The first recipe in this series is for these Pink & Green Checkerboard Biscuits: my tribute to the Li Sisters, Rosamund and Posy, who made their debuts in Season 4.

Table of Contents

• The Inspiration
• Ingredients
• How to Make Pink & Green Checkerboard Biscuits
• Recipe

The Inspiration

Season 4 of Bridgerton is, at its heart, a Cinderella story. As part of that, it follows the oft-used approach of having one of ‘Cinderella’s’ stepsisters be, well, nicer than the other: in this case, Posy is an absolute sweetheart and Rosamund is… I guess, whatever the opposite of that is.

Do you guys remember that old nursery rhyme that says something about girls being made of “sugar, spice and everything nice”? These two characters really remind me of it: Rosamund feels very spice and Posy feels very sugar. The official Bridgerton Instagram account ALSO referenced sugar and spice with regard to these characters (you can see the post here!), which made me feel extremely validated, so I figured that the whole sugar & spice thing would be a great concept for this recipe.

Last Christmas, I made Swedish Schackrutor for the first time as part of my Baking Around the World series. These tiny shortbread biscuits have a 2×2 checkerboard pattern, made with a combination of vanilla and chocolate dough. I thought these checkerboard biscuits would be a perfect base for this recipe: two sisters, two completely difference personalities and two doughs, all coming together to make one (delicious) biscuit!

When it came to deciding on the flavours, I was partially influenced by the whole sugar-and-spice vibe, but also partly by colour. In much of the promotional media for Season 4, Rosamund and Posy are seen wearing pink and green floral-print dresses: both fabrics feature the same pattern, but the colours are inverted. This fit so well with the checkerboard biscuit idea, I just had to make these biscuits pink and green, which heavily inspired the resulting flavours. I also love that these biscuits feel super Bridgerton: they’re colourful and fun, but they’re also fancy and delicate.

I’m not opposed to using food colouring, but, if I can, I prefer to use more natural alternatives. These biscuits are food-colouring free, tinted pink and green by the freeze-dried strawberry powder and matcha powder, respectively. Strawberry and matcha not only fit the pink-and-green colour palette perfectly, but they’re also a really delicious pairing, as evidenced by the strawberry matcha lattes that went viral over the past year (or two years? Or five years? I’m not even sure…)! I really liked the idea of these biscuits referencing the time period in which Bridgerton: Season 4 was released, as well as being inspired by the Regency setting of the show, so I ran with the flavour combo.

I did, however, want to incorporate a spicy element into the biscuits, so I opted to pair the strawberry flavour with pink peppercorns. I’ve actually heard of people pairing strawberries with black pepper before, so I figured pink peppercorns weren’t too much of a stretch: they’re milder (though they still bring a little bit of warmth to the dough), with a slight citrus-y note, and fit the pink colour palette perfectly, so I figured they’d be a great option here!

Honestly, I’m not usually the biggest fan of matcha (sometimes I just find it a little too earthy?), but I had a matcha panna cotta once that I absolutely loved and I think the difference was the presence of vanilla in the recipe: it really brings out the sweetness of the matcha without overpowering its flavour. Therefore, I opted to include a small amount of vanilla bean paste in the matcha dough, to make it a little more sweet and a little more delicious (for me, at least!).

Ingredients

The basic biscuit dough is a simple shortbread, using the classic 1-2-3 ratio of caster sugar-butter-plain flour (the same base that I used for my Schackrutor recipe). I’ve used unsalted butter here, but you can use salted butter if you prefer.

This recipe doesn’t make a huge batch of biscuits (they’re pretty tiny!), but you can easily scale it up to make more if you want.

To flavour the doughs, I used the following 4 ingredients:

• Freeze dried strawberries

It turns out that freeze dried strawberries aren’t as readily available as freeze dried raspberries in the supermarkets near me (who knew?), so I purchased mine on Amazon. They’re a great way of getting loads of strawberry flavour into bakes, particularly ones like shortbread that can’t handle too much additional liquid.

I bought freeze dried strawberries slices and ground them into a fine powder myself, using a mortar and pestle. If you can find them in powder form, you can absolutely buy them like that instead.

