I ended up scouring Pinterest for inspiration (if you don’t follow me on there, you should! I’m forever pinning delicious-looking recipes and crafty inspirations: my username is gemmaathomeblog!). In my scouring, I found myself really drawn to the simple floral patterns, particularly this one, which reminded me of a cute, patchwork quilt! I figured this would be a great starting point for an August setup: it has a summer-y, bright(ish), pastel colour palette, with a gentle sense of cosiness brought about by the patchwork vibe.

This, then, is my floral/patchwork bullet journal setup for August 2025! Let’s get into it, shall we?

Table of Contents

• Equipment
• Cover + Quote Page
• Monthly Calendar
• Things to Look Forward to + Daily Sunshine
• Weekly Spreads
• August Review
• Final Thoughts

Equipment

To create this setup, I used the following equipment:

• Coloured pencils (dark pink, pale pink, yellow, blue and green).
• Uni Pin Fine Line pen: 0.5, sepia.
• Scissors.
• Corner rounder.
• Ruler.

I wanted this setup to be really soft and gentle, so I opted to use coloured pencils throughout. I also used a brown fineliner, instead of my typical black, just to reduce the contrast and soften everything up even more. I ended up using the fineliner a lot throughout the setup, including to fill in lots of letters and scalloped borders, which took a very long time. If I’d thought ahead, I would definitely have using a thicker brown pen for this!

Cover + Quote Page

For my Cover Page this month, I really wanted to create an eye-catching, patchwork design, similar to my inspiration photo, that filled the whole page. I alternated between blocks of colour and plain, white blocks that contained flower doodles, using the same five coloured pencils throughout. I put the ‘August’ heading in the bottom right-hand corner of the design, placing one letter in each square. I also added a scalloped border all the way around the edge of the design, using my brown fineliner. I love the pretty, cosy finish the border gives the design and I think it really helps to neaten up the (otherwise pretty messy) edges!

I decided to include a Quote Page this month, alongside my Cover Page, because I wasn’t quite sure what else to do with the empty space here. I’ve not been quite so into including quote pages in my setups in recent months, but I think this one is simple and pretty, plus it sits nicely alongside the more eye-catching cover page. My quote this month is from Taylor Swift’s song, ‘august‘, because, well, of course!

Monthly Calendar

Into my Monthly Calendar now and I wanted to create a patchwork-style grid layout here too, in a similar style to my Cover Page. However, I don’t love writing in pen over sections of coloured pencil, so I opted to just draw the outlines of the block colour grid sections, instead of colouring them all in. It’s not quite as eye-catching as the cover page, but it’s definitely more functional!

Just like with the previous spread, I wrote out the ‘August’ heading in a messy, bubble-style font (painstakingly drawn and filled in with my brown fineliner), added a scalloped border around the calendar grid and added a handful of flower doodles down the right-hand side of the spread, to help tie it into the theme even more.

Things to Look Forward to + Daily Sunshine

This was a new spread combo for me last month and I LOVED using it so much, I just had to include it again this time around! On the left-hand side is my Things to Look Forward to in August page, where I can jot down all of the exciting/fun/interesting things that will (or might) be happening in August. I don’t sit down and fill this out all in one go— I just note things down as they come to me, so it’s very low pressure, but still a really fun and positive spread!

On the right-hand page is my Daily Sunshine page, which, if you’ve been here a while, you’ll recognise as one of my classic spreads. Essentially, at the end of each day I just write down one positive thing that happened: it can be anything! This helps me look back on each day with a more positive mindset (having to find a good thing even on the worst days will have that effect). It’s also so nice to look back on these spreads and relive all the lovely memories from the months gone by! I’d been having trouble keeping up with this spread recently, so I left it out of my journal for a few months there, but I reintroduced it properly last month and really held myself accountable for keeping up with it, which seemed to work, so I’m glad to have it back in my life now!

Weekly Spreads

Into my Weekly Spreads now and, as always, I’ve trimmed down the central pages (and used my trusty corner rounder, to minimise the risk of paper-induced injuries!) to create spaces on the far left and right-hand sides of this section. In those spaces, I put my general task lists, so that I can see them throughout the month, no matter what day/week I’m on.

The first 3 days of August run from Friday-Sunday this year, so I opted to just lump them in with the first full week, which cut down the number of spreads that I needed to set up. Therefore, the first weekly spread contains 10 daily boxes, while the remaining 3 contain the usual 7.

Throughout this section, I (painstakingly) drew scalloped borders around every large box (including the two task boxes). When it came to dividing up the daily boxes, I used the same coloured outline technique as my Monthly Calendar.

