collections

April BuJo setup and a look back at March

Angela PorterLeave a comment

April’s BuJo

Angela Porter April BuJo Cover

I’ve spent some time today setting my BuJo (bullet journal) up ready for next month.

I decided I’d like a kind of mandala with dangles for the cover page, which you can see above.

I chose quite strong purple, purple-pink and green-blues for the colour scheme, with golden highlights.  Faber-Castell Polychromos and Caran D’Ache Luminance pencils, along with a blender pencil from Derwent, were used to colour the design.  I used various Copic Multiliner SP pens to draw the design.

Angela Porter April BuJo Overview and Trackers

After working with my BuJo for a month, I decided that I needed a different design for the Monthly overview, where I’ll add in my appointments and events later on. I also wanted to change my mood tracker to one that lets me track my  mood through the day.  I thought it would be a good idea to add the other things I want to keep track of – meditation, walking and hand lettering practice.

I used dangles to join the various boxes to the headers on this page.

I also used Tombow Dual Brush Pens to colour in the designs on this page; and you can see the key to the colours used on the Trackers page.

Angela Porter April Weekly Spread

I’ve also set up one of my weekly views.  I really liked having a page for week’s diary/notes and one where I can write my gratitude and memories.  It’s worked well for me the past week.

I will set up the other weeks as I head towards them through the month, but they’re likely to be similar with just different header and divider designs being used.

A look back at my first month with a BuJo

I’ve certainly had an interesting and fun time with my BuJo this month, and I’ve been finding out how it works for me.

My days are often very simple in terms of what I need to do, so I don’t really need or use large amounts of space for each day.  What I tend to record for each day is a list of tasks accomplished along with appointments.  The memories section is really valuable as well; for me a BuJo is more like a memory store rather than planning out my life in detail.

I’ve done a huge amount of work on collections; these include charms, dangles, bugs, botanical drawings, floral wreaths, feathers, crystals, cacti and succulents, and favourite patterns. My BuJo is becoming a kind of visual directory for me, which will be very useful as I look to start my next book project soon, as A Dangle A Day is nearly complete.

Creating the spreads is a rather soothing, meditative process for me, especially colouring.  It also gives me the chance to practice drawing dangles and other items too. I usually start my day be adding to a collection or colouring some of the drawings already done.

I do tend to keep a list of important things to do on a post-it note, but as I do them I write them down as having been done in the appropriate day.  I’ve mentioned it before, but I find ‘to-do’ lists not very motivational for me and a source of me beating myself up.  For me, lists of things I’ve achieved that day helps me far more.

I’ve added hand lettering practice to my trackers as I want to practice that a lot more.

BuJos and Tombows

Angela PorterLeave a comment

 

Bujo01

Tombow Dual Brush Pens

Today, I recieved a full set of the Tombow ABT Dual Brush pens and I’ve managed to swatch them out in my BuJo.

So far, so good.  They ‘stick’ a bit more to the paper in my Leuchtturm 1917 dot grid BuJo than the Zig Art and Graphic Twin pens or my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens, but I like the colour palette.  I’m sure I will get a lot of use out of them for sure.

BuJo

Talking of my BuJo, I’m going to bravely share some of the ‘spreads’ I’ve done and share some of my thoughts on BuJo and how it’s working for me so far.

Bujo02 There’s a lot of stuff out there about bullet journaling, and a good place to start is bulletjournal.com, the website of Ryder Carroll, credited with starting the bullet journal system.

What attracted me to this system is it’s total flexibility and how you’re encouraged to make it work for you.

Rather than planning my day out, other than appointments or important dates, I use mine more as a journal where I record what I have done that day.

I find lists of things to-do can be counter productive for me; if I don’t tick things off I can be very hard on myself.  However, by recording what I have done, that just feels far more positive to me.

So, I do have a couple of ‘trackers’ in my BuJo for things I would like to do on a daily basis.

Notice I wrote ‘I’d like to do’, not ‘I must’.  That takes a lot of pressure off me, as well as the guilt I can have if I don’t get done what I thought I could get done in a day.  I’m far more ‘productive’ if I just get along with things.  I’m lucky to have the luxury of doing this as I’m self-employed, as well as being an arty, creative person.

So, here are my trackers, as they appear in my BuJo:

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I’ve noticed I have some colouring to do on some of them.  I decided I’d like my trackers to span a whole year, which seems to be working fine for me now. I also wanted to add some of my favourite quotes to remind me of why I want to keep track of these things and their importance to me.

I decided to add the quotes in boxes, and connect them with strings of little ‘doodles’ called dangles (the book I’m working on – A Dangle A Day – is spilling over into other areas of my creative life!) I like how they’re not all symmetrical in shape and arrangement.

I like how I can use my BuJo for daily practices of all kinds of things from drawing to hand lettering.  I can keep lists and notes on things that grab my attention.  I keep pages where I write down notes and ideas; not to-do lists, just notes to myself, or things I need to ask others about.

I have sections with botanical doodles/sketches, a list of sizes of picture frames and mats, the size of card blanks.  I have examples of hand lettering alphabets, with notes about them.  I have dangle directories too, a result of my work on A Dangle A Day.

The index is invaluable in helping me keep track of the collections, especially when they occur over multiple pages with other stuff in between.

Of course,  I also have weekly ‘diary’ pages, and I’ve been trying out different formats for them, including these:

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I’ve changed my monthly view for April, and here it is:

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The one for march didn’t have any room to write appointments or events in.  This one certainly does.  Not sure what I’m going to put on the right hand page yet, though I couldn’t resist drawing part of a mandala there.

I’ve found it is easy to get lost in bullet journaling; especially the creative parts. That’s fine when it doesn’t take me away from things that must be done, such as doing books. But it’s a different way of practicing drawing, hand lettering, organising thoughts/interests/memories/ideas and so on rather than in multiple books (journal, diary, sketchbook, note book) – they can all go in one book.

If you’d like to see any of these, let me know and I may share some, or little tutorials on how I draw stuff.

The flexibility and the ability to change what doesn’t work easily is the biggest draw, as well as the ‘permission’ to do what you need to do, what is right for you.  There’s no shoulds or shouldn’ts about it.

The other thing is not to get hung up on perfection.  I get things wrong in it all the time, or don’t like what I’ve done.  These can be ‘fixed’ by the use of correction tape or sticking a new piece of paper over the mistake if it’s a biggie. I just have to remind myself it’s a work in progress, it’s hand-made (well the content is if not the notebook itself), and it will help me, I hope, to accept that something is ‘good enough’ without it having to be perfect in all ways.

I already really dislike the heading for my Mood Tracker, but it’ll do for now.  I may change it with paper and sticky stuff.  Or I’ll just leave it so I can see how my hand lettering progresses over time.