• Pink peppercorns

Surprisingly, pink peppercorns are not related to the classic black peppercorns we know and love (I’m lying, black pepper and I do not see eye to eye). Pink peppercorns are actually a dried berry! However, because they have a pepper-y flavour, they’re often grouped together with the other peppers of the world. Along with their relatively mild, but still warming, pepperiness, they have an almost citrus-y flavour, which works really well with the fruitiness of the strawberries and the earthiness of the matcha powder.

You can of course leave the pink peppercorns out to make these into Strawberry Matcha biscuits. I’d probably still keep the vanilla in if you do this, just to really highlight the matcha flavour.

• Matcha powder

Make sure you get a high quality, pure matcha powder (not one of the flavoured alternatives) for this recipe. It can be quite expensive, but you don’t need much at all for this recipe.

• Vanilla bean paste

I like to use vanilla bean paste in these biscuits because it adds plenty of vanilla flavour without adding as much liquid as regular vanilla extract would (and without the faff of dealing with a vanilla bean). As I mentioned earlier, I find that adding vanilla to matcha desserts really brings out the sweetness of the matcha, so I definitely think it’s a worthwhile addition to this recipe!

How to Make Pink & Green Checkerboard Biscuits

Making the base dough for these checkerboard biscuits is super easy: you just put the ingredients (sugar, butter and flour) into a food processor (I use a mini one) and pulse/process until everything comes together. That’s it!

Things get a little more complex when it comes to flavouring and shaping the biscuits, but it’s still pretty straightforward once you know what you’re doing.

First things first, split the dough into two equal portions. I like to use a weighing scale for this to make sure that both halves of the dough are exactly the same size.

Add the matcha powder and the vanilla bean paste to one half of the dough. To the other half, add the freeze-dried strawberry powder and the ground pink peppercorns.

Working with one dough at a time, knead in the flavourings until they are evenly distributed throughout the dough and the colour is even.

Once you have both doughs ready to go, you need to split both of them up into smaller portions. Again, I like to use a weighing scale for this to ensure the portions are all the same. Start by dividing each ball of dough into 3 equal portions.

Then, divide 2 of each of those 3 portions in half again. You should be left with 1 large ball and 4 small balls of each dough flavour. The smaller balls will form the checkerboard body of the biscuits, while the larger ball will be rolled out and wrapped around the biscuits to form the border.

Use your hands and a bench scraper (or a clean, metal ruler: anything that will help you to really square off the edges of the dough) to shape each of the smaller balls into rectangular logs (you want the cross section of each log to be approximately 1 cm x 1 cm), making sure the logs are as equal as possible in length. You should end up with four green logs and four pink logs.

Carefully press each green log up against one of the pink logs, making sure they are stuck together, but being careful not to squish the dough out of shape too much.

Place one pair of logs on top of another pair of logs, positioning it so the top green section sits on top of the bottom pink section and vice versa. This creates the checkerboard pattern. Again, press them together, but try not to distort the shape too much. Repeat this process for the second pair of logs, so that you have two short cuboids featuring a 2×2 checkerboard pattern.

Now, it’s time to wrap the biscuits in their final dough layer! This gives the biscuits a really pretty border and makes them feel that little bit fancier (if you’d prefer to make the biscuits sans border, follow the instructions on my Swedish Schackrutor post instead— the dividing of the dough is a little less complicated if you do it that way too!).

Take one of the large dough balls and roll it out between two pieces of baking paper (you don’t want to use flour at this stage, because it will prevent the dough from sticking to the biscuit logs, so the baking paper is there to stop it from sticking to your work surface/rolling pin!). Aim for a rectangle the slightly wider than the length of one of your checkerboard logs, and long enough to wrap around the whole thing (approx. 8cm). Try to keep the thickness as even as possible, so that the border looks super neat.

Peel off the top layer of baking paper, then place one of the logs onto the dough, positioning it at one end.

Use a sharp knife to trim along the back of the log, as well as down both sides, flush with the edges of the log. This will make the final dough layer really neat.

Use the baking paper to help you roll the log down the length of the dough, wrapping it up in the dough as you go and pressing the edges gently to ensure the dough sticks to itself, until you’ve covered the whole thing like a little Battenberg. Trim off any excess dough at the end.