For the dates in the daily boxes, I drew one flower doodle in each box, then wrote the corresponding initial of the day of the week and the date itself right on top of those doodles, in the centre of each one.

I forgot to leave space for the subheading on the first weekly spread (oops!), but, on the others, I just used my brown fineliner to quickly write in which dates each spread spanned, then added a couple more flower doodles for good measure.

August Review

Finally, we have my August Review page, which has pretty much stayed the same (in terms of content/layout, at least), since October 2023! I guess that it’s been working for me, because that’s a looonnnggg time.

As always, the right-hand page features the ‘August Review’ heading (here written using a combination of the bubble-style font and a basic, lowercase font) and a large space for me to stick in a polaroid at the end of the month. This month, I decorated that space in the same way as the Cover Page, sketching out a patchwork-style design with my coloured pencils.

On the left-hand page, I have some smaller boxes (all outlined with that same, scalloped border). These will house the ATP/WTA (that’s tennis, for those who aren’t major nerds) Top 10s, my #1 Memory from the month gone by and, at the bottom of the page, my favourite songs from August. Usually I leave space to write in 6 songs, but, just because of the way this layout worked out, I only have 5 spaces this time around.

Final Thoughts

I really love this setup— it’s so fun, sweet and cosy, but still bright and summer-y: it’s exactly what I wanted (but didn’t know I wanted) for this month’s setup.

It was a bit of a pain to set up, mainly because I decided to use a fineliner for the ridiculous amount of scalloped borders and bubble fonts (very silly of me), but also because it involved a hefty amount of colouring! The colouring though, was actually quite calming: it was a bit like using a colouring book: very mindful! The fineliner-ing was less mindful, mainly because as much I love the Uni Pin fineliner, I find it SO unbelievably uncomfortable to hold?! You have to hold it a certain way to get the best ink flow but, in doing that, your finger rests just where the sharp edge of the pen is. Overall, not a pleasant experience. I’m seriously considering looking into other brown fineliners when this one runs out, just to avoid the pain!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my August bullet journal setup! Let me know what you think of it!

Gemma

xxx

Table of Contents

• Inspiration
• Equipment
• Cover Page
• Monthly Calendar
• Paris 2024
• Weekly Spreads
• August Review
• Final Thoughts

Inspiration

The 2024 Olympic Games kicked off in Paris on Friday and I am THRILLED. The Olympics are my favourite sporting event to watch and, because they only come once every 4 years, they always feel extra special. I wanted to do an Olympic-themed setup this month in honour of the games, but I also wanted to keep things simple because my energy levels are still a bit on the low side after being ill.

I decided to use the iconic Olympic Rings logo as my main source of inspiration for this setup. However, I have an irrational aversion to primary colours, so I opted to use slightly more muted versions of all of the colours. Furthermore, instead of drawing the rings in the classic 5-ring orientation of the logo, I just used random clusters of circle shapes to decorate the pages in the setup. I used both solid circles and rings to add a little more drama, while still keeping the essence of the Olympic rings.

As a final nod to the games, I used the official Paris Olympics font for my August headings (though I did draw the line at replicating this font on each of my weekly spreads- it would have looked great, but I just did not have the will power to do it!).

Equipment

To create this setup, I used the following equipment:

• Crayola SuperTips: dark pink and green (the exact shades I used were from this pastel pack).
• Tombow ABT Dual Brush Pen: 062 Pale Yellow, 452 Process Blue, N65 Cool Grey 5 and N45 Cool Grey 10.
• Sakura Gelly Roll, 10 Bold, white.
• Circle stencil.
• Pencil.
• Eraser.

Cover Page

For my Cover Page, I really went to town with the circle decoration and covered the whole double-page spread in an assortment of circles and rings. I placed the ‘August’ heading in the centre of the right-hand page.

For the circles, I used a circle stencil to lightly map out the circle shapes in pencil, then filled the shapes in with the coloured pens before erasing the pencil marks. I’m ridiculously bad at drawing circles freehand, so this felt like a much safer option for me!

Monthly Calendar

For my Monthly Calendar, I used the same coloured markers that I used for the circles to draw a grid of 5×5 boxes with rounded corners. I drew the boxes freehand, to make the process quicker and to tie this spread into the playful, doodle-y vibe I was going for. I added little circles of colour in the bottom right of each box, on top of which I wrote the dates (using my white Gelly Roll), as well as bigger circles at the top of each column, on which I wrote the initial of each day of the week. I put the ‘August’ heading in the top left, then filled the extra space with more circle/ring doodles.

