Today’s post is all about my Mid-Year Bullet Journal Setup! Every time I start a new journal, I have to re-setup all of the initial pages- things like my Future Log, Media Trackers and Tennis Calendar. This new journal will cover July through to December (though, seeing as July is already nearly over, I won’t be making a July setup this year- we’ll just skip straight to August instead, and that post should be coming soon!).

A quick note as well for anyone waiting for the 6th and final instalment of my Bridgerton House Baby Blanket Pattern: it’s on its way! Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten- I’ll be getting that post, as well as the Ravelry pattern page, out as soon as possible.

Table of Contents

• Journal
• Inspiration
• Equipment
• Cover + Quote Page
• Future Log
• Tennis Calendar
• Medical Notes + Prescriptions
• Blog Planning
• Ideas
• Bullet Journal Theme Ideas + Wishlist
• Finance + Knit & Crochet Tracker
• TV + Reading Tracker
• Final Thoughts

Journal

As I mentioned, I’ve started a new journal for the rest of 2024. I recently purchased some journals from Coral and Ink, one of my favourite UK-based stationery shops, so I had a few options to choose from! I actually purchased these journals as part of the company’s B-Grade journal sale, where they sell any journals with slight imperfections at a lower cost. It’s a great way to save money and still get a beautiful, perfectly useable journal (honestly, the imperfections on mine are barely even noticeable)!

Anyway, I selected this lilac bullet journal to use for the second half of 2024. It has a cute, gold polaroid and sunflower motif on the front, plus gilded edges, two ribbon bookmarks, a back pocket, a pen holder AND an elastic closure. I mean, what more could you want?

Inspiration

For my initial pages in a new journal, I always like to choose a theme that reflects the design of the journal itself. Unsurprisingly, then, I went with a sunflower theme this time around, using a purple and yellow colour scheme (that’s right- I know all about the colour wheel). I think it’s a really cheery theme, and the colours remind me a little of Tangled (my favourite Disney film!) which makes the whole thing even more perfect.

Because I was already so behind with my journal, it was really important to me that this setup be quick and easy to create. I decided to go down the doodle-y, ‘perfectly imperfect’ route, so the majority of the spreads are created with coloured pencils only. I know, I know- no ruler? Blasphemous. But it really sped up the whole process, which was exactly what I needed. I did also use a fineliner pen to write in some of the smaller headings and details, like the numbers, but I opted to use a brown shade, instead of my usual black, to keep things soft and a little more natural-looking. Also in the interest of keeping this setup simple and quick to make, I opted to forego my usual tab sections and scale down the number of spreads I had to create.

Equipment

As I mentioned, I kept my equipment list super minimal for this setup (no, like, for real this time). The only materials I used were:

• Coloured pencils (3 shades of yellow, 3 shades of purple and 1 shade of brown).
• Uni Pin fineliner pen, brown.
• Scissors.

That’s it! See- I can be minimal sometimes!

Cover + Quote Page

To decorate my Cover Page, I doodled some quick sunflowers, alongside some two-tone purple branches, which I scattered all over both pages. I wrote both the quote and the heading in my darkest purple pencil, in an intentionally messy, block capital font.

Future Log

The Future Log is a vital part of my bullet journal. I find that this particular layout works the best for me: I have a mini calendar for each month along the top, so that I can see the ‘shape’ of each month at a glance, then I have vertical calendars beneath them, where I can write in any appointments, plans or events. I’ve highlighted the weekend dates on my vertical calendar in a different colour, to give myself a clearer idea of which day I’m on.

I’ve actually included two double-page spreads for this Future Log: the first runs from July-December (i.e. the months covered in this bullet journal), then the second (pictured above) covers the first 6 months of 2025. I like to include a spread for these months, too, because I sometimes have appointments that are made a long way in advance and I need to be able to keep track of them too!

Tennis Calendar

Next up, we have my beloved, if slightly over-the-top, Tennis Calendar. I use a whole 6 pages for this spread, but it’s soooo worth it. I love being able to whip out my calendar and let everyone know (whether they care or not) what tournaments are coming up next.

