2022 BuJo – May theme

Posted: May 4, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Bullet Journal, Coloured pencil, Dingbat notebooks, Hand lettered, Penny Black, springtide | Tags: , , , , | 5 Comments

It’s been a while since the last bullet journal feature. I gave the journal a break over April; I was in recovery and catch up mode. We have skipped to May which is the month of the tulip festival in Ottawa so the theme was an easy pick. Coloured pencils seemed to make sense too as I have been working with them a bit lately.

I drew all my calendar squares by hand purposely making them a little wavy with breaks and dots. The Penny Black clear stamp ‘springtide’ seemed to work with an outline theme so I stamped in jet black archival on each page then coloured with polychromos pencils.

For each tulip colour scheme I used at least two co-ordinating colours; for the yellow tulips I used four. I forgot that both Ranger archival inks and FaberCastell polychromos pencils are oil based so the first layer of pencil blending ended up dragging some black ink. As you can see it didn’t spoil the result but I probably should have stamped the outline in memento or distress ink.

I kept the titles simple with some hand drawn block letters. I know that to-do list is empty in the photo but believe me that is no longer the case! Visiting the Ottawa Tulip Festival will be on the list for sure!

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2022 BuJo – March theme

Posted: March 10, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Bullet Journal, Dingbat notebooks, Hand drawn, Hand lettered | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

Yes we are a third of the way through March but better late than never. I live in the north where March rarely means spring flowers; more often it means spring snow so my theme is still wintery!

I actually left my home and went away last weekend to the mountains and did a little skiing and relaxing so this theme seemed appropriate. Our accommodation looked nothing like my hand drawn cabin but was lovely just the same.

The trees on these pages were stamped with a Simply Graphic stamp, ‘pine forest‘ in rustic wilderness and iced spruce inks.

Simply Graphic is a French company with some very cool stamp and die designs. The Foiled Fox just started carrying more of their product and sent me a few stamps to try out. You will see more in tomorrow’s post.

I used post-its to mask, drew my own cabin with Staedtler markers then lightly watercoloured it with distress inks.

I made many mistakes on these pages because I was rushing but I managed to cover them up or work around them!

If you haven’t seen one of my bullet journal spreads before I am working in a ‘Dingbats’ notebook; it’s A5 and dotted and I think the quality is excellent.

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2022 BuJo – February theme

Posted: February 8, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Bullet Journal, Dingbat notebooks, Hand lettered, Penny Black, Soft Grace, Spread Cheer | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments

I am a week late with my February BuJo set up; we are already 25% of the way through the month! I went with the snowflake theme as we have plenty of snow now and I assume more to come. It is a pretty simple layout on account of the need to get it done so I could record and plan in the journal rather than on scraps of paper!

I lay a piece of post-it tape across the page then used brushes to blend memento inks above the tape. I used three blue inks (listed below) and used the same inks to stamp snowflakes to decorate the top half of the page. I’ve found post-it tape to be very safe on these pages. Washi tape and painter’s tape (delicate) have both taken some surface off if I have not been careful. I wrote ‘February’ with the Bahama Blue memento marker but haven’t linked it as I am not sure where to get them these days. I was delighted to find mine still worked and had plenty of ink in it.

I ruled up the calendar grid as I often do then used strips of post-it tape to mask as I blended ink around the edges. Once again I stamped snowflakes from Penny Black sets to decorate the spread. As we are already a week into the month I added the to do list to the calendar page. The important thing at this stage is to do the ‘to-dos’ not to decorate them!

If you are in the middle of winter right now what are you up to? Are you hunkered down inside or braving the outdoors? I am definitely doing both; we have enjoyed several cross country skis and a few walks but I have also been busy with journal projects, sorting and organizing supplies and planning future classes and lessons.

