Gemma 
Welcome to Day 18 of Blogmas At Home 2024! 🎄🎅🏻✨
The new year always seems to sneak up on me SO quickly once Christmas is over, so I wanted to get ahead this year and make my January bullet journal setup nice and early! As seems to be becoming a bit of a habit for me, I’ve gone for a super quick and easy style this month: a simple, blue plaid pattern, some (purposely messy) brown line work and, because it is me, after all, some brown craft paper.
Table of Contents
Equipment
To make this setup, I used the following equipment:
- Tombow ABT dual brush pens, in the shades 491 (Glacier Blue) and 553 (Mist Purple).
- Uni Pin Fine Line pen: 0.5, sepia.
- Sakura Quickie Glue pen.
- Brown craft paper.
- Scissors.
- Corner rounder.
Cover + Quote Page
For my Cover Page, I filled the majority of the page with a blue plaid pattern, made using the two Tombow pens. I used the brown fineliner to draw a messy border around the pattern and to write the ‘January’ heading on some brown craft paper, which I stuck in using my Sakura glue pen.
It took me a while to decide on a fitting quote for my Quote Page this month— I wanted something that reflected the fact that January is the start of a new year, but most of the ‘New Year, New Me’ quotes feel a bit too… on the nose for me. As I was desperately trying to find a qupte, Natasha Bedingfield’s song Unwritten just happen to pop into my head and… it was just the perfect choice, so I went for that.
Monthly Calendar
As always, I went for a classic grid-style layout for my Monthly Calendar spread, where each of the boxes is a 6×6 square. I drew the grid and wrote in the dates using my brown fineliner, then filled the majority of the remaining space with more of that same, plaid pattern. Just like with my Cover Page, I wrote the ‘January’ heading on brown craft paper, then stuck it into the space in the top left corner.
Weekly Spreads
I usually include at least a couple more pages before going into my Weekly Spreads, but I wanted to keep this setup simple and pared back, so I opted to skip those pages this time around and go straight into my weeklies.
I’m using the same layout for my weekly spreads that I have used in my setups for the past few months, because it’s been working really well for me. To create it, I just trimmed the central pages right down, so there’s plenty of space on the far left and right for me to put in some master task/notes lists, while the trimmed down pages then house the daily tasks lists. I also used a corner rounder to soften the edges of the trimmed down pages, just to tie in with the style of this setup.
Week 1
The first ‘week’ of January 2025 only contains 5 days, so I was able to give each daily box in this weekly a little more space than I usually would. The first weekly sits on the same page as the task list on the far left, so I had plenty of space to add in more plaid decoration.
Week 2
The second weekly features a full week of 7 days, so I used my classic, 2-up/4-down layout for the daily task lists, leaving a space in the bottom right for the weekly subheading. I still managed to squeeze a little plaid section in though, just to keep things cohesive!
Week 3
The third weekly is exactly the same as the second, but I’ve changed the location of the weekly subheading from the bottom right corner to the top right.
Week 4
Again, the fourth weekly has the same layout as the two preceding weeklies but, for this spread, I’ve moved the weekly subheading to the top left corner.
Week 5
January ends on a Friday this year, so I opted to include the first two days of February in this final weekly. This page also includes the space on the far right for notes.
January Review
Finally, we have my January Review page. On the right-hand page, I have the ‘January Review’ heading, written in brown fineliner on brown craft paper, plus a large section of the plaid pattern, on top of which I will stick my monthly polaroid.
On the left-hand page, I have all my usual sections: ATP & WTA Top 10, my #1 memory from the month and my monthly playlist. I laid these sections out in the same way as in my December setup, which gave me lots of space to add another plaid section.
Final Thoughts
I’m really happy with how this setup turned out and I’m even happier with how quick it was to create! I literally set the whole thing up in an evening (while watching Jamie Cooks Christmas, because of course). I also surprised myself with how much I like the purposely messy linework— I think there’s something about doing two messy lines over the top of each other that makes it look extra intentional.
I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about my January 2025 bullet journal setup— I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below!
Gemma
xxx
