How to: Have an Aesthetically Pleasing Journal + Updates

Hello bookworms! I’m Nia and today I’m going to be talking about how to have an aesthetically pleasing journal.

One thing I have to update you first is that I migrated my bullet journal into my book journal. Before, I used to have two separate notebooks, one mainly dedicated to books and this blog, and the other to my everyday life and future events, but I found that really tiring, because it took me A LOT OF TIME to fill those journals, and sometimes I ended up leaving blank spaces. So I decided to combine my bullet journal and my book journal in one, and that’s what I’ve been doing in the past couple of months.

It have been so much better to me to plan my months, because 1. I don’t have two notebooks to pay attention to, and 2. I save so much time by doing so. But since you really enjoyed the first post I created talking about book journaling, I decided to do more.

I’ll mostly going to be giving you some tips and tricks on how to do an aesthetically pleasing journal, as well as telling you what’s been working for me lately and what I changed from my first journals.

As you can see, I usually set up a theme for each month. I know most of people decided to go with a winter-y theme for December, but whenever I think about December, the movie Anastasia comes up in my head, so I decided to go with that theme instead of the others.

I like to have two pages dedicated to my monthly theme, one with a picture I printed, and the other with a drawing I created. Sometimes I add a calendar or not.

One thing I always do is color scheme my monthly logs. For example, this month I decided to go with oranges, yellows and pinks, because those reminded me to that movie. I’ve also been practising lettering and calligraphy, and let me tell you I’ve been loving how pleasing it looks on my journal. I still have a lot to learn, but oh well, we’ll go from here.

As you can see in the image above, I usually draw a calendar of said month a write down all the things I have to do for the blog. I don’t add personal events there because I find this way more helpful and cleaner to me to look at, so I add my personal things on my weekly logs. I usually add a TBR full of books I’m interested to read that month. As you can see, this TBR is waay longer than the ones I talk about in my posts, but I feel better having a bigger amount of books to choose from, so that’s why it has so many.

There will be a few blurred spaces because either they are either personal things or blog related posts I want and plan to write, but still are secret, so don’t worry if you see them throughout this post.

Something I’ve been doing lately is add a floral drawing on this part of my journal. I’ve been doing that for the past two months and have been loving how it looks on my journal, so I kept doing that. Also I have a section for reviews I have to do, this month’s blog posts and new releases a my book hauls, which have been incredibly helpful since I’ll be talking about those in this blog!

Something I’ve been loving lately and hadn’t done before was keep track of my sleep and dreams. I find this so helpful and cool, because my mood tends to change when I underslept, so I wanted to know if I had a sleep schedule and how many hours I sleep per day.

Also something that’s been so cool to do was track my dreams. Sometimes I admit I don’t remember my dreams 10 minutes after I wake up, but other times I do, so I write them down here and they are the weirdest ones, let me tell you. I have a very creative mind. So that’s been really fun to do.

Also I added a few images realated to this month’s theme. Most of the pictures I got them from WeHeartIt, which is a really good app if you’re looking for pictures or inspiration (it’s basically like pinterest). So I either save the images on my phone and then print them, or have already saved them on the app (which is so much easier) and do the same process.

The expense tracker hand’t changed from my previous post, but I added a mood and a habit tracker, because I wanted 1. to track my mental health, and 2. to know the things I do in a day and if I’ve been productive or not in said day. I don’t know, I’ve been doing it for a couple of months and it’s been so fun, so I decided to keep doing it.

Also you may have noticed that I don’t have pictures here, and that’s mainly because I have no space to place them. So it’s basically what I told you before.

And this is one of the most helpful things I decided to add to my journal. Since I’m doing book reviews and talking about books on my wrap-ups or recommendations, I find that doing a mini review and writing what things I enjoyed and what I didn’t is extremely handy to me. I usually write down the things that came to my mind in no particular order, and then when I do my reviews I regroup them in parragraphs that have more coherence, but so fat I’ve been loving to do this, even though sometimes I’m a bit lazy to write.

Also my ratings there tend to change after a few days. Mostly I write them down here right after I finish the book, and so when I think more about it, I either lower or higher it. It’s just so I have a general idea of what I thought about it.

I also decided to add a Christmas wishlist and a gift list, because I feel it’s going to be quite handy for me to come out with ideas for these holidays.

It’s not entirely filled yet, because I haven’t dedicated it much time, but there’re a few things I’ve already anotated to gift to my family and friends.

Buuut… I have to take a few moments and fill up mine.

           

And this one is when my personal stuff comes. This is one of the parts of my bullet journal that I migrated into this one. It’s true that I’ve changed many things ever since, but the general idea is still the same.

I decided to add some ideas for future posts or things I want to do in my weekly logs instead of a separate place, because they are easier for me to find. Also I wanted to add a lunch ideas planner, because I’m really lazy and sometimes I don’t feel like cooking, so I hoped that by doing so I’d have more variety of foods to choose from. And the first week went great. The second? Not so much. But it’s been quite helpful so far to me, so I decided to keep doing it.

The main reason why I only have there my lunchs and dinners is because my breakfasts and snacks tend to be always the same, so it was a bit pointless to me to write them down again and again. And of course, I added some more pictures related to this month theme.

So yeah guys, that’s pretty much it. I plan to do my goals for 2018 and some plans I have once this month’s over, so if you want to see a post, just let me know.

I hope you’ve leant something new with this, and had fun seeing my pictures. I know this seems like a very difficult thing to do, but it honestly isn’t. It takes a bit of time, but it’s so relaxing to do so that I’m willing to do so. There are so many options for you to do, you don’t have to do the same things I mentioned here, because what worked for me may not work for you and vice versa. You do you.

Do you have a bullet/book journal? Let me know if you like these types of posts, because I have so much fun doind them, and I wouldn’t mind posting them from time to time.

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