Paris 2024

Seeing as this setup is celebrating the 2024 Olympic Games, it felt only fitting to create a spread to document some of the exciting moments of the games! On this spread, I have spaces to write down all of the gold, silver and bronze medals earned by Team GB, plus (the top section of) the overall Medal Table, which I’ll fill in at the end of the games.

Weekly Spreads

To keep things simple this month, I opted to forego my usual tabs. I also used the exact same layout for each of my weekly spreads (bar the first one, where I accidentally put my task list in a different place than I meant to), so that I could set them up super quickly (and with little mental effort).

Like with my Monthly Calendar, I drew all of the boxes for my daily task lists freehand, with rounded corners, using my coloured pens. I placed these down the centre of the page. In the top-left corner of each daily box, I added a little circle of colour, over the top of which I wrote the day of the week and the date, again using my white Gelly Roll.

For the most part, I put my master task list down the right-hand side of each spread by drawing another freehand box in a taller, thinner rectangle shape (though it’s a horizontal rectangle at the bottom of the page on the first weekly spread). For the subheading on this section, I drew a rectangle of colour and used my white Gelly Roll to write ‘TASKS’ on top in block capitals.

I added the weekly heading to the space on the right-hand page. If I had more energy (and determination), I would have continued using the official Paris Olympics font for these headings, but I just didn’t have it in me this month! Instead I opted to use my white Gelly Roll on top of my darker Tombow pen. It’s not quite as impactful, but it does the job!

Finally, I decorated all of my weekly spreads with even more circle doodles, placing them down the left-hand side and on the right-hand page, around the heading.

August Review

Last up, as always, is my Monthly Review page. I’ve kept the basic layout the same for this spread- on the right-hand page, there’s the ‘August Review’ heading and space for my favourite photo from the month. I added some more circle decorations here, some of which will still be visible around the polaroid, once I’ve stuck it in!

On the left-hand page, I have my usual sections along the top for the ATP & WTA Top 10 players, plus a space to write down my favourite memory from the month. Below those, I have a larger space to write down my top 6 songs of the month. To decorate this section, I used my coloured pens to draw these thicker rings that kind of remind me of vinyl records, which I thought was a fun way to tie the theme into this musical section!

Final Thoughts

Okay so, overall, this isn’t my favourite setup… I’m not sure if it’s just that the doodle-y vibe isn’t really working for me this month, or just that I found it really hard work to create (not in a sense of effort required- it only took a few hours to setup! I just couldn’t get into the swing of it like I usually do with my setups). Having said that, the colours are cheery and I know all of the spreads will be functional, so it will be perfect for getting back into the swing of using a monthly journal again.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below! Have you been watching the Olympics? My favourite sports to watch at the Olympics are definitely the gymnastics and the diving, so I’ve been loving following along with those.

Gemma

xxx

Anyway, let’s get into it, shall we?

Table of Contents

• Inspiration
• Equipment
• Cover Page
• Monthly Calendar
• Projects + Daily Sunshine
• Weeklies
  • Week 1
  • Week 2
  • Week 3
  • Week 4
  • Week 5
• August Review
• Final Thoughts

Inspiration

Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) has a very romantic, fairytale-esque vibe, so I tried to reflect that in my setup this month. I tried to incorporate some more ornate elements, as well as some slightly more detailed doodles to really reflect my source material. As usual, I completely overestimated my artistic abilities. My drawing are… not perfect (cursed hand, I’m looking at you), but I think they still convey the right vibe! Also, this setup is a veritable explosion of purple. In my defence, Speak Now has always been Swift’s ‘purple’ album, so I just had to do it, really.

A couple of (slightly more niche) sub-inspirations (is that a word? Probably not, but it will have to do): I have recently begun a collection of Taylor Swift vinyls (because, well, take my money, Taylor), so I did refer to my new Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) vinyl (I got the Orchid colourway) for some extra inspiration! One of the recurring elements in this setup, the torn purple paper, is inspired by the inside cover, as shown above.

At the time of writing, Swift has released one music video for the new album, for the song I Can See You (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault). The music video doesn’t necessarily fit the vibe I had in my head for this setup (it has a heist storyline- not really the flowery, purple fairytale I was rolling), but there was one thing that caught my eye: the gold picture frame. In fact, a gold frame was also featured in the promotional content for the album, posted by Taylor Nation, on Instagram. I think the latter may have been an Easter egg for the music video, but no matter- I knew I just had to include a gold frame in my setup. In fact, I ended up including 2! They’re not the same shape/style as the one in the video, because I wanted a slightly more romantic, fanciful vibe, but I think they are still a fun nod to the video.

