Below the flip-through video, you’ll see time stamps for different themes and a description of how the theme came about.
I’m sad to say that the Mindful Giraffe journal is no more – Laura closed down her company. I’m sad because this was my all-time favourite journal – the paper was first class and they had cute covers as well.
5:42 Dec – National trees
Tombow Fudenosuke hard tip pen
Prismacolor coloured pencils
Staedtler color double-ended fibre-tip pens
Pigma Micron pens
This month I moved into my Mindful Giraffe journal, and it’s such a pleasure to use. I almost wish I didn’t have a pile of other brands to use so I could keep on using this brand. Once again I allowed my husband to choose the monthly theme for my journal. He suggested ‘trees’. I thought about it a little, then decided that I should do distinctive trees from around the world. The theme still needed something ‘extra’ so I added an iconic animal from the country of each tree. Australia lucked in with two examples.
8:06 Jan – Washi leaves
Washi tape
Tombow Fudenosuke hard tip marker
Pigma Micron pens
Tombow dual brush pens
I wanted to go back to using washi tape because that’s something I’m good at – kind of my niche. I was going to be setting up my pages while I went camping over the Christmas holidays, so needed something simple that could be done with a set amount of supplies, so I didn’t have to take my whole cupboard with me! I settled on simply using leaves in different arrangements made out of washi tape, and using my Tombow markers to add little flower buds. They were simple but some of them were time consuming. I absolutely love how they turned out.
9:50 Feb – Backyard dogs (washi & dutch doors)
Washi tape
Stamp set
Tombow dual brush pens
Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen
Stickers
Rub-ons
This idea came about because I had a stamp set of little dogs. Some of them had their back to me, and it made me think of those videos where you see dogs looking through a hole in a fence. I decided to do a series of backyards as dutch doors, with each fence higher than the last, and little dogs going about their day in each. I built all the fences out of washi tape. Because of the dutch doors, this theme took a LOT of planning, with a pre-planning using layers in Procreate on my iPad, but the effort has paid off because this theme is by far the most popular video I have on my YouTube channel. I had gorgeous stickers for my dailies as well.
13:39 Mar – Australian birds
Stickers
Papers
Gelly Roll gel pens
Washi tape
Stickers
I had the most gorgeous stickers by Watercolour by Cat that I was just dying to use, and didn’t want to lose them in amongst my own artwork, so used a collage technique to display them. Stickers are always a good option for saving time too. The bright colours of the stickers went really well with the Gelly Roll pens and a bright fountain pen ink.
16:24 Apr – Australian flowers 3 ways
Prismacolor coloured pencils
Pigma Micron pens
Zebra Mildliners
Washi tape
Reeves watercolour paints
Gelly Roll gel pen
Signo metallic gel pen
I wanted to continue experimenting with washi tape, but missed using other mediums, so decided to do a theme that compared the same picture done three ways: with washi tape, with colouring pencils and with watercolours. I’d enjoyed seeing Australian birds in my journal the previous month, so thought I would display some of Australia’s beautiful flowers. I chose the most distinctive I could think of that I was able to draw. My cleaning tracker just had one solitary flower, but there are three techniques in that one picture: the stem and leaves are watercolour, the lower petals are washi tape and the top of the flower (a waratah) is done with coloured pencils.
19:26 May – Graffiti
Tombow dual brush pens
Papers
Washi tape
Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen
Pigma Micron pens
Stickers
This has got to be the strangest inspiration ever! I buy recycled paper toilet roll in bulk, and the company wraps each roll in decorative paper. They did a special release that had really interesting graphics and I had to save them and recycle them into my journal. Because of the types of graphics, I kept thinking of graffiti, and had also recently been inspired by @maja_reka_bujo, one of my favourite bullet journalists on Instagram, who had used a graffiti theme. I also had these really cool stickers of skateboarding animals, so my theme had to be skateboarding animals. The toilet roll paper became the images for the skateboards, and I found lots of great graffiti lettering examples on Pinterest. Love love love this title page!
21:29 Jun – Washi fox story
Washi tape
Winsor & Newton gouache paints
Pigma Micron pens
Stamps
Tombow dual brush pens
I’d been developing a style of washi tape art using torn pieces of washi and laying it down like paint to create light and dark shadows. I decided to push myself and create some scenes and then was inspired to tell a story with my spreads. It ended up being a simple little story about two foxes and some ducks, but I fell in love with the images and so did everyone else. I’ve had numerous people suggest I should use a similar style to illustrate children’s story books. Another all time favourite theme, closing out a journal with many favourites.