I’m excited to see the improvement between the two months!

For these pages I kept the rose and pinks theme going. The only thing I’m not sure about for next month is using pencil to trace out a shape that I am filling in with watercolor. The pencil lines didn’t erase too well once the shape was painted so I need to brainstorm how to improve this. If you have any ideas/suggestions for this please let me know!

28 Days of Gratitude:

A lot of people add a weekly spread to their bullet journals and I don’t. The reason that I don’t is because as I mentioned above, I still keep a planner so I personally just don’t feel the need to rewrite my weekly tasks and events in two separate books. I also know that I will more than likely neglect one of these.

So instead of the weekly spread I wanted to try something different; something to challenge myself. One of my goals for 2018 is to be more positive in all areas of my life and to go through this journey I thought I would challenge myself for February with a 28 Days of Gratitude page. I just made a 28 box spread and wrote in the top of each box a prompt. Each day I fill in the prompt. So for day 1 the prompt was: What scent are you grateful for? I wrote “lavender” because this scent is one of my favorites but it’s also so relaxing and calming to me that I use it in my personal linen spray and in my diffuser nightly.

Expenses/Mood Tracker:

I left the expenses blank for now for obvious reasons but the idea behind this is to keep track of my personal spending and my bills. Another goal that I have for 2018 is to spend less and save more. This page was super inciteful in my January spread so I decided to continue it into my February spread.

For the mood tracker *sigh* I really really don’t like the spread that I chose haha. Making this was stressful (remember that you’re supposed to enjoy this process..Don’t pick something that is going to make you stressed) but I do like the color coding concept and even the banner section on the top of the page. As I said above one of my goals for 2018 is that I want to be more positive so that’s why I felt that the mood tracker would be a good idea. This has been super fun to keep track of.

February Mini Goals Spread:

Yet another goal that I’ve set for myself for 2018 is to just overall improve my life and my well-being so I created various mini goals for the month. I split them up in their own monthly spread. I really liked how this looked but it was incredibly time consuming so I think for next month I’ll be trying something a little easier to write out. However on that note I really like doing this mini goal tracker. I definitely will continue doing this!

If you’re looking for other tips or ideas for your own bullet journal you can go to Youtube and search “bullet journal ideas” or something month specific like “March bullet journal” you’ll get a ton of results and ideas.
You can also check out my Pinterest board on bullet journaling ideas here.

You can tag my in your ideas on Instagram too!