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