Repeat this process for the second log, using the other dough flavour (the final ball!) to cover it. Wrap both of the biscuit logs tightly in clingfilm, then place into the fridge to chill for 2 hours. This will firm the dough up, so that you can slice the logs without distorting your hard-earned checkerboard pattern.

There’s no need to throw away the dough offcuts— roll them all together and form them into a couple of round biscuits (top left in the photo above!). Aim to make these biscuits a similar size to the cross section of your biscuit logs (approx. 3-4cm in diameter). You can bake them alongside the ‘official’ biscuits as little chef’s treats later!

Once the logs have chilled, unwrap them and use a sharp knife to cut them into slices, approx. 5-7mm thick.

Space the biscuits out on a baking tray, lined with baking paper (they won’t spread too much, so just leave a little gap between them). Bake them at 180°C (conventional oven, not fan) for 6-8 minutes, until they’re just turning golden around the edges (this is usually easier to see in the strawberry-flavoured sections than the matcha ones!).

Allow the biscuits to cool on the tray for 5-10 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely before enjoying.

Leftover biscuits can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for about 3 days before they start going a little soft.

Recipe

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Pink & Green Checkerboard Biscuits

Inspired by the Li Sisters in Bridgerton: Season 4, these shortbread biscuits are the perfect blend of sugar and spice. Two doughs, one flavoured with matcha and vanilla, the other with strawberry and pink peppercorns, come together to make a delicious, checkerboard-pattern treat

Course Dessert, Snack

Keyword Matcha, Pink peppercorns, Shortbread, strawberry, Vanilla

Prep Time 1 hour hour

Cook Time 8 minutes minutes

Chill Time 2 hours hours

Total Time 3 hours hours

Servings 16 biscuits

Ingredients

• 25 g caster sugar
• 50 g unsalted butter, diced and softened.
• 75 g plain flour
• 1/2 tbsp freeze dried strawberry powder (see Note 1).
• 1/2 tsp pink peppercorns, finely ground.
• 1/2 tsp matcha powder
• 1/8 tsp vanilla bean paste

Instructions

• Place the sugar, butter and flour into the bowl of a food processor (I use a mini one). Pulse/process until a dough forms.
• Use a weighing scale to divide the dough in half, then place each half into a separate bowl. Knead the freeze dried strawberry powder and ground pink peppercorns into one of the dough halves, then knead the matcha powder and vanilla bean paste into the other.
• Divide each ball of dough into 3 equal pieces. Then, divide 2 of the 3 balls in half, so that you are left with 1 large ball and 4 smaller, equal balls of each colour.
• Use your hands and a bench scraper (or a clean metal ruler/anything that can be used to square off the edges of the dough) to form each of the smaller balls into short, rectangular logs (the cross section should be about 1 cm x 1 cm) of the same length. You should end up with 4 green logs and 4 pink logs.
• Press one pink log alongside one green log. Make sure they are stuck together, but try not to distort the shape too much. Repeat this for the remaining logs.
• Press one pair of logs on top of another, positioning them so that the top green section sits on the bottom pink section and vice versa. Repeat this for the second pair of logs, so that you end up with two larger, rectangular logs with a 2×2 checkerboard pattern.
• Roll out one of the larger dough balls between two sheets of baking paper. Don't add any flour at this stage. Aim to roll the dough into a rough rectangle, slightly wider than the length of one log and a little over 8cm long, so that it can be used to wrap all the way around one of the logs.
• Peel off the top sheet of baking paper, then place one of the logs on top of the rolled out dough, at one end. Use a sharp knife to trim off the excess dough along the back of the log and down both sides, flush with the edges of the log.
• Using the baking paper to help you, roll the log down the length of the rolled out dough, pressing gently to help the dough stick to itself, until it is completely covered, like a Battenberg. Trim off any excess dough, then repeat the process for the second log with the final, large ball of dough (in the other colour).
• Any offcuts can be rolled together and pressed into little round biscuits to be baked alongside the checkerboard biscuits later.
• Wrap both biscuit logs tightly in clingfilm, then place them into the fridge to chill for 2 hours. This will firm them up, so that you can slice them without distorting the checkerboard pattern.
• After 2 hours, preheat the oven to 180°C (conventional oven, not fan). Slice each log into biscuits about 5-7mm thick, then space them out on a baking tray lined with baking paper. The biscuits won't spread very much, so you don't need to leave heaps of room between them.
• Bake the biscuits for 6-8 minutes, until just starting to turn golden around the edges. Allow them to cool on the tray for 5-10 minutes, then carefully transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling before serving. The biscuits can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days before they start going a little soft.