As I mentioned before, I waited until I’d heard the ‘Vault’ tracks on the album before sketching out this setup (side note: I think these might be my favourite ‘Vault’ tracks, out of the three albums Swift has re-released- I found the others a little hit-or-miss, but these are all firmly hits for me!). Most of the doodles, therefore, are inspired by the 6 new song- with a couple of exceptions, here and there.

In terms of fonts, the back cover of the album includes two very distinct fonts: there is the ‘Speak Now’ cursive font, which is pretty similar to Swift’s handwriting, and the standard ‘Taylor’s Version’ font, which is a fine, block capital font with slightly thicker down strokes. I made use of both of these fonts within my setup. On the whole, I use the cursive font for headings/titles and the block capitals for subheadings and quotes.

Anyway, enough chit-chat. Let’s look at the equipment you’ll need to recreate this setup in your own bullet journal.

Equipment

• Muji 0.38mm pen, black.
• Uni-ball Signo Broad, gold.
• Tombow ABT Dual Brush pens: 623 (Purple Sage), 606 (Violet), 990 (Light Sand) and a selection of grey shades, from this pack.
• Crayola SuperTips: mainly purple shades (purple, plum, wisteria & heather), but also some other rainbow shades for the fireworks. (SuperTips don’t have ‘names’, so these are my best estimations of the shades. The exact pens that I used are from a combination of this pastel pack and this assorted pack).
• Kuretake clean colour dot pens, mild colors (for this setup, I only used the purple shade from this pack).
• Gold glitter paper (this stuff is great– it doesn’t shed and it’s easy to cut. The back of each piece of paper is white, so you can easily sketch out your designs before cutting, and it’s not as thick as regular card, so it’s great for bullet journalling!).
• Purple lined paper.
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Scissors

Cover Page

Like in my May 2023, Bridgerton-inspired bullet journal setup, I wanted to use a whole double-page spread for my cover page this month. Usually, I opt for putting my cover page on the right-hand side and a quote page on the left, but I had a vision for this setup.

This is one of two pages that feature a gold frame. To make the frame, I used the gold glitter paper and sketched out a scalloped frame on the back, before cutting it out. Within the frame, I drew (my best attempt at) a castle (partly crumbling, of course), with some dragons (an ode to Long Live) and some fireworks (an ode to both Sparks Fly and Dear John). I used a variety of grey shades from the grey Tombow pack for the castle/dragons and a selection of rainbow colours from my two SuperTips packs for the fireworks. I really wanted this drawing to have lots of little references to songs from the album, but also to convey that magical, almost childlike, fairytale vibe. I also added some torn purple paper, for extra decoration. For the monthly header, I tried to mimic the font used for the title on the album’s back cover, using two different shades of purple (I used the fine tip of my 606 and 623 Tombow pens), and added some little heart/star/twinkle doodles around it, almost like confetti, using my plum and wisteria SuperTips.

If I’m being honest, I feel like this cover page doesn’t quite live up to the rest of the setup. I don’t know if it’s just because there’s less purple on it, or because of my lack of drawing ability, but it’s just not my favourite? On the bright side, all the little Speak Now references do make my heart very happy, so it’s not all bad!

Monthly Calendar

Time is a major theme throughout the album, so I knew that I wanted to incorporate some clocks into this spread (I mean, one of the ‘Vault’ songs is literally called Timeless). I opted to use a traditional, pocket watch style for my clocks, and created a cascade of them, using my Uni-ball gold pen, going down the side of my monthly calendar. I even made sure to have some clocks pointing to specific times that are referenced in the album’s lyrics!

Aside from the clock cascade, this monthly calendar was pretty simple: I opted for my typical calendar grid, with a 6×6 box for each day. I used my purple Kuretake dot pen for the dates. For the title, I used the same two-tone style as my cover page, along with the little confetti doodles.

Projects + Daily Sunshine

Last month, I included a ‘hub’ spread in my journal for the first time. I liked it, but I’m still tinkering with it to make sure it is as useful to me as possible. This month, we have a slightly adapted version of the ‘hub’, which I have called ‘projects’ (even though it is really just my notes for this blog!). One of the ‘Vault’ songs in the album has an antique shop as its setting, so I decided to channel that vibe into this spread. I used my heather SuperTip and Uni-ball gold pen to make an ornate, shop sign-style header at the top. Speak Now also contains a lot of references to books (both directly and indirectly), so I figured this antique shop spread would be a good place to include some little easter eggs for those. In terms of content, I have a space for my scheduled posts for August, as well as any notes. I then have a larger space at the bottom, where I can fill in any specific tasks I need to do for each post. I’m hoping this will help me stay ahead of my tasks and not leave them until the last minute! For each of these boxes, I used a more traditional style for the boxes, with inverted corners, in which I drew a little gold heart.

