My theme for this month is, of course, Bridgerton (I swear, I swear, there will be some non-Bridgerton-themed posts coming SOON… alongside a couple more Bridgerton-themed ones (#sorrynotsorry)…). With Season 3 coming out this month (in 6 days, to be precise!), I didn’t really have a choice in the matter- I just had to honour the occasion with a bullet journal theme. I did actually do a Bridgerton theme for my May setup last year, as well, but I’ve gone for a very different vibe/colour scheme this time around, so it doesn’t feel too similar!

Table of Contents

• Inspiration
• Equipment
• Cover + Quote Page
• Monthly Calendar
• Blog Planning + Daily Sunshine
• Weeklies
  • Week 1
  • Week 2
  • Week 3
  • Week 4
  • Week 5
• May Review
• Final Thoughts

Inspiration

As I mentioned, my theme for this month was Bridgerton– specifically, Bridgerton Season 3, the first half of which is set to be released on 16th May. I wanted to go in a completely different direction to my previous Bridgerton-themed bullet journal setup, so I really tried to focus on some of the themes and colours associated with the upcoming series.

Firstly, I went for a dark green and gold colour scheme. This was inspired by the new logo that the Bridgerton social media accounts have been using, in honour of the upcoming season. I opted to use POSCA Paint Pens for this, to get deep, opaque colours without risk of bleeding or ghosting. It did mean my spreads took a little bit longer to create, because I had to wait for each layer of paint to dry (and the pages did curl up a little bit, too), but, all in all, I think it’s made for a really successful setup.

I also took inspiration from several other themes/symbols from the show. These include:

• Wallflowers

The tagline for the upcoming season of the show is ‘Even a wallflower can bloom‘, which, of course, refers to the leading lady of Bridgerton Season 3 (and OG wallflower): Penelope Featherington. It’s clear that the concept of the wallflower will be integral to the plot of the upcoming season, so I really wanted to incorporate it into my setup somehow. In the end, I opted to create these green ‘brick wall’ backgrounds, then layered over some golden flower doodles, as if they were ‘growing’ up the walls.

• Mirrors

The so-called ‘mirror scene’ from the books has been all any Bridgerton fan can talk about in the run-up to this new season, so the mirror has, of course, become an iconic symbol that has been used throughout the promotional content. Because of this, I wanted to incorporate some mirrors into my setup, so I gave drawing a couple of ornate, golden mirrors a go!

• Bees

Bees are a running motif throughout the Bridgerton series, so it felt only right to include them in my setup. Every now and then, I’ve included a little, golden, bee doodle as a nod to that.

• Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers

The gossipmonger Lady Whistledown is a central character throughout the series, but will (for obvious reasons, if you’ve seen the first two series) really come to the forefront in the upcoming season. While I do have a whole page inspired by the iconic scandal sheets, I also reused the decorative border from those sheets in my weekly setups, to link my spreads together and give Lady Whistledown the recognition she deserves!

Equipment

Despite being quite an involved, ornate setup, I kept the equipment that I used for this setup fairly minimal:

• POSCA PC-5M Paint Pen, English Green.
• POSCA PC-3M Paint Pen, Gold.
• Sakura Pigma Micron, black (sizes: 01, 05, 08, 10 and Graphic 1- I bought mine in this pack).
• Ruler.
• Scissors.
• Pencil.
• Eraser.

Cover + Quote Page

For my Cover Page, I really ran with the wallflower design and created a whole page of bricks and golden flowers. I put the ‘May’ heading in the centre of the page, written in a block capital font (as my little nod to the classic, minimal font used in the show).

For my Quote Page, I created a green and gold border, then drew an ornate hand mirror in the centre of the page, using my gold pen. Inside the mirror, I wrote ‘Dearest Gentlereader’ (though I could not for the life of me decide whether it should be Gentlereader (one word) or Gentle Reader (two words)- everywhere online seems to use two words, but surely if it’s a play on gentlemen, it should just be one?! I just don’t know). To further decorate the page, I added my first little bee doodle, along with some swirly corner frames, inspired by the promotional content for Bridgerton Season 3.