Notes

1. If you buy the slices of freeze dried strawberries, this works out at approximately 2g (or 5ish slices). Grind the slices into a fine powder using either a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder. 

Table of Contents

• The Pattern
• The Yarn
  • Cascade Heritage: Mini Review
• The Knitting Process
  • Cuff + Picot Edge
  • Colourwork
  • Short Row Heel
  • Foot
  • Toe
  • Weaving in the Ends
• New Techniques
• Final Thoughts

The Pattern

The Itty Bitty Berry Socks are worked cuff-down and in the round. Stranded colourwork with three shades of yarn is used to create the super cute, repeating strawberry pattern. The folded cuff features a picot edging in a contrast colour and the socks are ankle-length, so they are perfect for spring and summer! The pattern also includes a Short Row Heel and a Wedge Toe (the latter of which is finished off by grafting the remaining stitches together).

The pattern is written with the Magic Loop method in mind, but I opted to use short circular needles instead. This was my first time using short circulars for socks and I found them so helpful for the colourwork: my colourwork often gets a little untidy at each side of the sock when using Magic Loop, but using the short circular needles really eliminated that problem (and made the whole process absolutely fly by, which is an added bonus!). I’d definitely use this method again.

The pattern also includes a section on ‘Knitting Colourwork Tips’, which basically talks about carrying the floats (specifically for sock-knitting), yarn dominance and weaving in the ends. This was really helpful and I would definitely recommend reading through it before you get started if you make these socks. However, I didn’t use the ‘Weavin Stephen’ method mentioned for weaving in the ends and opted to just weave them in with a needle later on, because I think this gives a more secure finish.

I’m a UK Size 6 and I have pretty narrow feet. I made a Size 2 in this pattern. I did add an extra 1-strawberry repeat (an additional set of rounds 1-10) to the foot of my socks (so, in total, I had 6 rows of strawberries on the feet), just to get the right length for my feet. The fit isn’t perfect: the socks themselves are actually quite thick (an unfortunate side effect of 3-colour colourwork!) and they just don’t fit my foot quite as snugly as I would have liked, especially for a short, summer pair of socks. I think the smaller size would be too small though, so I wonder if a different yarn (perhaps a slightly more hardwearing/stretchy, or even just a thinner one) might help?

The Yarn

I used Cascade Heritage yarn for these socks, in the following shades: Strawberry Cream (5648), Red (5607) and Sage (5635). I opted for a paler pink background shade than the one in the pattern, simply because I like the contrast of the colours.

Cascade Heritage is a 4-ply, 75% wool/25% nylon yarn that comes in 100g skeins. I used it with the recommended needle size from the pattern (2.25mm). For my socks, I used the following amount of each shade:

• Strawberry Cream: 43g
• Red: 13g
• Sage: 5g

Cascade Heritage: Mini Review

This was my first time using Cascade Heritage and I really loved knitting with it! It’s super soft and comes in a huge range of different colours, so I think it’s a really good option for colourwork projects. It doesn’t feel like it’s the most hardwearing sock yarn— it’s a little too soft (bordering on silky, in a fluffy kind of way) for that, and it doesn’t have quite the same level of stretchiness as other 75:25 wool/nylon blends, but it feels very comfortable against the skin and shows the colourwork pattern well.

After blocking, I did find that the yarn fluffed up quite significantly: it’s not a huge problem, but it definitely has a different feel post-blocking to when you’re knitting with it, which is a shame. I also found that blocking it didn’t even out my colourwork as much as I expected, which was also a shame (this could absolutely be because of the neatness of my colourwork, but I did feel my floats were pretty even?)!

The yarn comes in 100g skeins and is priced at £8.99 a ball, which feels like quite a reasonable price point.

Overall, I would absolutely use this yarn again, but the post-blocking fluff-up is definitely a drawback for me.

