Tag: bullet journal

Tuesday Musings – February 2020 Bullet Journal Spread

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I promise, I’m really making an effort to get caught up on these blog posts.

It’s pretty difficult actually trying to wrack my brain to remember how I was thinking/feeling months ago. February 2020 was a vastly different world from December 2020. For context, in case you’re reading this later, in February 2020 the coronavirus was mostly just a far-off news story from China, and in December 2020, the first batches of the coronavirus vaccine have just started being distributed in the US. Lots has changed.

I’m really quite happy with how my February bullet journal spread turned out. Can you believe I actually brought it (and my art supplies — including a small pouch of markers and my erasable pens) along with me all through my winter break travels? I probably didn’t need to do that — in truth, I likely only worked on it once in my AirBnB in Prague. Mostly, it was just extra weight I lugged around.

Unfortunately, I’m at home right now, and I left the bullet journal which contains February, March, and April’s spreads back at my apartment at school, and I have no pictures of my February spread saved. I thought I was smart — I’d learnt my lesson from having unnecessarily carried around my mostly-unused bullet journal through 8 countries! I guess I misjudged again.

I debated whether I should make this post or not without pictures, but having my blog in chronological order is pretty important to me (which is part of the reason why I’m writing about February in December). I figured I’d rather have something incomplete go live in the correct order than wait a month until I’m able to go back to my apartment and then write this blog, messing up the chronological nature of my site.

I’ll go back and add pictures of my February spread later, when I’m able to photograph it, but for now, I’ll describe it: since February 2020 for me was mostly characterized by my Sciences Po winter break travels, I themed it after the places I visited: Frankfurt, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Ljubljana, Venice, and Toledo. Ironically, what visually ties each of these cities together on my title page — and I never once took a train during my travels! We pretty much only took buses, with some Ubers and shuttles and a plane ride or two thrown in. I guess if you count metros or cable cars as trains, then I rode in a few trains?

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life studying abroad in Paris. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers:Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

Sunday Musings – January 2020 Bullet Journal Spread

Published on by lensembledujour1 Comment

Ah yes, of course, the most relevant time to be writing about my January bullet journal spread — mid-August.

I’ve vacillated a bit on what to do with my bullet journal posts on this blog — if I should post them more in line with the actual time of year they correspond to, or if I should post them at the same time as my OOTD posts from that month go up — ultimately, I’ve opted for the latter. Hence, this post going up at the same time as my January 2020 OOTD posts, despite the publication date now being August 2020. It’s not ideal, but it’s what I’m going to work with until I get caught up again in my blogs.

January 2020’s theme was an idyllic French kitchen. I drew it up before I left for Paris, so unfortunately, it does not match the actual kitchen I had in my Parisian apartment (though they honestly share the same aesthetic).

I had originally wanted the theme of January 2020’s bullet journal to be Paris in general (think drawings of the Eiffel Tower, cafés, les Champs-Elysées, etc.), but I decided to go with something a little less “on the nose.” I figured that I’d probably get enough of Paris in my daily life; maybe I didn’t need it to feature so prominently in my stationery as well.

I was also afraid to make my bullet journal theme Paris before I’d even arrived in the city in case I didn’t like it after all. That fear, of course, ended up being unwarranted — Paris was a lovely city, and though it took me a little bit to warm up to (as do most places in the world), I was getting to be fairly comfortable in it by the end of January, after I’d been there for about two weeks.

There’s also the chance my opinion is a little tinted by nostalgia now, seven months later, because I miss Paris so much. Looking back at my bullet journal from January literally feels like a lifetime ago. Even though now, as of writing this post, I’m back at Notre Dame again and life feels like it’s slowly picking up the pace into a steady rhythm after several months of semi-isolation at home, it still seems so foreign to me and look at my January calendar spread and see all the trips and meetings I had planned. Pre-COVID Meilin really was .

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester in Paris. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

Wednesday Musings – December 2019 + Year in Review 2019 Bullet Journal Spread

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You know, I think I’m finally becoming a fully-fledged bullet journal girl.

It’s funny — I used to make fun (like, in a friendly way) of the girls in my high school who’d carry around their perfectly laid-out planners. Everyone carried Lilly Pulitzer agendas back then. I thought it was so unnecessary and almost childish; why would you need to write down what you need to do? What are you going to do, forget? How could you forget when your teachers literally remind you every single day of the assignments you have to do?