I followed the same layout for this calendar as I’ve done in my last 2 setups: the middle two pages are trimmed down and house the heading, along with some decoration (in this case, more sunflowers and branches).

The remaining pages house the calendar itself, which I separate into months, then weeks, with ATP tournaments on the left-hand side and WTA tournaments on the right. I include the start dates of each tournament and use a little symbol to indicate what level of tournament they are: a full circle indicates a Grand Slam, a 3/4 circle indicates a Masters 1000, a semi-circle indicates a 500 event, a 1/4 circle indicates a 250 event and a star indicates a group or other event (such as, in the case of this year, the Paris Olympics!). I also have space on each side of the table to fill in the winners of each tournament.

Okay, okay, I messed up this side of the calendar a little bit. I don’t know how it happened, but my October weeks got out of sync and… I just have to make my peace with that. Still, that mistake gave me space to add some fun sections to the bottom of the page: I’ve included sections to write in the qualifiers for each of the ATP, WTA and Next Gen Finals, as well as the Year-End #1 players for both the ATP and WTA tour.

Medical Notes + Prescriptions

Next up, we have my Healthcare spreads. On the left-hand page, I have a space for any notes from my appointments- I like to jot a couple of things down to keep track of what’s happening and what my doctors are saying. You know, responsible stuff like that.

On the right-hand page, I have my typical Prescription Tracker. This is an essential page for me, because it helps me keep on top of my prescriptions and make sure I know when to reorder them from my local pharmacy, so I never run out! Whenever I get a new delivery of medicines, I count them all up and fill in this table, which helps me to work out when they will run out and, by extension, when I will need to reorder them.

Blog Planning

I’ve created a much more condensed version of my Blog Planning section this time around, using only a single, double-page spread for it. On the left-hand page, I have spaces to track my monthly growth on Instagram, keep a note of my colour Hex codes and record my intended Blogmas At Home projects.

On the right-hand page, I have a larger space to keep track of what I have posted on the blog, along with when I posted it.

Ideas

Typically, I like to separate my Ideas spread up into sections, so I can keep everything organised and accessible. This time, however, I’ve opted for more of a mind map/brain dump style page, with a simple heading in the middle and plenty of blank space around the edges of the spread to jot down any ideas.

Bullet Journal Theme Ideas + Wishlist

Admittedly, these two spreads are completely unrelated, so it’s kind of weird that they’re next to each other, but they’re both super useful pages to have! On the left-hand side, my Bullet Journal Theme Ideas page has a space at the bottom to jot down any generic theme ideas, as well as a more structured space in the top right to note down any theme ideas I have that I would like to attempt for a particular month, or are month-specific.

For my Wishlist, I decided to keep it separated into sections as usual, but tried to keep the amount of sections to a minimum. In the end, I created 6 sections: Hair & Skin (meaning, of course hair products, skincare and makeup- NOT anything Hannibal-y, I swear), Clothes, Stationery, Entertainment, Home and Accessories. I haven’t quite found the perfect Wishlist spread that works for my needs yet, so I’ll see how this setup suits me this time around!

Finance + Knit & Crochet Tracker

Again, two pretty unrelated spreads (though maybe the finance tracker will prevent me from buying copious amounts of yarn on a whim? I’m unsure…) here, but, again, both very useful in their own way! On the left-hand side, my Finance Tracker is where I weigh my costs vs my income and calculate my savings each month, to keep myself (and my expensive taste) in check. At the bottom of the spread, I have a space to jot down my income streams for each month, so I can see where my money is coming from.

On the right-hand page, I have my Knit & Crochet Tracker. I love using Ravelry, but I’m a bit useless at filling it in as I go along, so I’m hoping this spread will help me to remember when I started a project, even if I don’t log it on Ravelry until I’ve finished!

