Bullet Journaling has become a definite thing hasn’t it? I really enjoy watching people’s planning videos, and all the different spreads in the various tags on social media. I’ve been keeping my own bullet journal since the end of of 2016, though not as well or as nicely as now. It’s funny to look at my current bullet journal and my April spread / theme for the month, and then compare it to the lined pocket notebooks that were probably a little smaller than A5 I started out with. We’ve come a long way. I shan’t reminisce too much, and I’ll give you a little peek inside my Bullet Journal for April.

Theme colours: Peach and Blue

For my 2020 Bullet Journal each month is themed around colours. In journals past I’ve themed each month around washi or deco tape designs, but I felt that I really wanted this years #bujo to be very cohesive and a wash of pastel colours. So the different months are a different blend of two shades. This month (April) I decided to go for one of my favourite colour combinations, peach and blue.

Working with set colours for the month is a very easy way to create aesthetically pleasing pages without having to do too much work. You don’t have to be a dab hand at drawing, you don’t even really have to be artistically inclined, and I think it’s a concept that works with both minimal set-ups as well as those that are the exact opposite. It also means that you don’t run through your favourite patterned washi tape as fast.

I’m lucky that Korea has a lot of accessible stationery stores that are fairly inexpensive, whilst also having a great selection of things for journaling purposes – Artbox, Hottracks, and of course Daiso are very well stocked with tapes, stickers, coloured pens, post-its, and little extras. I love Muji for fine-tipped pens and their glue tape; I also spent an embarrassing amount of money in a Japanese stationery store called Loft when I visited Kyoto in my Winter holiday… but it was worth it. Currently I’m finding a lot of very nice journaling extras on Coupang and Aliexpress.

The layout for my April bullet journal spread:

Each month has a similar set up and layout, but I change it to suit my needs.

The first page of the month will have the month name, a mini calendar and something with the colours for the month. I also choose and print out a little image / character (? I’m not sure how to describe this, but it seems reductive to describe them as my ‘girl/boy’ for the month) for this page. I have a pinterest board full of character art – I really try my best to only pin images with direct links/credit to the original artists – that I print off and use as extra decoration. The art for this month is by poyuraa on instagram.

Page 2 will either be a larger calendar or my ‘trackers’ depending on my mood. For April, page 2 is the larger calendar. I use square boxes of 3 dots by 3 dots (3 x 3), with a row of 1 space by 3 (1x) along the top for each day of the week. I start my week on Mondays~. Then I’ll mark on important days of the month using different colours. Here you can see that the 15th is circled in red as it’s a ‘Red Day’ (National Holiday here in Korea), and the blue lines at the top of some days mark ‘Coronacation’. The calendars usually don’t take up the whole page, so I move them around in positioning, sometimes they’re more central, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, whatever feels good for that month. I’ll decorate the remaining space with more print outs, washi tape, or stickers.

Page 3 for April is my ‘tracker’ page. I used to do whole month trackers on this page but found that I wasn’t really filling them in often, or they thought of them stressed me out… which is the exact opposite point of a bullet journal. Since I have larger goal planners and other trackers towards the front of my bullet journal, I only put down the things I absolutely have to do for myself each month. My big goal for this year is to produce more consistent content again – which is 2 blog posts a month and 1 video, so I have little check boxes drawn out for them. I also mark down any important content creation deadlines for other projects, as well as ideas that I have, or posts titles that have been published.

Here I’ve also used these absolutely adorable Pantone style stickers that I found on Aliexpress (you can shop them here), I love that they add a pop of colour but still in a more minimal style.

Weekly Layouts:

My weekly layouts are fairly boring, really. They’ll still use the months colours with little embellishments here and there, but the layout is tried and tested for me. On page 4, I will have 4 rows with 7 spaces in between the dividing lines for Monday – Thursday, and then on page 5 I will have 3, same width, and a box for notes at the bottom. I’ve tried rolling weeklies and faux dutch-door styles, but I find that they don’t work as well for me because 1) my life is relatively boring / monotonous and 2) I don’t always get time to update my bullet journal daily. So there’s a lot of wasted space and to me it looks untidy.

So, I keep my weekly layouts simple and functional for me, changing accent colours and adding extras in the margins of space to fill it out a little.

Special Pages:

For some months, I’ll include special planning spreads for shoot ideas (I have another planner for the bulk of those), packing lists, things to add to the apartment, large chores to break down and tackle, those kind of things. For my April bullet journal, I have a special two page spread dedicated to my last week of vacation from work before the new semester starts (and the stress ramps up). It has content ideas, places I want to visit and people I want to catch up with.

And that’s everything in my bullet journal for April! Do you bullet journal? I’d love to see some of your spreads if you do! Please tag me on instagram so I can see!