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2021 BuJo – December theme

Posted: December 2, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: brilliance, Bullet Journal, delicate pines, Dingbat notebooks, Hand lettered, Penny Black, Taylored Expressions | Tags: , , , , , | 3 Comments

I didn’t have a lot of time to spend setting up my December pages; I can’t even believe it is December honestly. It’s a busy week but I had a snowflake idea for the theme and a bit of a plan which you can see did not happen at all. But that is ok because I can save my snowflake plan for January or February or March or Ap…….

After creating the large panel for my recent stack of PB ‘delicate pines’ Christmas cards the stamp set was still on my table along with its buddy the PB ‘brilliance’ stamp set. I decided to use them together for some festive foliage. I used a mix of distress greens and blue along with a red marker for the berries and a white gel pen for the frost.

I reused a frisket film mask which I saved after creating October’s title page and stamped foliage from both PB ‘brilliance’ and ‘delicate pines’ sets. I blended over the stamping with prize ribbon distress ink then dotted white around the circle and on top of the red berries.

The to-do page and the calendar page have simple foliage stamping and some lettering with Pentel Flair pens.

I have used masking in quite a few of my pages this year; I might need to come up with a new favourite technique for next year. I hope your December is off to a good start. Because I can’t believe it is December I have a discount code for the Floral Faves class, Winter Wonder class and the Colour Clues class. If you use HTDEC you will get 20% off. If you are interested in giving an online class as a gift please get in touch so I can help you make it happen.

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2021 BuJo – November theme

Posted: November 2, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: all natural, beautified, Bullet Journal, Coloured pencil, Dingbat notebooks, Hand lettered, Penny Black | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

And just like that it’s November! I’ve been stamping and painting wreaths for the last few months while creating my new online course so it seemed natural to add one to my bullet journal.

I used stamps from the Penny Black ‘all natural’ and ‘beautified’ sets to create a wreath with dye inks and coloured pencils.

For the calendar page I stamped the same grass stamp in a different colour for each week day and added coordinating labels at the top of each column.

The same stamps from the wreath popped up again on the to do list page springing out of a masked corner and once again coloured with polychromos pencils.

No snow yet in Ottawa I’m happy to say. Still quite a few leaves to fall and collect. I have planted some bulbs and done a bit of garden clean up but I am hoping the weather stays nice long enough for me to finish the job!

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2021 BuJo – September theme

Posted: September 6, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Bullet Journal, Darkroom Door, Dingbat notebooks, Hand lettered, Nature Walk | Tags: , , , | 6 Comments

This was not the original plan I had for the September theme; I’d thought instead of doing apples. I sketched a few apples in preparation then realised I would want to have them on all my pages and that would take me half of September. I would then want to colour them in and that would take the other half of the month. I was already late on getting this done so….

…when short on time and want something pretty what do you do? You pull out one of your faves! ‘Nature Walk’ from Darkroom Door is definitely a fave and for a late summer theme it works beautifully.

I began each page design with a masked sun, blended in harvest gold ink. Next I masked either a straight or hilly base and blended fine linen for the background then stamped flowers and grasses in gold, kraft and chartreuse.

Life now includes a few more commitments so I decided to spread the month of September over a few pages with the middle one cut down narrower.

I also have a page for my work commitments, current projects, future projects, etc. The title is my attempt at a mixed up font. There are plenty of examples on the interwebs but I decided to make up this one out of my head. Not too bad for a first try. You would think it would be easy to do every letter a different way but even a mixed up font needs balance!

Hope you are feeling more balanced than mixed up! Have a great week.

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2021 BuJo – August theme

Posted: July 31, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Bullet Journal, Dingbat notebooks, Hand lettered, perfect pairing | Tags: , , , , | 5 Comments

This might be a first, having my month theme set up and ready to share before the month has even started! I wanted to include butterflies as the garden has been attracting quite a few. I’ve been enjoying both blooms and wings.

I masked the circle with an ‘express-it mask it sheet then stamped butterflies and flowers from the PB ‘perfect pairings’ set with soft stone ink. Before colouring I added memento summer sky ink with a blending brush.

