I opted for a super simple design this month: something really minimal (in fact, I actively challenged myself to be as minimal as possible, because, if you’ve been here a while, you’ll know that I am many things, but minimal is not one of them), quick to create and easy to use.

Table of Contents

• Equipment
• Cover Page
• Monthly Calendar
• Things to Look Forward to in Autumn + Daily Sunshine
• Weekly Spreads
• September Review
• Final Thoughts

Equipment

To create this setup, I used the following equipment:

• Sakura Pigma Micron black fineliners.
• Tombow ABT Dual Brush Pen: 990 Light Sand.
• Ruler.
• Scissors.
• Corner rounder.

I meant what I said about being minimal this month!

Cover Page

I did some research on ‘minimal bullet journal spreads’ on Pinterest before diving into these spreads (mainly because of my aforementioned lack of inherent minimalism). I particularly liked this design, so I tried to replicate it for my Cover Page this month, using my Tombow pen in the shade Light Sand as the accent colour, instead of the green shade in the original design.

Monthly Calendar

To keep my Monthly Calendar as minimal as possible, I only separated the grid out horizontally, omitting my usual vertical lines. I have to say, I don’t love doing this (I’m a major waffler, so I need strict boundaries to keep my notes in check!), but it did make the process of setting this spread up much quicker! I used my Tombow pen to highlight the horizontal lines, wrote the dates on top of those coloured lines, then added the SEPTEMBER title at the bottom of the page.

Things to Look Forward to in Autumn + Daily Sunshine

Next up, we have two spreads that I have recently (re)introduced to my monthly setups & am still loving: my Things to Look Forward to page and my Daily Sunshine page!

The Daily Sunshine page is exactly the same as its previous iterations: just a vertical calendar format where I can write in one positive thing that happened on each day.

The Things to Look Forward to page is a little different this month, because, instead of being ‘Things to Look Forward to in September‘, it’s ‘Things to Look Forward to in Autumn‘! There’s a couple of reasons for this: firstly, I knew I had a lot of things happening in September that I was not looking forward to (just general life stuff: appointments etc) , so I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to scrounge enough fun things together to make this page the encouraging, fun addition to my journal that it’s supposed to be. Secondly, autumn is by far my favourite season: I get so excited in the run-up to it and I just love every second of it when it comes, so I figured a seasonal version of this spread was more appropriate this time around!

Weekly Spreads

Now we come to my Weekly Spreads, for which I’ve used the exact same format as recent months: I’ve trimmed down the central pages in this section, so that there are two spaces, one on each side of the spread, that are visible no matter what weekly page I’m on. These spaces house my master task lists, where I note down jobs that I need to do, but don’t necessarily have an assigned day for yet.

I added a vertical stripe of colour down the left-hand side of each master task list, using my Tombow pen. In this stripe, I can add little checkboxes alongside each individual task, so that I can easily tick them off as I complete them.

As always, I used my corner rounder to soften up the corners of the cut pages. I like how this helps these pages fit in with the rest of the journal (which also has rounded corners!), plus I feel less at risk of paper-cuts this way, so it’s a win-win!

I opted to use the same layout for each of my Weekly Spreads this month, to speed up the process. I divided each spread into 8 sections (4 down, 2 across), and used 7 of the spaces for my daily task lists. I then used the remaining space for the weekly heading (which helps me to keep track of which week I’m on!).

As I’ve done throughout this setup, I used my Tombow pen to define the different sections, then wrote the corresponding dates/days of the week over the top.

September Review

Onto the final spread in this setup now: my September Review page. The content and basic layout of this spread is exactly the same as its previous iterations: on the right-hand page, I have the ‘September Review’ heading and a space to stick in a favourite polaroid from the month. On the left-hand page, I have sections for writing down the ATP & WTA (that’s tennis!) Top 10, my #1 memory and my 6 favourite songs from the month (or my ‘September Playlist’).

As with the other spreads in this setup, I’ve used my Tombow pen to highlight the different sections, then used my Sakura fineliners for the headings and extra decorations. For this spread, that mostly just equates to a few extra lines and some little doodles on the playlist section!

Final Thoughts

Okay, so I’m not a minimal person— we’ve established that! I’m pretty happy with how this spread turned out, though: I used every ounce of my self-restraint to keep it as minimal as possible (admittedly, that self-restraint slipped a little with my doodles on the final spread, but… oh well) and I think this definitely qualifies as a minimal setup, right?!