TV + Reading Tracker

Finally, two spreads that have… something in common! Welcome to the abbreviated version of my Media section. On the left-hand page I have my TV Tracker. On this spread, I write out the title of the series I’m watching, along with a little circle for each season of the show. As I finish each season, I fill in the circle. I like doing this in my journal, not so much to track my watching habits, but because I like to look back and remember all the things I’ve watched (it also means, when my dad bemoans the fact I am watching something for the 500th time, I can remind him how long it’s been since I last watched it and feel vindicated).

Finally, we have my Reading Tracker. Here, I keep track of how many books I’ve read so far this year, which books I’m reading and when I’ve read them. I’ve recently got back into reading after a pretty drastic slump, so I’m really looking forward to using this spread again!

Final Thoughts

I really love how this spread turned out- it was so quick and easy to create, which was exactly what I wanted (and needed!) this month, but I don’t feel like I had to compromise on the design side of things to achieve that. These spreads feel cheery and happy, but still kind of… tasteful, I guess? I went into creating this setup without a lot of planning and no sketching AT ALL, which was kind of scary, but kind of freeing as well? There are mistakes, of course (RIP my Tennis Calendar), but I usually make mistakes even when I plan, so I don’t think I can blame the lack of planning for that one!

I hope you love this setup as much as I do! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Gemma

xxx

Long story short, I don’t have much experience when it comes to knitting clothes! Bar the crumbs of knowledge gleaned from making a couple of Weasley Jumpers and a single, fateful pair of socks (I was horrified when I (rather belatedly, I admit) realised I had to do the whole process twice), I really don’t know much at all about knitting clothes. Which, given the huge volume of beautiful knitwear patterns in circulation at the moment, seems like a complete oversight on my part. Because of this, I’ve decided to branch out with my knitting and learn how to knit clothes that I can actually wear in my everyday life!

One thing to note here: as I mentioned earlier, my mum is a super experienced knitter- I’m really lucky that I have her expertise to rely upon throughout this process. If you do not have a knitter friend/relative who can help you with yarn suggestions and understanding patterns, don’t worry! There are plenty of online resources that can help you: check out the forums on Ravelry, or head to YouTube for video demonstrations of specific techniques.

Now that you’ve heard my knitting story and know what my aim for this project is, let’s get into this instalment of Project Knitwear and look at my first garment knit. I actually made this top around this time last year, but I wanted to start this series at the very beginning of my knitwear journey!

Table of Contents

• The Pattern
• The Yarn
• The Swatch
• The Knitting Process
• New Techniques
• Final Thoughts

The Pattern

For my first proper garment knit, I decided to make the Daphne Top by Friday Knits. It was, perhaps, a slightly ambitious choice, but it worked out fine in the end (shoutout to my mum, for putting up with my e n d l e s s questions and mini-panics). The Daphne Top is inspired by the Regency era-style fashion in the Netflix series, Bridgerton, which, if you’ve been reading the blog for a while now, you will know that I am huge fan of! I came across this pattern on Instagram (you can follow @fridayknits here, if you’re interested in seeing more patterns from them!) and immediately fell in love. I mean, it’s just so pretty! Anyway, after a little persuading from my mum, I bit the bullet and purchased the pattern. Step one, done!

The Yarn

As soon as I saw this top, I knew I wanted to make it in a pale purple shade. Funnily enough, Friday Knits has since released a dress version of the top, with the sample made in purple, which made me feel very validated. Anyway, I like to think that I just like the colour, but I have a feeling my inner Bridgerton fangirl just wanted to match Daphne’s post-marriage colour scheme. Can you blame me? Daphne looked great in purple.

I was on the fence about which yarn to use- I have a real aversion to yarns that aren’t… smooth? Which I feel is actually a super blasphemous thing to say in the knitting community, because wool is supposed to be, well, woolly, but if I can find a suitable yarn with a soft and smooth feel, I will always choose it. Having said that, I also didn’t want to spend loads of money on the yarn, given that this project could end up tossed aside in frustration! In the end, after plenty of deliberation and lots more advice from my mum, I decided to use DROPS Merino Extra Fine, which is a DK weight, 100% wool yarn- it’s actually one of the suggested yarns for the pattern. Having used the yarn, I can say that I really liked it. I’ve seen lots of comments saying that finished garments made with it lose their shape when washed, but I haven’t noticed that with this project. It was a little bit splitty and there were a few knots, but I’ve had much worse!