As I did the last two months I used markers to colour the flowers and butterflies; I am still new to (non-blended) colouring with markers. Usually when I use markers for colouring I add a little ink then blend it with water to fill a space. As the bullet journal pages do not handle water in the same way as watercolour paper I’ve avoided water blending.

On both the title page and list page I filled the wings with blue first then added all the details over the top with black and white gel pens. I switched to a pilot fineliner to do the numbers and lettering.

After prepping my August pages with flowers and butterflies it is time I headed out to my garden and did some real life tidying up. Thanks for dropping by.

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If you have a garden…

Posted: May 31, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Art Journal, Darkroom Door, Hand lettered, Papertrey Inks, scratches, Wildflowers Vol 2, you are everything | Tags: , , , , , | 8 Comments

The rest of the quote says, ‘… and a library you have everything you need.’ My art journal is pretty much all book or flower related pages; I guess there is room for a new inspiration. Currently with a garden that is looking promising and an online course newly launched you could say flowers are on my mind.

The background for this page was created months ago when I was making subtle backgrounds for a few cards. Instead of swiping a whole panel through waterbased inks I was inking a piece of acetate then spritzing it and swiping it on a stamped panel. I opened a spread in the art journal and swiped the acetate across the pages a few times to leave some ink there. I don’t remember the exact colours but the smooshed ink covered the lower half of the pages in blue, green, yellow and pale orange. Last week I pulled it out again and turned the page into a messy garden.

As I said the lower half of the pages is smooshed ink. The upper half is broken china distress inks applied with a blending brush. The flowers are a mix of silhouette stamps from Darkroom Door’s ‘you are everything’ and ‘wildflowers vol 2’ sets. I inked with papertrey ink cubes, spritzed the stamp and stamped on the pages. Sometimes I blended the stamped ink, other times not. To make the blue flowers stand out a bit more I painted blue gouache paint over the stamping. The gouache works well on the journal pages so you will probably see more.

Once all the flowers were added I stamped the DD ‘scratches’ background stamp in black on the lower section of the page and added black and white splatter all over. I added the quote with a black gel pen. If you are in my Floral Faves online class you might this was inspired by one of the projects in lesson 3.

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2021 Bujo – March to do list

Posted: March 20, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Bullet Journal, Dingbat notebooks, Hand drawn, Hand lettered | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

This is the last of my birch themed pages, photographed before I added all the to-dos and wishes. We are two thirds of the way through March and I’d like to say I have done two thirds of the things I added to this list but sadly that is not true!

I used the same technique for this page that I described in previous birch + sunset posts here and here. One unexpected outcome of reusing the post-it tapes for four different pages was some pretty blue, pink and yellow tape to use on another page! Seeing I am primarily a card maker I plan to create a card using this technique and hopefully a video to show you the process.

Thanks for dropping by.

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2021 Bujo – March daily record

Posted: March 13, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Bullet Journal, Hand drawn, Hand lettered | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments

I’ve continued the birches + sunset theme on the month record spread. This is the page where I record day to day things, some in advance as reminders, but mostly afterwards so I can look back and see what I cooked last week or how long it is since I went for a run!

As I mentioned on my title page post last weekend we still have snow around here so this theme is currently appropriate. In the last week however we’ve had several warm days so I am thinking April’s theme might include flowers or leaves! For this spread I used the same method as for the title page where I masked trees and branches with post-it tape, masked a hill at the base then blended memento ink over the masking to create a sunset sky. After removing the post-it tape I outlined the edges of the the trees, added markings and branches in black then shading with a grey marker.

The layout is one week per trimmed page; you can see on the photo below that I cut off a portion of two pages so I would have ample room to write daily notes and still see the birches from each page.

I reduced the amount of habit tracking this month as I already have app on my phone to record water consumption and one for any exercise I do. Tracking things in two places isn’t really worth my time. I mentioned when I first wrote about this bullet journal that I want the practice of bullet journaling to help me stay on top of things rather than just be a pretty notebook. Do you keep track on paper or digitally or maybe a mix of the two like me?

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