New Bullet Journal Set Up & Hello September

Hello bullet journalers!

I had to start my third bullet journal. I did have several pages left in my 2nd bujo, but not enough to set up an entire month, so that means starting another one. I was thinking about what I could do to make it a little different this time round. As a paper crafter, I have a few different alphabet die sets, and thought I should use them more often. Since the names of the months are longer come the end of the year, I knew that I would have to use my tall and narrow alphabet die set.

Perhaps I should have taken a close up photos of 'September' because you can not see the gold pen lines traced around the letters too well in this photo. I am hoping that this bujo will go through to the end of December, but as I am not sure of that I left the last month blank to add the letters later.

Now, the next thing that usually goes into the bullet journal is an index. I setup my usual three pages for that, but ended up making a mistake. I had to get up out of my chair to get my black pen for the entry of items into my journal, but while I was away, the page must have turned because when I finished entering everything I had done so far and went to turn the page to enter my 'key' symbols, I was surprised to see that the 'key' page was already there! I had to chuckle because there was no way I was going to fix this. I would have to have my index a little mixed up.

So here is the third page of my indexed filled in as the first page should have been.

It wasn't until after I filled in the entire year calendar, that I thought how silly it was to include months that had already passed. So, next time I think I will leave off the completed months and find a way to set it up to include the months of the new year in their place.

Since I am hoping this journal will go through December, I decided I needed to include January 2019 in my 5 month 'future log'. Five being an odd number, the best way to include them all on one page was to ignore the meeting of the pages and use it as if it was only one page. I was able to fit it all in that way.

So now I have the journal set up, it is time to set up the month of September. I went to my washi tapes for inspiration and ended up choosing the ones with gold, purples, pinks, and beiges. I also wanted to see if I could use some stamps too. I found my 'hello' stamp and decided to try heat embossing it in gold. that ended up being a mistake. I share the reason why in the next photo. I found my old gold ink pad so that I could stamp in gold. 

Here in this photo you can see the gold stamping better.

Now, turning the page you can see why it was a mistake to heat emboss on the previous one. The heat on the thin paper brought the embossing ink and gold bleeding through.

I went ahead and set up my calendar over it rather than covering it up.

Next is my 'Brain Dup' page. I love using the dotted grid to create gold dots along the edges of my washi tape. I decided to use the gold gel pen for the lettering of the title, too.

I always have to have my 'future classes & kit' log. Last month I only set up three sections on one page, but I ended up needing more than that, so I made sure that I set up 6 this time. I used my gold gel pen for this as well. I think once the photos go in of each set, it will look great with the gold.

Now comes my 'finances' spread. I used my usual layout with just a few minor changes. Again the gold dots, but this time on a gold line for the border.

Now comes the real daily usage part of my journal. When I started my first journal, I used a page folded in half to fit my weekly view into a double spread view. Well, I have found that I need more width to my weekly columns and decided to try a variation of that idea. It means that I need to use two pages to make it fit, and instead of fold the page in half, needing more width, I cut the page and included a tab design onto these two pages. This way I get my wider columns and and see my week in one view.

So, the benefit of this is that I can get away with creating only one monthly mini calendar that can be viewed as I turn the partial tabbed pages, and can access my 'notes' section more easily.

The last part of my set up for the first week of September, is my 'gratitude log' and my 'weekly expenses log'. I decided to give myself two lines for each day's gratitude entry. I sometimes had to squeeze it in, so that is why the change. By cutting down the size of the heading to just one line for both of these sections, not only gave a new look, but gave me the space to do the change.

The next couple of empty pages are for my daily journal entries, and ends with a weekly review.

Well that's it for the start of my new bullet journal and the first part of September. Oh, I ran out of gold ink in my pen, so I will need to get another pen.

Happy journaling!