Weekly Journal: February Set up + Method

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Hello! Today I'll be posting about my February spread!

I will also be talking about my method for doing up my weekly spreads, and the reasons for the different elements.

Let's get started!

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So my theme for February is watercolours!

As it's my birthday month, I always like to make it a month theme that I enjoy personally (last year was amythests). But that also means that my themes are often different from the others for this month. That being love, hearts, and everything valentines related. But I do t find this a big deal personally because I'm not that interested in romantic love.

But I did get the theme in there a little this time being the quote I use as filler between the last month's last weekly and the next month's cover photo.

Love the life you live. Live the life you love.

-Bob Marley

After the cover I tend to my planned monthly Calander.

This is where I put all my important dates and big events and such like birthdays, due dates, activities, or appointments. Just a typical calendar. But I also make sure to include a monthly goals section to give myself an idea of the kinds of things I want to do (left it blank due to privacy).

Next is my planned monthly spreads.

This month was Emotion tracking and Uni prep (didn't include due to privacy).

I find emotion and mental state tracking very helpful to keep track of my mental health. As well as be something to he able to refer to later in therapy and such.

But my tracker is a lot more extensive then other spreads I see around.

I have 9 colours, which often chance depending the theme, attached to a emotion. And at the end of everyday, or more likely in the morning of the next day in reflection, I depict the biggest at most two emotions from the day. And sometimes they are conflicting. Like having a good morning and shitty after noon. But more often then not it's just an OK day. Meaning nothing crazy positivez or negative.

You will also notice I have more negative then positive. Well I personally have pretty simple positive emotions, but very complex negative ones. So I tried a bunch of different ones over time and found these were the 9 that work best for my personal tracking.

All of this is being drawn during the last few days of the previous month.

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After that, every Sunday I sit down to set up the next week according to what I think my week will look like. Sometimes there is more space for dailies, other times less tracking. Just depends.

This is a break down of the this weeks process.

Firstly I do everything lightly using my pacer.

Just a ruff outline of where everything will sit on the page.

The next step, because the theme is water colours, is to do the watercolouring on the page.

Now, this paper isn't really build for watercolours. But by using the cling wrap method, patting right after application, and then drying between paper towels and heavy books. I managed to keep the paper warping to a minimum, while also achieving the watercolour aesthetic.

Nexy I brush penned in some accent titles using some a brand suggested to me, Sta Aquarelle.

Then I inked in the details of my little corner calander, trackers, and boxes with a size 0.3 micron pen.

Using my Aquarelle once again I wrote in the dates along the watercolour for my daily tracking.

Then used my pacer, micron, and pentel Sign brush pen to finish off the other details.

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Now for a break down for areas.

Firstly my big trackers that I often lump together if I have them.

This set contains a sleep tracker to keep track of my sleeping habits, a consumption tracker to track what I eat in a day.

Then at the bottom I have a fruit (circles) veg (triangles) and water (1 drop = 500ml) tracker to help keep me eating my whole foods and track my hydration.

Next my daily habit trackers.

They are little symbols I keep with the daily section to track what habits I'm keeping up with. Once I complete one I ink in the illustration with a pen.

These are trackers that I used to do on their own separate pages dedicated to just that tracking along with the emotional tracker.

However I find that I am more likely to keep track of them when they are incorporated into my weekly spread. Rather then separate.

My emotion one is different however. As that one I often like to make look a lot more elaborate (I will post the end product of it as I have plans for it. It's still technically a working progress)

Then I have a little quote to fill in space at the bottom of the page.

This was all completed over about an hour (15 mins, gap of maybe 4 hours for pressing, then the last 45 mins of work with maybe a few mins here and there to take photos) and I find it highly meditative.

As well as being enjoyable, as the themes for this journal is art mediums that I often wouldnt do in bullet journals due to possible paper problems it would cause.

But as my theming for this year is "Let go and embrace your imperfections.", I find that doing this is very enjoyable and freeing.

I encourage you to also do such in your bujo, embracing the mistakes and the learning experiences and make your journal medium for your journey as well as a tracker for it.

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And with that I am done! This will likely be my longest post about my monthly set ups as I don't think I will go into such detail to the different aspects of my spreads. But I likely will still do a step by step of how I create them again. It was fun to do so! (though my lighting kept changing. We are having a late stormy session here in Australia.)

Thank you for reading!

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Some music I listened to:

× Dulaman - Celtic Woman

× Lovely London Sky - Lin-Manuel Miranda

× Fly Away ft. Anjulie - TheFatRat

× The River - Jordan Feliz

× A million Dreams - P!nk

× Chant of Benevolence ft. Chi-Chi - 4everfreebrony