It may not be my usual style, but this setup was exceedingly easy to create, took almost no time to make AND is super functional, which is just what I needed this month with all of the life-induced chaos. All-in-all, yes, I do generally prefer a more detailed setup, but there’s a time and place for minimal and this month was definitely that!

I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about my September setup! It won’t be too long before I’m posting again about my October one (and isn’t that a scary thought…)!

Gemma

xxx

Table of Contents

• Equipment
• Cover + Quote Page
• Monthly Calendar
• Projects + Blog Posts
• Weekly Spreads
  • Week 1
  • Week 2
  • Week 3
  • Week 4
• September Review
• Final Thoughts

Equipment

To create this setup, I used the following equipment:

• Crayola SuperTips: brown and dark brown (from this basic pack).
• Tombow ABT Dual Brush Pen: 990 Light Sand.
• Sakura Gelly Roll, 10 Bold, white.
• Uni Pin fineliner pen, brown.

Cover + Quote Page

For both the ‘September’ title and the quote, I used the darker brown SuperTip marker and a bubble lettering style. I also used my white Gelly Roll to add some definition to each letter. I filled the rest of the spread with little croissant doodles, which I drew using the lighter shade of brown and the Tombow pen. To draw the croissants, I started with the centre ‘segment’ of each one, then worked my way outwards, alternating between the two shades of brown, to give the croissants definition.

For my quote this month, I wanted something croissant-themed, but, unsurprisingly, croissant quotes are a little hard to come by. In the end, I found this quote: ‘When in doubt, add more butter’, which was possibly said by Ina Garten- the Barefoot Contessa (and OG Butter Lover), but I can’t find a definitive source for that claim… (100% something she would say though). Anyway, the quote felt fitting, both for my bullet journal theme and my life at the moment (I too love butter), so I went with it.

Monthly Calendar

I love the soft, playful vibe of rounded boxes, but I am terrible at drawing rounded corners. Last month, I drew out each rounded box individually for my Monthly Calendar, but this month I decided to give myself a break and drew the calendar as two grids, one on each page, rather than a series of individual boxes. It was much quicker, much easier and only required 10 rounded corners (as opposed to 124…). I drew the grid using the lighter brown marker, then used the Tombow pen to add a drop shadow (hello, my old friend) to each grid, as well as a little spot of colour in each grid square for the dates. I wrote in the dates using my brown fineliner, staying true to my shades-of-brown colour scheme. I added the header along the top, in the same dark brown bubble font, then filled in the rest of the space with, you guessed it, more croissants.

Projects + Blog Posts

I always end up with a lot of projects this time of year (it’s COZY season- it’s not my fault!), but I’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed with them lately. I decided to dedicate a couple of spreads in this setup to helping myself stay on top of what I’m working on and where I’m at with each project.

On the left-hand page, I have my Project Tracker. This is just a basic grid, drawn in the same way as the calendar grid, but with a header row at the top that I highlighted using my Tombow pen. On the far-left, there’s a column titled ‘c’ for ‘Craft’. Here, I’ll write in which craft each project is: knitting, crochet, baking, sewing etc. Then, there’s the biggest column, for the name of the project. I highlighted every other line in this column with my Tombow pen, to make the table easier to use (and to add some more colour to the page). Then, there’s 5 more columns for checking off my progress on each project: ‘m’ for materials (acquired), ‘c’ for created and ‘f’ for finished, as well as ‘s’ for start date and ‘e’ for end date.

On the right-hand page, I have my Blog Post Tracker. This is a simplified version of the Kanban Board that I had in my previous bullet journals for a while there, but I’m hopeful that it will help me to keep track of the multiple posts I’m working on at the moment. The table is created in exactly the same way as the Project Tracker, but the columns this time are: ‘m’ for made, ‘p’ for photos, ‘w’ for written, ‘e’ for edited, ‘ep’ for edited photos, ‘p’ for pin and the final column, with the tick, is for when the post is ready to go live.