Monthly Calendar

As always, I like to use a double-page spread for my Monthly Calendar, because I like to have plenty of space to write in any events/notes. For this spread, I used that same wallflower-inspired background, but, instead of doodling the wallflowers randomly across the background, I drew the flowers around the calendar grid. I placed the ‘May’ header in the top left, using the same, golden block capital font, and added another bee doodle in the bottom right.

Also, let’s absolutely not discuss the fact that I just… completely missed off 1st May in my calendar…? I have no idea how it happened, but I truly did not even notice until I was writing in the dates after I’d decorated the whole spread. Whole thing. Luckily, because I’m so late with my journal this month, it won’t affect me anyway!

Blog Planning + Daily Sunshine

Another spread that uses my wallflower-inspired background, my Blog Planning page has 4 boxes down the left-hand side, for any quick notes on my upcoming posts. I have also included a larger, more detailed box for a super fun, upcoming project I have planned, so keep your eyes peeled for that one! To keep a sense of ✨mystery✨, I haven’t added the subheading for this section yet, but I will be writing that in with a black fineliner.

For my Daily Sunshine page, I opted to forgo the wallflower background and instead tried my best to replicate the design of the Lady Whistledown scandal sheet, as seen in the show, using just my Sakura Pigma Micron pens. The layout does mean that I’ll have limited space to note down my happy memories from this month, but I think it’s worth it (I can always write super small, anyway!).

Weeklies

I typically use tabs to separate out my Weekly Spreads, but, recently, I’ve been experimenting a little with different methods/styles of doing this. Back in January, I tried out waterfall-style tabs, where you cut away the whole edge of each page, increasing the width of the pages as you go to get a staggered effect. I decided to do something similar for this setup, but I alternated between wavy floral and straight dark green edges, to achieve a pretty, striped effect. So that my spreads looked fully-decorated no matter what page I was on, I decorated the left-hand side of the first page with more of my green brick pattern.

Although I varied the orientation of each of my Weekly Spreads, I tried to keep the style/decorative features quite consistent throughout. In general, I used the same Lady Whistledown border that I used on my Daily Sunshine spread to section up the pages, wrote the subheadings in black script and highlighted them with a line of gold, then used the same font/style for the green and gold headings (except for the first page, where I accidentally drew an extra box… oh well).

Week 1

The first 5 days of May run from Wednesday-Sunday, so I only needed 5 daily task list spaces on this spread. I used the remaining space for my task list/heading.

Week 2

I think this might be my favourite layout from all of this month’s weeklies: 4 vertical boxes along the top, 4 along the bottom and the heading right across the middle.

Week 3

For this spread, I split the right-hand page into 6 sections (a 3×2 grid). I then used the bottom of the left-hand page for the remaining daily task list and the rest of the space for the heading/task list.

Week 4

For my fourth weekly, I put the heading along the top and split the remaining space into 8 (one 2×2 grid on each page).

Week 5

As usual, with my final weekly, I like to include all the days from Monday-Sunday, regardless of whether they fall in the right month or not, just to help me visualise the whole week. To set up this spread, I divided each page in two horizontally, then used vertical boxes for the days in May and horizontal boxes for the days in June, to distinguish between them. I also included a (slightly wider) task box.

May Review

For my May Review page, I’ve included all my standard sections: places to list out the ATP & WTA Top 10, to write out my top memory for the month, to note down my top 6 songs from the month and, finally, to stick in a polaroid picture. As always, I’ve placed the polaroid section on the right-hand page, along with the header, then fit the other sections into the left-hand page.

To decorate the left-hand page, I went back to my brick background (minus the wallflowers, because a) there wasn’t enough room and b) my wallflower tab gave enough floral decoration for me!). I decided to make a ‘frame’ for the polaroid this month (for the first time in a long time) and tried to mimic an ornate, rectangular mirror with my gold pen, by using lots of swirly details. Admittedly, this could just be a picture frame, but I’ll know that it’s meant to be a mirror, so I’m happy. To finish off the spread, I added two, final, little bee doodles.

