Gemma 
Welcome to Day 10 of Blogmas At Home 2024! 🎄🎅🏻✨
Today’s post isn’t particularly Christmassy, but, seeing as we’re in the last month of the year now, it’s time to finish off my 2024 bullet journal so that I can start a new one for 2025. In today’s post, I’ll be chatting about the final two spreads in my journal: my 2024 Review spreads! You might remember that I did this kind of thing in my journal last year, but I went in a slightly different direction this year.
Attending the Eras Tour was the biggest highlight of my year, so I used it as the theme for these spreads. I actually did a whole monthly setup with an Eras Tour theme back in June, which was one of my favourite setups I’ve ever done, so I used that as inspiration for these spreads!
Table of Contents
Equipment
To make these spreads, I used the following equipment:
- Uni Pin Fine Line pen: 0.5, sepia.
- Coloured pencils.
- Pencil.
- Eraser.
I wanted to keep these spreads soft and colourful, so I opted to use a brown fineliner, instead of my usual black one. Otherwise, the equipment list for this one is pretty basic!
2024 Memories
This year has been a strange one for me, so I didn’t really fancy doing a super in-depth review spread this time around. Instead, I thought it would be nice to make a more visual spread, full of memories from the year gone by.
I decided to use the same friendship bracelet doodle decoration as my June setup, with little round, heart & star-shaped ‘beads’, in all of the colours associated with Taylor Swift’s album eras. As with my monthly setup, I used the following shades of coloured pencils to correspond with each era:
- Taylor Swift – pale green
- Fearless – gold/deep yellow
- Speak Now – lilac
- Red – red (astounding, I know)
- 1989 – pale blue
- Reputation – dark grey
- Lover – pale pink
- Folklore – grey
- Evermore – beige
- Midnights – dark blue
- The Tortured Poets Department – black
I had the idea to fill this spread with one massive friendship bracelet, fitted with multiple ‘charms’ that represent significant memories for me this year. I’m not the best at drawing/doodling, so I was a bit nervous about drawing the charms, but I just went in with a pencil and eraser first, before inking over the lines, to take the pressure off.
I won’t go into detail on every charm, because I’d like to keep some memories just for me, but here’s what a few of my charms symbolise:
- Pink disco ball: This was the charm I chose to represent the Eras Tour! I wore a sparkly pink dress (that I made myself!), Taylor swift has a song called mirrorball and I danced a lot, so it felt fitting.
- #1 red & green tennis ball: My favourite tennis player, Jannik Sinner, reached #1 in the world this year, so this charm is to commemorate that and how much fun I had watching all the matches over the past season! Sinner is Italian, so I used red and green for the colours of the ball (though, now that I think about it, I feel blue might have been a better fit here, because the Italian players wear blue in the Billie Jean King/Davis Cups (which, coincidentally, Italy also won!).
- Pig in blanket: Ever since last Christmas, I’ve been in a major Pig in Blanket era, which is kind of random, but obviously had to be commemorated.
- Ball of yarn: I’ve been really getting back into my knitting this year, particularly with my Project Knitwear series, so I wanted to draw a charm to reflect that. However, I also wanted to commemorate the Paris Olympics that took place this summer (and forgot to give it a charm of its own), so I opted to use the colours of the Olympic rings for this yarn ball charm. I think this worked out pretty perfectly, because my biggest yarn-y project this year was my Grace Blanket, which I made while watching the Olympics.
- Golden bee: I couldn’t summarise my 2024 without a reference to Bridgerton, after the release of Season 3 and my Bridgerton Watch Party series here on the blog. The bee is a classic symbol of the show and I chose to make it gold to reflect the green & gold colour scheme of the promo material for Season 3.
- Aurora borealis: I would forgive you for not knowing what this one was, because my artistic skills leave much to be desired, but I actually managed to see the aurora borealis on two (!) separate occasions this month, right on my doorstep, which was very magical.
- Ink pot & quill: With my Taylor Swift theme, I couldn’t leave out the latest album/era: The Tortured Poets Department. It’s not my most favourite era, but I still love it (and I just got an Anthology vinyl, which is SO exciting!).
In the centre of the page, I also sketched out the numbers in ‘2024’. The aim was to make these also look like charms, so the whole thing is one, big, ‘2024’ charm bracelet. My skills at 3D-ifying things are evidently still a work in progress, but I still like the effect here.
After I’d sketched everything out, inked all the lines, coloured in all of the charms and added in the smaller beads, the spread was basically finished. However, there was a little space in both the bottom left and the top right, so I couldn’t help myself from adding in one of my favourite Taylor Swift lyrics (which is always very fitting for these types of spreads): “Hold on to the memories they will hold on to you” from New Year’s Day (which Taylor Swift JUST sang as one of the surprise songs at the last ever Eras Tour show in Vancouver so… it’s kind of meant to be!).
2024: Spotify Wrapped
Let’s be real: Spotify Wrapped this year was… kind of a let down. However, I wait all year to have my listening habits broken down into fun statistics, so I still wanted to pay homage to it here. I love to look back over my Spotify Wrapped from years gone by and see how my likes/dislikes have changed (though, let’s be real, Taylor Swift is always my #1 artist). I figured where better to store this info than in my bullet journal, so I made a spread for it here.
Again, I’m keeping with that same friendship bracelet, Eras Tour theme, using my brown fineliner to keep everything soft and light. I wrote the heading for this spread on little alphabet ‘beads’ (i.e. circles that I drew with the fineliner). I then drew little corner frames for each section and filled the rest of the space with coloured pencil doodles (with varying degrees of success: my TTPD space ship looks more like a Picasso eye and my guitar has a slight lyre vibe to it…).
My music listening this year has definitely taken a bit of a hit— honestly, most of the songs in my Wrapped playlist are the ones I listen to to fall asleep! I very much enjoyed seeing my April phase though (Royalcore String Quarter Classical Pop): you can tell how excited I was for Bridgerton Season 3 coming out in May! My biggest listening day being the day before my Eras Tour show was also very fitting. I’ll have to work on my Swiftie credentials though— I’ve dropped from being in the top 1% of Taylor Swift listeners a couple of years ago to the top 3%! Sigh.
Anyway, those are my Eras Tour-themed, 2024 Review pages in my bullet journal. Now, it’s time to start on my new, 2025 bullet journal! Watch this space!
Gemma
xxx