Weekly Spreads

Into the Weekly Spreads now and, as usual, I’ve kept the basic elements the same for each weekly, but varied the layout for each one. This month, each weekly features croissant doodles and a bubble font-header, as well as boxes for my master and daily task lists. I added drop shadows to all of my boxes, as well as little rounded oblongs in each box to write in the subheading/date, with my Tombow pen. I also added some highlighting to the task boxes on each page, just to help differentiate those boxes from the daily boxes.

Week 1

The first day of September is a Sunday this year, so I opted to merge it with the first full week in the month and create an 8-day spread for the first ‘weekly’. I used a simple layout of 2×2 grids, with a horizontal box in the top right for my master task list.

Week 2

For the second weekly spread, I used this asymmetrical layout, with a vertical task box down the far right, which left me with plenty of space on the left for croissant doodles.

Week 3

For the third weekly, I used my favourite vertical layout, where each page is divided into 4 columns, 7 of which are used for my daily task lists and 1 of which is used for my master task list.

Week 4

The last day of September is a Monday, so, like with my first weekly spread, I opted to merge my weeks and create another 8-day spread for the final ‘weekly’. I also tried out this new ‘L-shaped’ layout, which I actually really love!

September Review

Finally, as always, we have my Monthly Review page. The content of this one is exactly the same as my usual monthly review pages- on the left-hand page, there are 4 sections: 1 each for writing down the ATP & WTA Top 10, 1 for writing down my favourite memory and 1 for my favourite songs from the month gone by. I like to give myself space to jot down 6 different songs because I am chronically indecisive. I really like the effect here of using the darker brown marker to doodle in these super simple ‘scrapbook-style’ corners for the album covers!

On the right-hand page, I have the ‘September Review’ heading, which I wrote in that same bubble font, as well as copious croissant doodles. I’ll stick my polaroid of the month on top of the croissants on the page, so there will still be a few peeking out around the edges.

Final Thoughts

This spread was super quick and easy to create, and I really love how it turned out. The croissant doodles are by no means realistic, but I think they still give a good croissant impression. Overall, this setup has all the cozy, almost-autumn vibes I was craving, and I can’t wait to start using it and counting down the days to autumn!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my bullet journal setup for September- I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below!

Gemma

xxx

After much (much) deliberation, I ultimately settled on this cityscape theme for this year. I just love the contrast of the rustic, torn kraft paper and the sharp, black silhouette- it feels simultaneously comforting and dramatic, which I am very much for.

Table of Contents

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

Inspiration

I took inspiration from a multitude of places (pun… kind of intended?) for this month’s bullet journal setup. First and foremost, as I mentioned, I wanted to work some kraft paper into whatever theme I ended up using, so that was my starting place. With the US Open approaching, as the not-so-subtle tennis fan that I am, my initial idea was to do something with the New York City skyline. While I’m very much a small-town girl (living in a lonely world…?), I have always loved a city skyline. I even have a picture of the London skyline on my bedroom wall! I did a bit of research, but ultimately I decided that I just didn’t have enough knowledge of the architecture in New York to make a whole journal setup inspired by it- I just think it would have felt a bit…superficial? I still liked the idea of a city skyline, but there just isn’t a city that I feel strongly enough connected to to make a whole setup about it. Then, I realised: it doesn’t have to be a full city skyline! I can just take elements of cityscapes from around the world that I like, or that I think would look cool, and place them next to each other for my own, personalised city scape.

Initially, I planned to create my cityscape using a black fineliner and a ruler to make a line art cityscape. When it came down to it though, I just didn’t think I would do a neat enough job to achieve the look I wanted. In the end, I decided to use black paper and a craft knife to cut out a cityscape. It took a little bit of patience, but I think it looks super clean and dramatic- exactly what I wanted!

Equipment

• Kraft paper (I used this brand).
• Black paper.
• Sakura Gelly Roll, 10 Bold, white.
• Muji 0.38mm pen, black.
• Tombow ABT Dual Brush pen, N15 black.
• Glue pen (I used this brand) + a regular glue stick.
• Craft knife + cutting mat.
• Alphabet stamps + ink pad.
• Hole punch.
• Scissors.
• Ruler.
• Pencil.
• Eraser.