Then, when I began at Notre Dame, I caved and got my own Lilly planner. I figured it was university, and it was time I learned to organized and start keeping track of my assignments and schedule. You can even see some of my early attempts at writing in my Lilly planner freshman year here. I tended to doodle a lot, which, looking back, was definitely the precursor to my bullet journal habits now.

I guess the rest is history. I got my first bullet journal June 2018, and, after a few months of writing in it on and off, (I may have skipped bullet journaling from October-December 2018 and again from May-July 2019, oops) I have finally, after over a year of trying, gotten into a habit of doing it semi-consistently. I’ve completed spreads — mood and habit trackers and all — for September, October, November, and December. That’s four consecutive months in a row!

I even made a little year in review spread for 2019 to celebrate the end of the year. I think my favorite panel was the “themes of 2019” section. It’s cute to have little thumbnail sketches of all of the themes I did in the past year in one place. It really shows how much I’ve grown — I started by mostly copying YouTubers like AmandaRachLee, and  I ended by coming up with unique designs of my own.

Anyway, here’s to continued bullet journal success for all in 2020!

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this winter break in Kentucky. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

Sunday Musings – November 2019 Bullet Journal Spread

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Following up on my successful bout of October bullet journalling, I finished my November bullet journal on time!

I was, however, less successful at posting the blog about my November bullet journal spread on time. It’s January 2020 now, and this is the blog from November 2019, which ideally would have been posted before the month even began. Oops.

I know a lot of bullet journal bloggers and YouTubers like to post their monthly spreads in the week before the new month begins so that other people can get inspiration from their designs as they’re working on their own journals, but I like to show mine off after it’s already been completed. I like to doodle in the calendar as events come up and fully fill out my habit and mood trackers; otherwise, it seems so plain and colorless.

My November spread was themed on jewel-tones and fall fashion. In DC, took until about early November for things to start cooling off, and once it started, it didn’t take long for me to bust out all of my fall and winter layers. I mean, let’s be honest — I was already dressing in fall and winter layers in the dying days of summer, but at least by November, I was comfortable wearing them.

So in honor of my excitement for the coming of fall, I decided to theme my bullet journal around fall fashion. Each of my doodles for my mood tracker represented a different article of fall clothing (hat, scarf, coat, boots, etc.), and my cover spread was meant to represent a closet full of jewel-toned fall clothes. The way I imagined it, you should feel like you’re walking into an Ann Taylor LOFT store in late October.

Not everything I drew was necessarily a piece I own, but they were meant to look like something I would like to own. Some of the doodles were based on accessories/clothes I own, though — for example, the green and tan bag hanging on the clothing rack for the cover spread is actually a messenger bag that I own, which you can see here in the last photo from this old post. The green rain boots are also actually a real possession of mine. Can you spot the others?

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

Thursday Musings – October 2019 Bullet Journal Spread

Published on by lensembledujour1 Comment

I think this may be my first time actually completing a whole month’s worth of bullet journal pages?

I believe the closest I’ve ever come before was April 2019 — and I never even posted pictures of that particular spread! Let me know in the comments if that’s something you would like to see; maybe I can do a retrospective or something featuring bullet journal designs that never made it onto my blog!

Apart from this month and last April, though, I often fail to even come close to completing all of the pages in a bullet journal monthly spread. What gets me every time are the habit tracker and mood tracker pages — they’re deceptively difficult to keep up with! You wouldn’t think filling in a square in the grid every time I go for a run would be hard, but apparently, it is, because my habit and mood trackers are almost never up to date. And they almost never get completed.

And that’s why it’s so exciting to have finally almost finished everything that I drew out for myself for October! In comparison, last October, I didn’t even draw up a bullet journal spread — I just pasted it in from a sheet of Halloween-themed stickers that my parents bought me. And despite cutting that corner and getting a fall break (which I didn’t get this year in DC) to work on bullet journaling, I still didn’t get everything filled out — hence, the gap in bullet journal posts on this blog from September 2018 to January 2019.

But I’ve been on the grind for all of September and October, and I’m hoping to keep that trend going. I love bullet journaling as a way to keep my life organized in the present, to provide a record of past events in my life for the future, and to give me an avenue to practice my art skills even if I haven’t been in an art class for over a year. To be honest, I don’t know if I can rightfully say I have a better quality of life when I keep up with my journaling…but it makes me feel put together even if I’m not.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

Sunday Musings – September 2019 Bullet Journal Spread (in October…)

Published on by lensembledujour3 Comments

Oof, it’s been a really long time since I’ve posted one of these. 

