Categories
General Stationery Tutorial

Still not tried bullet journaling? A simple guide to get you started.

Do you love lists? Organising your thoughts on paper? Tracking your goals? Bullet journaling might be for you!

Bullet journaling isn’t a new trend – in fact, it started to become popular around 10 years ago, so most likely you’ve heard of it. It can be used to focus your tasks, track your goals and generally organise your life; often done on dotted paper, but you can use blank or even lined. The point is to customise it your way.

As with starting any new notebook, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with all those empty pages. Some people use bullet journals a bit like an extension of a diary or planner – often with a key or index for reference.
However, this can be a big undertaking at first, so my advice would be to start with one or two things and go from there; make them something you like, something fun – books you want to read, top films etc. or tracking your favourite exercise (if you have one!).

To get yourself started, you only need a few basics. 

Essentials:

  • Journal/notebook
  • Pen/pencil

Nice to have:

  • Coloured pens or pencils
  • Ruler
  • Rubber

What about paper type? A dot grid allows you to easily draw neater lines & boxes, create charts & tables, and gives you guides to draw banners and embellishments – without hindering your creativity too much. If you want to use blank, lined or graph paper, that’s fine too! 

The biggest task is setting up the pages; using templates and guides can help, especially if you’re using blank paper – draw out a guide on a spare piece of paper and you can use it to trace again and again.

It can be as simple or as complicated as you’d like to make it. Tailor it to your strengths and needs. If all you need from it is a title and some bullet points for lists – perfect. If you want to decorate every inch of paper – go for it!

These simple flags can be made any size you want, and can be used for things like titles or tabs for section headers, or just to decorate the page.

To do/To buy

This is a great one to start with: nice and simple, easy to repeat and can be customised each week/month. (It’s one I use all the time!). I used the dot grid to draw the outlines, then decorated the edges with coloured fine liners. Stars make a fun alternative to round bullet points.

Books books books 📚Aiming to read a certain number of books each month, or just to track your reading for the year? This bookshelf layout can help do that! The “shelf” was created on plain paper, using a ruler and pencil, before going over in pen. You can then sketch out the books in pencil, and outline or colour them in as you finish each book. 

Fancy having a go? I’ve got two styles of dot grid journal in stock:
Moon Phases and Smoky Keys.
Shop plain paper journals and notebooks here.

Categories
General

Flame on, Lay it out, Geek it up

Ahoy There!

A warm welcome to followers old and new. I’ve been busy stocking my Etsy shop with lovely rescued leather journals and pencil wraps this month and have created some new labels for my shelf space at The Emporium (a Wellingborough based shop full of handmade awesomeness!) – all my products now have more of a library-esque feel, which I love.
But enough about me; let’s just get down to it, shall we?

Have you heard of Little Flame candles? Based in Northamptonshire, this small business started to make these hand-poured candles upon retiring. After many months of research and testing, Little Flame was born. Did you know? Soy wax is non-toxic, clean burning and completely free of animal derived substances! Find them on Insta & Facebook and show a new small business some love.

I don’t know about you, but I love a journal with blank pages. It gives you the freedom to do whatever you want; doodle, write, sketch, list, paint… and if you’d like more structure, you can simply add it in yourself. From creating lines, grids, tables and headers, Pinterest (where else?!) has some great ideas to get you going. Prefer video? Here ya go! In the market for a new journal? Check out this selection over in my Etsy shop.

I’m a huge fan of some beautiful creative lettering. But what’s classed as a font and what’s a typeface –  and what’s the difference? Essentially, the Typeface is the base set of characters (e.g. Arial), the font is a particular set within the typeface (e.g. Arial Regular or Arial Rounded). Want more? Nerd yourself out here. Fancy some creative typeface fun? This book is great!

Categories
Lunchtime Lusting Notebooks Stationery Stationery

Ahoy there, stationery fans!

Hands up if you love stationery. Me too. So let’s not waste any more time with this section and get right to it!

Do you use washi tape? I absolutely LOVE it. So versatile, so pretty and so practical – you can use it for journaling, wrapping, decorating notebook covers… plus it’s made from natural fibres, so can be recycled. Winner! Joanne Hawker has just added her own designs of washi tape on her website and, like the rest of her range, it is just delightful. 

Have you heard of bullet journaling? Is it still a thing? What even is it? Well, it’s primarily a type of diary-journal-planner, most often done on dotted paper or something that helps create sections, bullet points, trackers etc. The more ambitious use plain paper journals and create their own grids & patterns. People use them for well-being, tracking habits, or just general planning. Personally I think half the fun is customising and decorating the pages! Here are some ideas for if you’re just starting out, and some more adventurous ones.

Did you catch my last blog? Take a look through these 5 signs you’re a stationery addict. From hoarding notebooks to not using pencils because they’re too nice; how many of these do you identify with?