Cover Page

I went all out with my cityscape for my cover page. It definitely took me the longest of any of the decorations in this setup, but I didn’t mind putting a little extra effort into this one to make sure it really set the scene for the rest of the setup! I included landmarks from several different cities in this setup: there’s the London Eye and the Shard (both buildings in, as the name of the former suggests, London), then I have the Empire State Building (from New York), the Golden Gate Bridge (from San Francisco) and the Eiffel Tower (from Paris). I chose these structures because they are pretty recognisable (even in a simplified form!) and there is a good array of shapes in there, which gives my cityscape a bit more dimension.

I started out by sketching the cityscape onto some black paper. This will be the back of your cityscape, so remember to draw your buildings back-to-front if they are not symmetrical! After that, I placed the paper onto a cutting mat and used a craft knife to cut along the top of the skyline. From there, I could move the piece about more easily, which made cutting out the intricate details much more straightforward. I cut out the details, working slowly and carefully to make sure I didn’t rip the paper (though I did cut through it a couple of times! No matter though, you can just line the two edges up when you stick the cityscape into your journal). To add extra definition, I added some very fine cut-outs, both where two buildings met each other and within some of the more simply-shaped buildings. This got a little bit tricky where I had the Shard behind the London Eye, but it wasn’t too bad overall!

Once I had my cityscape, I just glued some torn kraft paper into the bottom right-hand corner, then used a glue pen to stick down the cityscape on top of that. I used a glue pen because this cityscape is very fine- if you use a glue stick, you might end up tearing it and ruining all of your hard work! I’ve never actually used a glue pen before, but I have been wanting to try one for ages and I thought this was the perfect excuse. Honestly, I loved it! I hate using glue sticks- I always end up covered in glue no matter how hard I try. The glue pen makes the whole process so much less messy. You have to work speedily, because the adhesive does dry quite quickly and it is surprisingly strong, so you can’t manoeuvre the paper around as much as you can with a glue stick, but, once you get used to it, it’s magical. 10/10, would recommend. I did cut my cityscape in half vertically before sticking it in, so that I could stick it more seamlessly over the seam between the two pages, but that probably isn’t super necessary. After that, all that was left to do was to add the ‘September’ heading, which I made using the capital letter stamps in my alphabet stamp set. And there you have it, my September cover page!

Monthly Calendar

As always, I like to use a full double-page spread for my monthly calendar, so that I have plenty of space to write in all the important dates for the month. I started by decorating the page with another (more simplified) cityscape, so that the cityscape would lie behind the calendar, almost as if it is in the distance. To make this cityscape, I followed the same process that I used for the cover page cityscape, but kept all the buildings as basic rectangles. I tried to vary the size, shape and position of the windows to add some intrigue, and, as with the first cityscape, I cut small incisions between each building to add definition. Again, I used my glue pen to stick down the cityscape.

For the calendar, I stuck two rectangles of kraft paper onto the spread. I wanted to get a rustic, torn look, but I still wanted the rectangles to be quite neat (i.e., not ripped all over the place and looking more like triangles!). To do this, I drew out my rectangle, making sure to place it about 5mm in from the edges of the paper. Then, I lightly scored along each of the lines (you can do this by placing a ruler on the line, then gently dragging a craft knife/open pair of scissors along the ruler), before tearing along each scored line. This method will help you to achieve a more even tear, so that your kraft paper looks rustic, but intentionally rustic.

On top of each kraft paper box, I drew a grid of 25x25mm boxes using my Muji 0.38mm pen. For the dates, I used a hole punch and some black paper to make lots of little black dots, which I then stuck into the bottom right-hand corner of each box using a small dot of glue from my glue pen. Once they were all stuck down, I wrote the dates on each dot using my white Sakura Gelly Roll. After that, I just stamped out the September heading with the same capital letter alphabet stamps as the cover page.

Blog Planning + Daily Sunshine

Next up, we have the page that I use for planning my blog content. If you’ve been here for a little while, you might have seen this spread evolving over the past few months, as I have been rearranging, reworking and renaming it on a monthly basis, trying to create a spread that suits my needs. Last month, I trialled some mini to-do lists, one for each post, in this spread and I found it really helpful. This month, I’ve decided to make the to-do lists a little less ‘mini’ and dedicate the whole page to them! As a result, this spread is comprised of 4 kraft paper boxes (made using the same scoring + tearing technique as the calendar on the previous spread), one for each post. Like my calendar spread, I used the black dots from the hole punch and a white pen for the labels. The heading was made using the same capital letter alphabet stamps and I kept the decoration on this page very minimal, with just two little skyscraper silhouettes.

