My Real Life Bullet Journal Pinterest Board.
If you read my bullet journal blog posts regularly or just lust over them on Instagram, you might be forgiven for thinking every page is perfect, a masterpiece, a sight to behold. And the reason for this? I cover up all the shit ones.
I take pride in making my bullet journal as well as productive and functional. I am an illustrator, designing things and drawing comes second nature to me, I find it as easy as I find breathing. So what happens when I spoil a page? When I mess up a layout, when I draw a spread and hate it? I did, in my first journal, cut a page out. The journal fell apart.
These days I have found a much more creative way of using a page I hate and making it into something I love - because that's rule 101 of bullet journaling; you make it your own. Sure you're meant to embrace your mistakes but that just ain't me so no, I cover my pages and lately, that's come in the form of a real life Pinterest board.
In my last bullet journal I only really messed up one page the whole year and I covered it in wrapping paper and washi tape and all the stickers from my BanDo planner and it looked mint. But this time around, I am only a few weeks into my second bujo of the year and have already covered up 3 pages. Read into that what you will.
This time around I decided to get creative, to get my inner scrapbooking gal on and make a moodboard of sorts. When I was in uni I bought a little square Paperchase scrapbook and filled it to to rafters with Pinterest images. Every single page, some new theme, some quotes, some photos, some outfit inspo, just all things I found beautiful and all it does is sit on my shelf and occasionally get looked at. I adore it, I just forget to pull it out all the time.
So with my damages pages I decided to recreate the same sort of thing, but in a tangible 'look at it every day' kinda theme.
The most important thing I felt about this moodboard was that it had to be things that inspired me and it had to be things I wouldn't hate in 6 months time. This moodboard will be well thumbed by the time 2018 rolls around and I have completed this journal and I didn't want things that would go out of fashion or wouldn't be my tastes anymore.
I deliberately for that reason chose a lot of muted tones, a lot of greyscale and white and very whimsical colours - things that always stay in fashion. I chose pieces of art that I loved, bullet journal spreads I want to use myself, clothes that are similar to things I own, hairstyles I want to recreate - but all things that I know will still work for me in December.
I also went for things that worked together, colour schemes that blend and no over imposing harsh tones but that's purely down to the old perfectionist artist eye for beautiful things cos god knows if I put a contrasting colour together I wouldn't have seen anything else for the next 6 months.
All my images are things I have pinned to my Pinterest boards.
So how to create your own bullet journal Pinterest board? It's v simple.
I personally whacked all my images onto two Photoshop A4 jpegs, simply because you can get more on a spread. Similar to what I do in my first of the month inspiration posts, I dragged and dropped and re sized until they were all next to them and I was happy. You can of course simply save them to your desktop and then print them out using the pre sets to fit 9 or 16 or whatever onto a page but just bare in mind they'll all be the same size so if like me you need some long thin ones, some horizontal ones, some square ones all to fit your layout then best you do it yo self.
And literally all I did for half an hour one day was cut them all out and then lay the images out on the pages to see what worked best for me. I shoved and shifted and cut down and edited until I had no gaps and I was happy with the arrangement. And then I glued it all down and kept the book closed for a bit to help them stick! (My advice would be go for a good old fashioned Pritt Stick, liquid glue is going to seep everywhere and potentially ruin your bujo.)
It's the simplest thing in the world and yet the results, if chosen carefully are very effective. My in real life Pinterest boards now mean I have something pretty to look at every day. They fill my bujo with colour (I'm v much traditionally a black and white kinda gal) and I am instantly drawn to them meaning I turn to those pages every single damn day.
I feel like they truly inspire me, it's like they're my brand, my aesthetic, my goals all rolled into one cute moodboard. You know how in that episode of KUWTK when Kim is planning her website content and they have about 10 moodboards for her to look at she just keeps saying "I want it to be something cool and super arty" - this is my one of them. It's my moodboard to look at and say this is what I want my content to be, this is how I want my photography to look, this is the kinda level I want to be at. It's my inspiration.
And the best part of all? It hides a multitude of sins underneath. I try and roll with it, I try and be like 'hey it's all part of the bujo you leave those mistakes missy'. And then within about 30 seconds I'm all "I HAVE RUINED THE WHOLE JOURNAL WITH THIS ONE PAGE MISHAP IT MUST ALL GO".
So it's probably for the best that I cover them up with cute images because the way it's going otherwise the whole journal would end up in the shredder.
