My Bullet Journal: Recent Work

This is one post in a series of posts about My Bullet Journal Journey. I’ve sequenced the posts so that they chronicle my journey and are step-by-step guides for those of you considering starting your own. 

• #1 – My Bullet Journal: Taking the Plunge (materials)
• #2 – How to Get Started (terms and basic set up)
• #3 – My Collections
• #4 – Oopsies & Reinvented Pages
• #5 – Tools in the Toolbox
• #6 – Favorite Spreads
• #7 – Things That Didn’t Work
• #8 – My Worst Ideas
• #9 – Recent Work

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I have about five-ish solid months of bullet journaling under my belt now. I took a month-long hiatus from mid-April to mid-May. While this is my first year of the journal, I’m learning. A lot. Learning how to do things better and things maybe not to do again…like these spreads. I’ll be sharing my worst ideas and designs to date.

Recent Work

 

Just Some Updating

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I came back from my hiatus, I decided to start back over from the beginning and comb through my bullet journal. I decided I didn’t like the dots, and I wanted to fill in the squares. I actually think it looks much better with just that small change.

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge

I was able to mark off several new titles on my Alphabet Soup Challenge page and update my progress. I wasn’t too impressed to realize I had the wrong color when updating the bar at the bottom. I think I’ll go back and use my magic wand (ahem, White Out) to clean things up a bit.

I did decide to mark the date with my new progress so I can see the milestones throughout the year. I’ve participated in this series since 2014 and I still have not yet completed the challenge. I don’t purposefully seek out books, either, so I’m going to try to work on that for the latter part of the year.

 

Brush Colors

I got tired of not knowing what my brush marker colors were. This took a bit of time, but what took longer was painstakingly color matching to Crayola’s color palettes. These damn markers don’t have any color names on them! I realized after doing this that it didn’t really help me that much. I’m going to have to go back with a permanent marker and label each and every one of them so I quit picking up the wrong shade.

 

Things I Need To Do MORE

I’ve been wanting to do one of these for a while, but I just never got around to figuring it out and how I would do it and what I would put on it. I’ve only used half the page so far, but I am so impressed with what I’ve done. All of the lettering is freehand and I’m pretty proud of it.

I’ve definitely been taking care of that reading task lately. 🙂

 

 

Brithdays

This one took A LOT of time to just set up. There were a few of the drawing and shading I had trouble with, August in particular. You may notice that some names have a heart following them. These are relatives who have passed away. I started doing that in college, and I don’t know why, but I’ve continued it since. I love the color and the variety of this spread. Although I think for next year I’m going to have to make May all rainy, too. We are infamous for our Memorial Day floods and storms.

 

May Calendar 

I am pretty proud of my flag on Memorial Day. I set up my monthly layout in advance and I didn’t really think about what I wanted. I’m still working on it because I don’t like it. And then I actually ran out of space on May for my books. I read two more after Misty Lake. This is one I’ve got to rethink.

How do you fill in when you’ve taken a break from everything? The classic child’s mimicry, of course!

 

June Calendar

I saw something that inspired me to do a dreamcatcher for June. I ended up not liking the browns so much, but I do like it overall. The dreamcatcher took a significant part of a day to get drawn and colored.

I decided to change things up a bit with my June calendar and trackers. I made a full spread calendar with a task bar to the right. I like that a lot.  It might entirely take over the calendar companion that has my monthly goals and to-do so I won’t need them anymore. Then I’ll just have to figure out a “what I’m reading” thing.

I also decided to do something new in June. I was tired of feeling tired about my mood tracker and only having one mood for the entire day. I saw someone who used this type of system, and I’m going to try it out for June and see how it goes.

 

 

 

 

Travel Destinations

I was inspired by one of my students for this one. I spruced mine up quite a bit.

One of my biggest fears in life (still) is that I will never get to travel anywhere. Vacations were a foreign thing for my family. When I was halfway through college we took our first “vacation” for a couple of days to Corpus Christi. First family vacation.

I am excited though because next summer my family is going on a cruise for my mother’s class reunion. Her 35th isn’t until 2019, but all the classes from the 80s got together and came up with this idea for their reunions. So I’ll get to add a Latin American country to my list!! 😀

 

Dr. Seuss

I don’t even recall what specifically it was, but something that happened at work (with coworkers, not the kids) really upset me a while back. And it drove me back to this Dr. Seuss quote. In college, a friend wrote this my BFF’s minifridge. She didn’t realize it was in permanent marker and not in Expo until October. I remember Kat living and embodying this quote so much. She was judged a lot and this quote meant a lot to her.

It has since come to mean a lot to me, too. I spent hours and hours working on this spread, and I don’t regret it. It was time well spent.

I drew everything free-hand. I almost wish I had left it in pencil, but I did end up adding color. I’ll share the full thing colored version in an upcoming post. This is the spread I am most proud of in my entire journal. It is like the holy grail of my journal at this point. I also think it took all of the creative juices I had for the next four months.

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See? It’s OK to make mistakes in your bullet journal. 

Look for the next post in the series about some of my most recent work.