As always with my Daily Sunshine page, I like to leave as much space as possible for myself to write out my happy memories & positive thoughts, so I only had a small amount of space to play around with in terms of decoration. In the end, I went for another cityscape running along the top of the page, above the heading, which I stamped onto a kraft paper strip. To spice things up a little bit, I also added two black lines, one thick and one thin, which I drew using my Tombow N15 and Muji 0.38mm pen, respectively. I used the same Tombow to draw out a rectangle, 30 lines tall (one per day), for writing down my happy notes, then stuck a strip of black paper down the left-hand side, onto which I wrote out the dates for the month in my white Sakura Gelly Roll.

Weeklies

As always, I’m using tabs to separate my weekly spreads in this setup. I like to do this so that I can easily navigate between the pages, but I also like the way it creates some distinction between my weekly spreads and the rest of the monthly pages. This month, I opted to use slightly longer tabs than usual, because I knew I wanted to fit the month into 4 spreads, instead of the typical 5. I covered both sides of the tabs with black paper, then stuck a strip of kraft paper onto both the left-hand side of the very first weekly and the right-hand side of my September Review page, so that the tabs would lie against the kraft paper, no matter how you looked at them.

I kept each of the 4 weeklies pretty consistent in terms of setup/decoration. Much like the rest of this setup, every heading is made with the capital letter alphabet stamps, which I also used to indicate the day of the week for each daily task list. All of the daily task lists, notes boxes and master task lists are made with kraft paper boxes, while all of the dates are made from the same black dot/white pen combination that I have used throughout the setup. For the longer subheadings, I used a small strip of black paper (about 5mm thick) and used the same white pen to write the heading in a simple, lowercase font. To decorate the pages, I stuck a simplified cityscape along the bottom of each weekly spread, so that, as you turn the page, the skyline just seems to keep going and going!

Week 1-2

Because there are only 3 days in the first week of September, I opted to combine them with the second week and make a single spread for the first 10 days of the month. To do this, I created a 5×2 grid of kraft paper boxes, starting from the bottom left of the spread, for my daily task lists. I used the remaining room at the top of the right-hand page for a notes section, then the remaining space on the right for a master task list. I placed the header in the space in the top left.

Week 3

The second weekly spread spanned a single week, so it was much more straightforward to create. I opted to use square kraft boxes for my daily task lists, then filled the remaining space on the left-hand page with an elongated box for my master task lists and a smaller box for notes. On this spread, I put the header in the bottom right.

Week 4

I went back to basics with the third weekly spread and used my favourite long & thin boxes for my daily/master task lists. My box for notes went at the top of the right-hand page, opposite the header.

Week 5

I have to admit, I don’t really like using horizontal boxes in my weeklies, but I always seem to end up making at least one spread with horizontal daily task lists. Sigh. It’s a curse. The final day of September falls on a Saturday this year, but, as always, I like to be able to see my whole week at a glance, so I did include the first day of October in this spread as well. I placed my notes box on the far left and my task box on the far right, while the daily task lists are all in the centre, with the heading in the bottom left.

September Review

Nothing all that new with my Review page this month- I still have a space for a polaroid on the right-hand page and 4 sections for monthly roundups on the left-hand page (as always, there’s one box each for the WTA/ATP Top 10, one for my monthly favourites and one for my #1 memory). I continued on with the same decoration as my weeklies, with the skyline placed across the bottom and the kraft paper boxes, black paper subheadings and stamped header.

Final Thoughts

I am IN LOVE with this setup. I’ve been doing some more doodle-y themes over the past few months, which, while they’re fun and cute, just aren’t really my forte. I feel much more at home doing these slightly more dramatic, collage-based themes.

As an added bonus, I feel so much more confident with a craft knife after making this setup, which I think is a good skill to have! While it took a little bit of time to make all of the cityscapes for this setup, I think that the technique has such a high payoff in terms of impact.

Also, two important things to take away from this post:

1. Kraft paper is love, kraft paper is life.
2. Glue pens are magical and I love them.

I hope you like this cityscape bullet journal setup! Have you been to any of the cities featured on my cover page? I’ve only been to London and San Francisco, but I’d love to go to New York and Paris as well one day!

Gemma

xxx