Look, I’ve been busy. I’ve been to seven different countries and three different continents in the time since I last posted a “Weekly Musings” or a bullet journal post. I finished my sophomore year, finished an internship in South Bend, finished an internship in Rome, finished a research trip to Israel-Palestine, and made it halfway through an internship in Washington DC.

And it’s not like you missed out on much in my bullet journaling. I did a spread from April, and it actually turned out quite nicely, but I haven’t done a spread since then. Maybe I’ll post the April one a little down the line — a sort-of bullet journal #throwbackthursday, perhaps?

These bullet journal spreads just take so much time! I love doing them, but I need to sit down and devote a solid five or six hours to getting everything drawn. The reality is, they’re never really done until the month is well-over. And sometimes they’re never fully-done — you may notice that my mood tracker was never filled in for several days towards the end of the month, for example.

That’s what I love though. Because I can’t draw everything at once, I have to work on it a little bit at a time, especially with the mood tracker doodles. It’s not a daily thing, but it certainly is an every-several-days-or-maybe-once-a-week thing. It gives me a way to keep up with my drawing, even if it’s only drawing simple line illustrations.

The only part that I really try to do all at once in one sitting is the month cover page (the part that says “September” with the big drawing of the Washington DC Metro map). The cover page sets the theme and color scheme for the rest of the pages, so I have to complete it first. Ideally, I’d have it done before the month actually begins.

Well, ideally, I would have posted this blog before the end of September, so you can tell where my ideals get me.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy looking at my bullet journal spread, even if the month it’s about has come and gone. I rather like how the Washington DC public transport theme played out, especially on the cover page. The color scheme isn’t as strong with this one (I tried to do like, a red-white-and-blue thing, but it was hard), and I ran out of Washington DC doodles for my mood tracker and I had to resort to random Americana imagery, but I’m still satisfied with the overall product.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

 

Saturday Musings – March 2019 Bullet Journal Spread!

Published on by lensembledujour5 Comments

One of my favorite things about sharing my bullet journal spreads on this blog is that I don’t have to come up with a creative blog titles — I can just announce that I’m writing about my bullet journal spread and be done with it.

Anyway, this blog will be about my March spread. Please don’t pay attention to how this is being posted on March 30, also known as the second-to-last day of the month.

As I see it, though, people can still be inspired by my bullet journal drawings regardless of when in the month it is — it’s not like I’m a bullet journal influencer, so I don’t see any reason to post my spreads at any particular time. Besides, I’m new to bullet journaling myself, so I don’t see myself as anything worth copying at the moment. In fact, I’m still copying the layouts of some of my favorite artists, like AmandaRachLee.

I’m kind-of surprised with myself for managing to keep up with bullet journaling for so long (that is, if you ignore the three-month hiatus I took from October-December where I basically didn’t write/draw anything at all). I really like it as a way to force myself to draw a little every day — since I’m not in art classes really anymore, it’s a great way to try to exercise my skills.

I honestly wish I had more time to devote to it, though — I sometimes find that I end up rushing through a design/spread because I know I have limited time each day realistically to work on my journal. I wish I could do elaborate, time-intensive, and detailed drawings each month, but they usually end up pretty simplistic.

And simplistic isn’t a bad thing! But a lot of my artwork in the past was very detail-oriented, and there’s nothing really I’m doing right now to practice that kind of artwork. It’s looking like I’ll have a month at home in between my various travels, so maybe that’s something I’ll work on then.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

 

Tuesday Musings – February 2019 Bullet Journal Spread!

Published on by lensembledujour1 Comment

Hey look, I know I’m late — but at least this post is getting done before the end of the month.

Believe it or not, I actually finished the spread for this month at a decent time this month. I can’t tell you exactly when I finished the cover page, but it was toward the beginning of the month.

So why did it take me so long to share my designs on my blog? In truth, I just didn’t have a chance to do the photography. I also hadn’t finalized some fo the doodles for my calendar portion (like what you see under February 22 and 16, and I didn’t want to post pictures of my designs until I’d included those extra little drawings.

I like the spread I did for February, though I kind-of wish it were a little more representative of what February in South Bend is really like — that’s to say, while I like the flowers I drew, flowers aren’t exactly something I saw once this entire month. I saw a lot snow, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, snow is a little harder to draw, and not nearly as colorful.