Moving on to the Daily Sunshine spread. I must confess, it’s not… my favourite? Similarly to the cover page, I just don’t feel like it fits in very well with the rest of the setup. Nevertheless, it is one of my most used spreads every month, so I’ll have to get over it. Serendipitously, the lined paper I had been using for decoration throughout the setup had exactly 31 lines on it, the same number of days in July, so I decided to just use a sheet of that for this spread. The lines on the paper are slightly thinner than those in my bullet journal, so I had more space for my header, which, you guessed it, I made in that same two-tone style, with confetti doodles around it.

Weeklies

As always, I am using tabs to separate my weekly spreads. For the tabs, I used the 5 main purple pens that I have used throughout this setup (4x SuperTips and 1x Tombow (623)), one for each tab, arranging them in a gradient. I usually like to place something in front and behind the tabs, so they really pop, but I thought they looked nice against the white, so I just left the spaces blank instead.

For all of my weeklies, I included a little doodle with a song lyric from the album. Other than that, and the differing layouts, all the weeklies are pretty similar: they all include a cursive header that reads ‘August’, with the ‘Taylor’s Version’ font for the dates/subheadings. Pretty much all of the boxes have inverted corners with gold hearts and the subheadings for the boxes are written along purple ribbons (I used my Tombow 623 for this). Each main header is also decorated with some torn paper and more confetti doodles.

Week 1

The first week of August only has 6 days, so I had space for a larger header. For this page, I included a doodle of a phone, because telephones and phone calls pop up a lot in the album’s lyrics! Admittedly, most of the lyrics that refer to phones are a little depressing, so I opted to include the nicest one, from the ‘Vault’ song, When Emma Falls In Love.

Week 2

I can’t help but laugh when I look at this setup and that is because of one thing and one thing only: the CURSED HAND IN THE TOP RIGHT CORNER. I mean… look at it. I think I must have been labouring under some false sense of confidence when I decided that I, with my next-to-no drawing skills, was capable of drawing a hand and now we all have to live with the consequences. Anyway, I left it in because a) it makes me laugh and b) I’m not even sure I could do it any better. Anyway, this week’s quote is from another ‘Vault’ song from the album, Electric Touch (which features Fall Out Boy- random, huh?).

Week 3

I shook things up a little for Week 3 and used larger purple ‘sparkles’ for my dates. Because these naturally have inverted corners, I felt that using the same corners for the boxes alongside them might be a bit too much, so I opted for plain rectangles. I did, however, bring back the heart corners for my note and task boxes! The doodle for this week was definitely the easiest one to create: it’s just a super simple US-style mailbox, an ode to the ‘Vault’ song Foolish One.

Week 4

For Week 4, I returned to the heart corner boxes for all of my sections. I ended up having a much larger space for decoration at the bottom of the right-hand page, so I braved a moth drawing. I was pretty proud of my moth, but then, of course, I coloured it purple and now it just feels like a butterfly. Also, I gave it creepy legs. Sigh. Anyway, this drawing was inspired by the new line in Better than Revenge (which is randomly controversial, but I really like it!). I also added a little nod to Dear John on the match box.

Week 5

The final week in this setup contains the last 4 days in August and the first 3 days in September. As always, I like to include a little space for each of the days in the upcoming month, just so I can always see the whole week at a glance. For this spread, I kept the August days on the left-hand page and put the September days on the right-hand page, along with my task and note boxes. For decoration, I included a doodle ode to the numerous references throughout the album to letters, love letters and notes. For the note, I used my Tombow 990, to achieve that parchment-y kind of vibe.

August Review

I think this spread might just be my favourite in the whole setup! As I mentioned earlier, I left a blank space on the right for the tabs, but the rest is very standard in terms of my typical review spread. On the left-hand page, I have spaces for my monthly favourites, my #1 memory from the month and the ATP/WTA top 10. On the right-hand page, I have space for a polaroid in the gold frame, which I made in exactly the same way as the larger one on the cover page. I doodled some roses along the bottom, as an ode to Back to December, and coloured them in with my plum and wisteria SuperTips. For the header, I used the same cursive font for ‘August’, over the top of the torn paper, then the ‘Taylor’s Version’ font for ‘review’.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think this setup really conveys the romantic, nostalgic, fairytale that I was aiming for. I have to admit, the cover and daily sunshine pages aren’t my favourite, but I really love my weeklies and review page, in particular. I really did challenge myself with all the drawn elements in this setup (the HAND, I am truly sorry), so I’m proud of that, but I definitely think that I’ll be going for a much less drawing-heavy theme for September!

Have you listened to Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) yet? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Gemma

xxx