Bullet Journal: Tips 'n' things

Here at designist we've been Bullet Journalling since last summer, and loving it! Depending on personal preference (or often the size of our hand bags) we use either the A5 hard cover or the B5 soft cover notebooks from Leuchtturm1917 with dotted paper. If you're new to Bullet Journalling, there are hundreds of YouTube tutorials and articles that explain how to get started (or see our earlier blog post). And if you use Instagram you can hardly miss the floods of posts from eager doodlers and organisers, proud to share their colourful, neat schedules with us. 

While the fancy illustrations and colourful graphs are beautiful and inspiring, some of us are more for the practical layouts and useful tips. So here are a few of designist's staffs' favourite Bullet Journal tips and tricks!

1. Habit Trackers

If you're trying to eat healthier, go to the gym more or remember to water your poor dying basil plants, a habit tracker is a clean, simple way of laying out your page and keeping track of when you've remembered your daily tasks. Mark off the box when you've taken your vitamins and try and keep the streak going as long as possible! It's extremely satisfying filling in those squares...

2. Flip-out key
One of the main elements of Bullet Journaling is creating a key of symbols that function as your own personal shorthand. If you're new to the system, remembering the key can be tricky and can slow you down, this flip out key chart is a really handy little cheat sheet that you can fold neatly back inside your notebook.

3. Washi Tape

Washi Tape is an incredibly strong and durable tape made from natural fibres that has completely blown up over the last year – especially in the craft world – due to its amazing range of cute designs. Using Washi tape is a quick way to create boarders and separate your lists and brighten up your page, win!

4. To Read - Bookshelf
The reading bookshelf is a really cool way of keeping track of books you've read over the year and remembering the names of books you want to get stuck into! Draw your bookshelf and add the titles as you go, then colour them in once you've read them. These pages in a BuJo are called 'collections', and they can be handy for many things from music discoveries to spice rack stocks. Index your collection and you'll also know where to find it when you want to add something else to a list.

5. Organisation stickers
Try these downloadable stickers as another way of breaking up your page and creating neat sections to work in. They look great and they're amazing if – like me – you're not so great with a ruler! 
https://www.etsy.com/ie/listing/264672437/bullet-journal-stickers-package-in-teal?ref=shop_home_feat_1    
Happy BuJoing everyone!