Plan With Me | New Bookish Bullet Journal & July 2020 Spreads!

I can’t believe it’s nearly July ~ the year has gone by so fast but I’ve also been looking forward to this because at the end of May, as I started planning out my June spreads, I realised that I only have enough pages for June and not much else. Somehow my cute little B6 bullet journal perfectly fit 6 months of journalling within!

It was a bit tricky to acquire – I had to save money because Archer & Olive bujos cost like 2 hardbacks in Australia, I generally don’t have much spending money, the stock for the journal at the store I shop at (Washigang, they are lovely!) was super low, I was anxious as hell the last 3 in stock would be bought by other people before I had enough money to buy it – anyway, stress – but I finally managed to get my hands on another B6 journal!

And I actually LOVE this one way more than my previous one. This one is super cute with a bee on the front in gold foiling and the colour – THE COLOUR, it honestly gives me the best vintage vibes and the second I saw this journal, I knew I had to have it.

After much delight and unboxing this gorgeous thing, I finally spent the whole day yesterday sketching my spreads and creating my 2020 part 2 and July pages for the months ahead.

It was really exciting to kind of get a do-over and to be able to reflect on the first half of the year. Here is the new setup for my new bullet journal:

2020 Part 2: Bujo Spreads

I tried to keep the style quite minimalistic but ended up choosing 3 pastel colours as a highlight since I don’t own any grey or muted brush coloured pens or highlighters. It brought some colour to these simple spreads – and yes my birthday is already marked on the calendar!

If you feel generous on my birthday, I actually made my first Amazon wishlist and although I doubt anyone will buy me a book on there, it’s nice to be able to show what I would personally buy from there if I had some dough to spend.

I’m super proud of how my goals and reading pages turned out. It was awesome to be able to affirm to myself that before July is even here, I’m already over halfway with my reading challenge. I’m keen to be able to write down all the books I read in the book sized gaps as I finish off my challenge of 50 books this year. The goals page was inspired by Caitlin’s Corner’s recent new bullet journal setup; I really like being able to choose words to describe the year and reflect on how much I’ve already achieved so far. All about positivity!

The pages above are pretty straight forward – I have never actually created spreads for these things before and never thought I would need them, but recently I noticed myself putting down anticipated releases and arcs I should read on sticky notes. Seeing this, I realised that I might actually need some spreads to officially write stuff like this out.

For the things to check out, the ‘places’ category might be a little barren since we’re mostly staying inside but I think I can come up with some cool places like nature walks and national parks to visit where I can get fresh air after a small road trip and enjoy a day out whilst not being around people.

July 2020 Spreads

Now, onto my beloved July spreads. I am SO HAPPY with how these turned out, even thought I’m absolutely sick of drawing koi fish now.

I initially wasn’t sure what theme I was going to do for this month but I knew that I wanted to try something creative that didn’t use a lot of collaging because I don’t have many of those materials like washi tapes, and I don’t own a printer – so I can’t really print cute stuff to stick into my journal either. (It’s actually pretty sad because I’d love to stick in the covers of the books I read like Books with Chloe does, it ends up looking so beautiful.)

Anyway, while browsing Pinterest and Youtube, I found this awesome French YouTuber with this beautiful April spread full of koi fish drawings and I just knew, like yes, I just recently got more fish so this month’s theme has to be fishy. Also super stoked to have found a French journalling Youtuber because I do speak French but I find it so hard to find French content online (don’t even get me started on how hard it is to find French books in Australia).

I’m especially proud of my monthly and tbr page – it just makes me so happy because it’s so colourful and bright. The koi fish drawings ended up looking pretty good for my standard and lack of drawing skills, and it was surprisingly easy after the 3rd or 4th time drawing one.

My next spread is my July reads as well as a more concise study planner. I noticed that although I loved my spreads from May for my online study period, I wasn’t using them a whole lot. I ended up really changing how I study by the second half of the study period. Basically each week, there are a number of modules to complete. I had previously listed out all the modules and while it was satisfying to tick off all the boxes, it took a lot of time to set those up for each week.

So this new study period that’s about to begin, I’ll be able to simply add little module number indicators in the tracker boxes next to each week, and colour it in as I go study. I also haven’t put the due dates on the assignments yet because the study period hasn’t begun and I don’t actually know those.

Last but not least, this is my weekly spread.

I didn’t really change it a whole lot from last month’s (I didn’t share that one because I wasn’t really proud of it, I had a very lazy month). What I learnt with my journalling is that I started writing down the hierarchy and times of what I needed to do on sticky notes because I work from home, so I figured again, let’s actually put that on paper in my journal instead. So, I’ve found that I now really enjoy this hour/daily list kind of format and that it means my actual to-do list is a lot shorter too.

My habits haven’t changed, I still try to read everyday, try to study German and Korean twice a week, and exercise from home twice a week. Weekly habit trackers work so much better for me because I don’t look at my monthly spread all that often.

So, what did you think of my spreads? Do you like my new bullet journal? Link me your posts or instagram photos if you also have some spreads or themes you’re really proud of. I’d love to see!

I’m excited to fill everything in and curate my TBR for July. My June Wrap-Up and July TBR will be up soon 🙂

Until next time,