I opted to use the colour way 36 (Amethyst), to get that pale purple shade I wanted. I purchased my yarn from Wool Warehouse and (I believe?) it was on sale at the time (DROPS often is!). I followed the pattern for the Medium size and bought 9 balls of yarn, but I did have about 1 1/2 balls leftover, even though I added quite a bit of length to the pattern in a few areas (more on that later), so I could probably have gotten away with buying 8 balls.

The Swatch

Is it too soon to say that I despise swatching? This was my first ever gauge swatch and I hated every minute of it. I am beginning to understand why younger Gemma preferred making tiny, swatch-less toys. Ah, those were the days. Unfortunately, swatching is necessary to ensure knitted clothes fit as intended, so swatch I did. Luckily, my mum is well-versed in making swatches, so had all the helpful equipment (wool wash, foam boards & swatching pins) at the ready. On the bright side, my swatch met the required gauge on the first go (looking back, I don’t know what I was complaining about? I recently did about 8 different swatches for a single project and I am MAD at my past self for being so angsty with this single swatch).

The Knitting Process

Finally, I was on to the actual knitting! As I mentioned earlier, I made the size Medium and, to meet gauge, I worked on the suggested 3.75mm needles.

Truthfully, I did find this project quite difficult. A large part of that was caused by my inexperience at reading patterns, so having my mum close by to help was invaluable. The other part of this pattern that I struggled with was the fit. I know, I know- I blame myself for trying to make something fitted so early on in my knitting journey! I did end up making a few adjustments for my top (with varying degrees of success):

• Increased length for the bust

The pattern clearly explains how to do this, which was super helpful because I think it is designed for someone with a much smaller bust than me! I ended up doing about 9cm, instead of 6.5cm, for my bust, but I think I should have done a little bit more- the I-cord detail doesn’t quite sit in the right place on me, I don’t think.

• Shortened length of the straps

I made my straps 1cm shorter than the pattern suggested, but I did still have issues with the sleeves falling off my shoulders (something I have noticed other knitters have struggled with when making this pattern too). I have attempted to prevent this from happening quite so much by threading some 3mm elastic ribbon into the I-cord straps. You can see the elastic from the inside, but not the outside, so I don’t mind it at all. I think that, if I were to make this top again, given that the shorter straps didn’t do much to prevent the slipping, I would leave the straps at the longer, suggested length, which might help the top fit better around my bust. I also wonder if attaching the straps further in (i.e. closer to the centre of both the back and front?) would help? If I made this top again, I’d be tempted to try that, because the whole slippy-sleeve thing is really annoying. The back is pretty wide/open anyway, so I think it could work!

• Lengthened sleeves

After knitting up the sleeves, I felt like they finished at a slightly odd point on my arms, so I lengthened them a little. I’m much happier with them now!

New Techniques

While this project was quite challenging, that did mean that I learnt loads of new techniques to flesh out my knitting arsenal with, including:

• Long tail cast on
• Provisional cast on
• I-cord straps
• Applied I-cord
• German short rows
• Picking up stitches
• Seaming hems

Quick note here: I know it’s a bit soon to say but… I think I might be a German Short Row Girlie?? Once I got the hang of them, I really enjoyed knitting them up. It was so cool seeing the shape of the top develop with each row!

Final Thoughts

First up, I am SO proud of myself for making this top! It was definitely on the more challenging side (considering my abilities), but I ended up with a super neat, pretty top. For the first project in this series, I think it was super successful!

I feel that my finished garment could have done with a few more adjustments- most notably increased length in the bust. Having said that, I find this top much easier to wear after adding the elastic to the sleeves, which don’t fall down so much now, so I’m happy!

I hope you liked this first instalment of my Project Knitwear series! Thanks for reading 🙂

If you're interested...

You can buy the Daphne Top pattern here.

You can see the project page on Ravelry for my Daphne Top here.

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