Final Thoughts

This setup brought a lot of firsts for me: it was my first time using a dramatic colour scheme like this, my first time using paint pens and my first time (attempting to) draw mirrors! Overall, I’m really happy with how it turned out- it’s a very different style for me, but it’s exactly the kind of opulent, Bridgerton-y, #polin vibe I was going for!

When it comes to the paint pens, I was really happy with how they worked here. I didn’t get any bleeding or ghosting (minus one tiny patch on one of my weeklies) and the colour is pretty opaque. I did find it could be a little patchy if I didn’t press the nib down frequently enough, but I think that’s a case of user error. It was a little bit tedious having to wait for each layer of paint to dry on each page, which is part of the reason this setup took me so long to create, but honestly, it was so worth it. If I had created this setup with regular markers/gold ink pens, the colour would absolutely have transferred to the opposite pages while I was setting it up, which I feel would have ruined the effect. Long story short, it required a little extra time and effort, but the end result was better for it!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my May 2024, Bridgerton Season 3-inspired Bullet Journal setup! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments- including whether or not you’ll be watching the new season of Bridgerton on 16th May!

Gemma

xxx

For the first time ever, I have next month’s bullet journal setup all done and ready to go in advance! Wow- what an unusual experience for this habitually last-minute journaller. Is this what Marie Condo feels like when she organises the heck out of a closet? Infinite pride? I can only assume so.

This month, I was craving something light, bright and relatively simple to create. I saw this setup by Shayda Campbell on YouTube and absolutely fell in love with it. I decided to take my inspiration from the thumbnail image, which features drawings of daisies on grey paper ‘boxes’ with rounded edges, and run with that. Even though I really loved the grey colour scheme used in the original, I wanted something a little more colourful for my journal, so I used light blue paper instead, as a nod to the blue skies that I’m hoping will start showing up more and more, now we’re officially into Spring!

So, let’s get into my ‘Daisies and Blue Skies‘ April setup!

Equipment used:

• Pale blue paper
• Artistro acrylic paint pens, yellow and white (I purchased mine in this pack).
• Tombow ABT dual brush pens, N65 and N89 (I purchased mine in this pack).
• Zebra mildliner, fluorescent blue (the blue shade from this pack).
• Crayola supertip, yellow (I purchased mine in this pack).
• Sakura gelly roll, white.
• Muji 0.38 pen, black.
• Pencil, scissors, glue, craft knife and cutting board

Cover and Quote Page

My cover page this month is very simple- a rectangle of blue paper with rounded corners, decorated with a few daisies, with a simple, lowercase header (but below the decorative element, so… a footer?). For the daisies, I first used my white Sakura gelly roll to draw a rough outline, then filled it in with my Artistro paint pens. I’ve never used paint pens before, and they did have a bit of a learning curve- I learned along the way to shake the pens very well before each use and to try out the pen on a scrap piece of paper after shaking (make sure there’s no watery ring around the pigment- this means you need to shake it more!). I also found that I got a better opacity (without saturating the paper too much) if I did a thin layer initially, allowed that layer to dry (this will protect the paper a little from the wateriness of the next layer), then did a second, much thicker, layer. Another thing to note: my blue paper was very thin, so it did saturate quite easily and crumpled up a little as the paint dried. I couldn’t find a way to avoid this crumpling- you can probably see in the photo above and, indeed, in the rest of my spreads, that I did get a few creases and bubbles, even after sticking the paper into my journal- I wonder if flattening the decorated paper boxes between a couple of heavy books before sticking them in would have helped? For the stems, I used both ends of my Tombow N65 pen and purposefully embraced a messy, slightly abstract, approach (yes, this was because I could not draw attractive, realistic looking stems for the life of me).

For my quote page, I opted for a quote from the song Mr Blue Sky by the Electric Light Orchestra: ‘It’s a beautiful new day (hey, hey)’, which I feel is very apt, both for this particular setup and for my state of mind at the moment! I decorated the space at the bottom with another rounded rectangle of blue paper, decorated with more daisies.

