Below the flip-through video, you’ll see time stamps for different themes and a description of how the theme came about.
Make sure you check out my review of the Vivid Scribbles journal – this mid-price journal was okay, but started to fall apart towards the end (with a lot of use). Dots are larger than most journals.
3:18 May – Moths
Pigma Micron pens
Prismacolor coloured pencils
Tombow dual brush pens
Posca pen
Gelly Roll pen
In May I moved into my new journal, a 160gsm Vivid Scribbles journal. I had a few introductory pages that didn’t follow a theme, set out my new productivity and goals pages and then began the new month. Now I could have drawn butterflies but everyone does them! I found one that I thought was a butterfly but it turned out to be a moth and it was gorgeous. I was sold! Moths are stunning, and even better they’re completely symmetrical. Fascinating really. I kept my weeklies, but this month I went back to including dailies too because they tie in really well with my miracle mornings where I try to do a little journaling every morning. I loved my font of the month and also really enjoyed trying a drawing on the page of an old book
5:00 Jun – Clockwork birds
Pigma Micron pens
Tombow dual brush pens
Washi tape
Stickers
I love steampunk and thought it might make a good theme. When I first searched on steampunk I found a lot of images of clothes, but didn’t feel like drawing clothes this time, so kept hunting. I also didn’t want to draw anime even though I love to watch it, because its done quite a lot and wanted to do something a little different. I was quite happy when I started finding images of clockwork animals, and settled on clockwork birds with a steampunk twist. It was an easy step after that to add cogs and keys as embellishments. Halfway through the month, I decided to try daily rapid logging of a form true to the bullet journal method. If it works out, I’ll keep doing it next month.
6:38 Jul – Jellyfish
Reeves watercolours
Pigma Micron pens
Tombow dual brush pens
Uni-Ball Signo gel pens
Sakura Gelly Roll pens
Pentel Hybrid Gel pens
Zebra Mildliner Highlighters
Kikki K Alphabet stamp set
I had an entirely different plan for this month, but then I decided that I wanted to do a doodle challenge with @journal_by_jet and her theme was under the sea. I gave the list to my husband and told him to pick something as my theme, and he chose jellyfish. I kind of didn’t know where to start with drawing jellyfish, so I had to do a few test pages in my Pink Mackerel notebook to decide how I wanted to draw them. Even after that I wasn’t entirely sure about my title page, but definitely grew more confident as I did more spreads. After a month of black and white in June, I was dying to use colour, and there’s been a colour explosion in July! Best thing of all is I had some beautiful jellyfish stickers to use on my daily log entries!
10:33 Aug – Washi tape
Washi Tape
Pigma Micron pens
Sakura Gelly Roll pens
In order to justify my large washi tape collection, and following my making a video introducing you to washi tape art, it was destined that I do a month theme based on washi art. There’s a huge amount of time involved in washi art, especially to the level of detail seen in my title page, so many of the pages just celebrate beautiful washi tape, rather than creating a work of art. I am incredibly proud of my title page!
12:20 Sep – Cats
Pigma Micron pens
September stickers from Bunbougu.com
Stickers and washi from The Washi Tape Shop
Washi tape
Tombow dual brush pens
Zebra Mildliner Highlighters
Djeco stickers
This wasn’t a theme I had planned for. I don’t mind cats but I’m very much a dog person. But, I got a free set of stickers late in September 2020 that had a cat for each day with the date and the month of September, so if I was going to use them, it had to be this month. The sticker design used block colours and it inspired me to do spreads based on colour-blocking. I chose six colours of washi tape that matched key colours in the stickers, picked out six markers that also matched, and then ended up adding some cats from a sticker sheet I had, and the theme kind of evolved from there. It was good timing for such a simple theme that relied on stickers rather than my own artwork, because I’m crazy busy this month, even working some weekends, so this time-efficient theme was perfect. You can still do a lot with simple stickers and a bit of colour.
14:46 Oct – Bugs
Washi tape
Tombow dual brush pens
Djeco stickers
Rub-ons from Cute Things from Japan
Poooliprint printer
Pigma micron pens
Prismacolor coloured pencils
I’ve been wanting to do a theme on beetles for a long time, but in the end I’ve varied it a little and created a more general theme of bugs. Part of my professional job has been analysing the bugs in creeks, because the type of bug is an indicator of the water quality and health of the waterway. I’m fascinated with beetles because they come in so many beautiful colours. This means the inspiration for this month is pretty straightforward. I really wanted to continue creating spreads using washi tape, partly because I enjoy doing them, partly because it’s a bit different to what everyone else is doing, and partly because people seem to enjoy seeing them – three good reasons!
17:00 Nov – Cute critters
Reeves student watercolours
Tombow dual brush pens
Poooliprint printer
Pigma micron pens
Washi tape
Stickers
Bengt & Lotta 100 papers
I found these cute needle-felted critters on Pinterest and immediately wanted to paint them. They’re pretty simple, but I have to be careful about using too much water on this journal’s paper. I’ve stuck with a montly calendar and task list and found a new layout for my dailies that fits two per page and gives me an opportunity to use this lovely book of decorative papers. Cleaning is back in my journal, simply because it wasn’t getting done!