Starting a Bullet Journal | Zafira

Hi and welcome to this weeks blog post!

My exams are done, I am a free woman (kinda) and I am very ready to start working on my own stuff so expect more blog posts and a lot more photographs on my Instagram. I also wanted to wish everyone who's fasting a very late Ramadan Mubarak!

Since about February/March time, I really wanted to put my life into order. It was getting to the point where I wasn't even sure what day it was and everything I was doing was rushed and just not what I wanted it to be especially when it came to college work. I started researching different methods and ways to organise my life when I came across this whole bullet journal trend. It took me 2 minutes of watching people's monthly bullet journal 'plan with me' vids and I was completely hooked with the entire concept of it. If you want to watch the original bullet journal video to get a grasp of what it is and some basic ways to start one click here.

So it's a basically a place to dump all your crap that for me is usually written on scrap pieces of paper or on the back of my hand. It's such an efficient method to plan and organise because everything is one place and you can design and customise it to fit you.

Firstly, you need to find yourself a decent notebook or sketchbook. You can pretty much get anything you like but I got a pretty minimal and basic sketchbook from Paperchase:

 https://www.paperchase.co.uk/art/sketch-books/agenzio-large-sketchbook.html

The quality of the paper is so nice and smooth and the ink from pens and felt tips doesn't sink through to the other side which is amazing. As you can see, I personalised mine by using some stickers also from Paperchase that I thought were quite cute and funky and wrote 2017 in a white pen to contrast the black.

For the supplies that I used within the journal, I feel like I kept it pretty basic compared because that's just how I like things.

To be quite honest, I only bought these because they came in a pretty nifty case and said 'go bananas' on each individual felt tip but they're actually pretty good. As stated, they're brush tip markers so one end is a brush tip which is really good if you're into calligraphy and doing fancy titles in your journal and then the other end is a normal felt tip end. Each month I pick a colour and base the main colours around that.

I feel like everyyyyyone owns these but they're so handy. I use them for revision notes all the time because there's a really nice range of colours. They're also good for doodling so if you want to decorate the pages in your book then these are a great place to start stationary wise.

Post stick notes are my literal saviors. I write everything on these. For my journal, I bought some smaller cute pastel ones that you can pretty much get anywhere and since I've had exams over the past few weeks, I'll use them to list everything I have to do. They're great for adding extra notes into your bullet journal.

This pen has honestly changed my life and the way I write. That sounds like the lamest thing anyone could ever say lol but it really has. This is the Uniball Eye Needle pen in black and it writes so so so smoothly on the pages of the bullet journal and just in general. It makes writing more pleasurable and joyful especially when you're sat in an exam and you're writing page after page. The thing I love about this pen the most is that it doesn't smudge at all because it dries so fast.

Stickers have been my pride and joy recently. I'm really making myself sound like a complete loser but that's mainly because I am but I love love love stickers. These are all from Paperchase because I haven't really seen anywhere else do such a diverse and unique range of stickers. They are good to decorate your journal pages with and add a little bit of life to your weekly spreads.

this isn't completed yet lol

When it comes to structuring and laying out what pages you want included in your journal it can be quite difficult but I hope that after showing you what I've done so far, it will inspire you.

A future log is a pretty good first double page spread. An index is also another good idea but I didn't really want one in mine because my journal is quite simplistic but if you're thinking of adding a lot more pages to your book it might be worth considering. On the first page I did a basic calendar and circled the important dates.

On the second page, I listed everything that was occuring in those months and colour coordinated the bullet points depending on what kind of occurance it was. I made a key at the top of the page just so I remember what each colour is for.

I feel like a new year's resolution page is a necessity as you can always look back onto this page and see what you are doing and what you can do in order to achieve them.

For a lot of titles I used my normal handwriting as it's naturally pretty cursive and fancy shmancy.

Also can we just appreciate those little green leaves around the edges that I doodled on. I'm not the greatest drawer for an art student but those leaves are cute.

This is such a great page to have in your journal too. It's really handy when you have an overwhelming amount of films, books and TV shows to conquer but you don't know where to begin. Listing them all out in a similar way can help you decide what you want to watch first and you can cross them off as you complete them.

I still have an absurd amount of stuff to add to this.

For title pages for each month I've been keeping it super simplistic mainly because I've not really had enough time to sit and make it really nice and pretty but when I have time this summer I'm definitely going to back and finish them off. This is one I did for April but as you can see, it looks a bit plain and meh.

Each month I do a little banner of every page with the month and year.

These are the next pages after my monthly title page and it just lays out everything that needs to be done for that particular month as well as the events that are going to happen.

My tracking pages are probably my most favourite page to do monthly because it's fascinating to see the progress. The two trackers I do every month is a mood tracker and a sleep tracker because my sleeping schedule is a mess as you can clearly see. My mood tracker was quite low this month mainly because I had exams and they were a big pain in the backside.

This is quite good if you have insomnia or your sleeping schedule is a complete and utter mess much like mine, you can see how long you've slept or not slept.

This is another must for me since I'm trying to get better with handling my money. You make three coloums consisting of the date you bought the item, the item itself and the price and then at the end of the month you total it all up to see how much you've spent.

As for my weekly spread, this is what I've been using since I started my bullet journal and it's worked so well. It's pretty much the typical planner layout but it's perfect if you have a lot of stuff going on. I think for the month of June however, I might switch it up since I won't have as much to do and it'll be fun to experiment with different layouts!

I decorated the top using stickers but you can add doodles like I've done for the month of May below.

I know that for the original bullet journal there's a whole system where different symbols represent different things but like I've said, I like to keep it pretty simple and quick so I just bullet point everything that needs to be done for that day or is occurring that day and when it's done I'll just cross it out in red.

Thanks for reading! Make sure to follow me on Instagram for updates and lots and lots of pictures as well as all my other social medias!