Monthly Calendar Page

This spread is probably my least favourite- mainly because I think it diverged a little from my intended cheery daisy chains into a slightly thorny situation? Kind of Miss Havisham-esque. Sigh. I used my Tombow N65 pen to draw rounded boxes for my calendar- each box is 5×5 squares with a 1 square gap between each. I added a drop shadow to each calendar box using my N89 Tombow and filled the space on the left-hand side with a strip of blue paper, again, decorated with daisies.

Project Planning Page

This spread is a new one for me! I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed by having multiple projects going on at once and finding it hard to keep track of all of the different elements of each one, so I am trialling a ‘project planning’ page this month. I decorated the bottom of the spread with a strip of daisy-patterned paper and put the heading for the spread across the top. The 8 grey boxes in the middle of the spread are my ‘Kanban Board’ for blog posts, made in the same way as the calendar boxes with the Tombow pens. I learned about this technique from Plant Based Bride on YouTube and I’m going to trial it this month to see if it will be helpful for keeping me on track! Each box represents one stage of making a complete blog post: 1) making, 2) taking photos, 3) editing photos, 4) making a pin for the post (I have a Pinterest up and running now! You can find it here, or you can click on the Pinterest logo in the ‘Follow me!’ section at the bottom of this site), 5) writing the post, 6) proof-reading the post, 7) publishing the post and 8) posting to social media to promote the blog post. The idea is that I’ll write each post on a small sticky note, then move it through the stages as I complete each one. This way, I can keep track of multiple posts at once! On the left-hand side of the spread, I used my blue Zebra mildliner to draw a vertical box which will house a master project list. I then replicated this box on the right-hand side to house any additional notes on my projects. I actually made this spread last, but I wish I had used the wavy line header in all of my blue boxes! On my other spreads, you’ll see that I just used a straight line made with my Zebra mildliner and used my Muji 0.38 pen to write in the header in block capitals (I obviously forgot my whole vibe in this spread was lowercase lettering), but I think using a wavy line and following that line with my lettering created a much more dynamic and interesting header.

Weekly Setups

For my weekly tabs this month, I used a craft knife and cutting board to cut out half-daisy shapes, instead of my usual trapezium-shaped tabs. For the centres, I used my yellow Crayola supertip to draw a semicircle, then outlined the petals themselves with my Tombow N89, just to define them a little. As always, I like to stick contrasting pieces of paper on the left-hand side of the first page and the right-hand side of my review page to help the tabs stand out. This month, I used the same blue paper that I have been using throughout this setup.

My first weekly spread uses quite a simple setup. The first two days of April fall on a Saturday and Sunday, so I grouped them together with the first full week of the month. My daily task boxes are grey with drop shadows, while the sections for my master task list and notes are blue. For the header, I used my white Sakura gelly roll and the same lowercase font on blue paper, decorated with a couple more daisies. I also threw in a little ‘feature’ block of daisy-patterned paper to fill in the extra space on the right-hand side.

For my second weekly, I used vertical boxes for each daily section.

For the third weekly, I split the left-hand page into 6 for my daily task lists (with an added box for Sunday on the right-hand page). The rest of the space is taken up with the notes and tasks sections.

For the final weekly, I made 7 horizontal boxes for my daily task lists. The header is the same shape and size as my daily task lists, but, as with the other weekly spreads, it is made using blue paper, decorated with more daisies.

April Review

Finally, we have my April Review spread. The right-hand side is the same layout as my other monthly review pages, with the header at the top and the space for a polaroid picture at the bottom. Instead of a frame for the photo, I decided to just use a rectangle of daisy-patterned paper, which will lie underneath the left half of the polaroid when I stick that in.

On the left-hand side, as always, I have my monthly round-up sections. As with the previous months, I have a space to record my monthly favourites, the ATP top 10 and my #1 memory. Because I already have a whole spread dedicated to my projects, it felt a bit unnecessary to have another space to list out my projects for the month on this page, as I have done previously. As a result, I had space to include the WTA top 10 as well, which I am very happy about!

So, there we have it, my Daisies and Blue Skies April bullet journal setup. I’m really looking forward to using this pretty and cheery setup (I’m also hoping that by using it, I will encourage the blue skies to come…speedily)!

Gemma

xxx