And so I think the February spread represented more my hopes for what the month would be like, rather than my expectations. I mean, you’ll notice, I also included lots of Valentines Day-themed drawings, and it’s not like I actually did anything exciting for Valentines Day (more on that in the February 14 blog).

The winter is definitely wearing thin. At the time of writing this blog, it’s February 26, and I’m about a week and a half out from spring break. “Spring break” — that should imply that spring is around the corner, right? Not here. It’s still definitively winter here in beautiful Northern Indiana. I think it made it all the way up to 30 degrees Fahrenheit today — so basically, it was a scorcher.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip

 

Saturday Musings – January 2019 Bullet Journal Spread

Published on by lensembledujour4 Comments

Today, I realized something that should have been obvious — “bujo” stands for “bullet journaling.

I’ve been seeing the bujo tag on Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr for ages to represent images of visually appealing, artistic, and cutesy journal pages. I’ve also been seeing bullet journals all over — which ultimately influenced my decision to purchase one for myself and try to get into it. However, of all of my years of consciously knowing that “bujo” and “bullet journaling” were aesthetic journal trends, I never realized that they were the same thing. Bujo = BUllet JOurnal. Shouldn’t that have even obvious?

In other news, you’ll notice that I’ve brought my Saturday Musings series back! I haven’t done one of these posts since mid-September. I initially took a break because I just felt like I didn’t have any new inspiration for posts — they were getting repetitive, just shots of my coffee and my laptop over and over again. I started the series to give me a break and take the pressure off from the OOTD posts, and yet, I found that the Saturday Musings posts were just putting pressure on me to produce flatly-style pictures even when I had no new ideas.

But now that I’ve gotten into bullet journaling (sort-of — I did kind of fall behind in November and December), I have a new source of inspiration for what I can show off in these Saturday Musings posts. So I’m brining it back — but I’m taking the pressure off of myself to do a post like this every week, and to do them only on Saturdays. Now, these “musings” style posts will come whenever I feel the inspiration for them — be that on a Saturday or no.

Anyway, I finally got around to doing a January bullet journal spread, and so I thought I’d  share it with you today. With all of the traveling I did at the end of 2018/beginning of 2019, I thought this image of the globe would be fitting. But then, of course, after the traveling was all over, it was time to return to university, so I combined the travel imagery with some study inspiration in the form of books. I guess you could say the general theme for the January spread is studying through cultural immersion.

Or maybe there’s no overarching theme — just some aesthetically-pleasing doodles and colors combined into a calendar spread. Going with the theme of minimal commitment and pressure that I’m adopting with my blog, I’m also not putting strict definitions or rules about what my bullet journal has to be. It’ll be whatever it ends up being.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip

Monday Musings + Coffee – Long, Short Weekend

Published on by lensembledujour2 Comments

Huh, somehow, I wound up doing another Musings + Coffee post on a Monday.

This weekend has been crazy, so you’ll have to excuse my lack of blogging. In the last 72 hours, I have experienced — in no particular order — a concert, a dead car battery, 24,000 steps worth of Chicago, and a missed mandatory class. Once I get to the OOTD posts from these last few days, I’ll go into more detail, but suffice to say, I’ve been busy.

Somehow, though, it seems I managed to fit in some flatlay photography for one of these posts. Keyword — some. This isn’t the most cohesive set of photos I’ve ever posted on this blog (save the first two, which are clearly from the same set of my bullet journal), but I like them all for their individual merits. And I did indeed get some really good photos this weekend; it’s just that they’re unrelated. I hope you can forgive me.

Apart from the bullet journal photos, I’ve also got this from picture from my plant class that I thought turned out really well. Our homework is to go out and collect and identify plant samples — how cool is that? It’s probably one of my favorite classes at the moment because it’s low-stress, it’s a subject that interests me, and it’s fun. Compare that to my Russian Lit class, which is high-stress, not interesting, and not much fun, and it’s easy to see how an outdoors botany class would speak to me for this semester.

Plus, I like plants. I’ll have to give you guys an update on my dorm plants soon — since I’m in a new dorm room this year, I guess you’ll have to see the updated configuration. We had some tragic losses (RIP my rose moss seedlings), but we’ve also had some new additions to the family.

The weekend concluded with this really lovely sunset over the Golden Dome, which I had the pleasure of watching out a library window. Sort-of. I wasn’t actually able to secure a coveted window seat myself to watch the whole thing, but I walked by the window multiple times so I could catch it — probably thoroughly annoying the person who was actually sitting by the window in the process.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!