The Knitting Process

I really enjoyed the process of making these socks: I do like knitting stranded colourwork and this was such a simple, repetitive chart that I felt like I could really get to grips with the process and find a colourwork method that works well for me (which I did— more on that in a second!). I did make a few, slight changes to the pattern here/there, so I’ll be sure to highlight those here as I go through the process.

Cuff + Picot Edge

The cuff is folded over in the pattern (which is one of my favourite things to do with sock cuffs, because I find it really helps the socks to stay on my feet!) and features a picot edge worked in a contrast colour.

I opted to use a crochet provisional cast-on for the cuff and knit the folded cuff edges together (as opposed to whip-stitching them together, as suggested by the pattern). I prefer to knit my folded cuffs together because a) I find it less labour-intensive and b) I think it gives a stretchier finish, which is particularly helpful for a sock!

This was my first time working a picot edge and I really enjoyed it! I think it’s quite magical how such a simple method turns into such a fancy looking edge. I also love how a contrast colour is used for the picot— I think it really adds an extra something-something to the socks.

Colourwork

As I mentioned, the colourwork chart for these socks is really great: there are artfully placed seed stitches that mean you don’t have to worry too much about your floats and the strawberries themselves are so simple that the pattern becomes quite easy to memorise.

Because of the relative straightforwardness of the chart, I decided to test my colourwork limits a little and see if I could find a more efficient method for knitting stranded colourwork. In the past, I’ve always worked colourwork very slowly, dropping each yarn strand and picking up the new one as needed throughout, but I saw this video on Instagram recently and decided to give the two-handed method a go! I loved this method: it made the process go so quickly and made it super easy for me to keep an even tension and keep the floats the right length (not too long, not too short!). Overall, I will definitely be using this method for 2-colour colourwork in the future! I did, however, find that I couldn’t use it so easily on the rounds where there were three colours in play, so, for those rounds, I just reverted back to my tried-and-true, drop-and-switch method. Not the most efficient, but it worked!

Typically, for colourwork in the round, it’s recommended that you knit the project ‘inside out’, so that the floats have a slightly longer path to travel around the edge of the work, rather than along the inside. I usually do do this, but I just couldn’t make it work for this project: the small diameter and short length just meant it kept turning back right side out! Luckily though, my new colourwork method seemed to work perfectly for getting the right length floats on its own, so, in the end, I just gave up with the knitting inside out and the socks are perfect, so I’m happy!

Short Row Heel

If you’ve been here before, you’ll know that I’m a die-hard fan of the Shadow Wrap Heel, but I decided to follow the pattern this time around and give the Short Row Heel a go.

Honestly, it was… fine? I do think the heel is neat (bar some slight gaps at each corner, but I often get that (and a potential solution to this is highlighted at the beginning of the pattern!), but I’m not sure that it has overtaken the Shadow Wrap Heel for me. I just found the process a little more involved (and the instructions a little more overwhelming!), plus I don’t find it ‘hugs’ my actual heel quite as well, so I’m still very much a Shadow Wrap Heel girl.

Foot

The foot is knitted in exactly the same way as the leg: in the round, following the colourwork chart. As I mentioned, I did add an extra row of strawberries, just to get the right length for my feet (so I ended up with 6 rows of strawberries total on the foot: one more than the pattern calls for, while I did the same, 3 rows called for by the pattern on the leg). This was a super easy adjustment to make: the pattern gives clear instructions for how to adapt the length of both the foot and the leg, so you can easily customise these socks to fit your feet.

Toe

The toe is worked (I believe) as a Wedge Toe: one of the most common toes in the world of sock-knitting. I like it and it was very straightforward, but I think do still prefer the Rounded Toe that I tend to use (full details in this post), which features a slightly different distribution of decreases, in terms of look and fit.

This project also gave me another opportunity to practise my grafting: I’m definitely getting better!

Weaving in the Ends

As I mentioned, I opted to weave in all my ends with a sewing needle at the end of the knitting process, instead of using the ‘Weavin Stephen’ method suggested in the pattern. This is because I’m not entirely convinced by the structural intergrity of that method (surely the ends will just come out? No?).

Look, there were quite a few ends to weave in: 4 for each row of strawberries (2 red, 2 green), but it’s just one of those things. I’m really happy with how neat my finished socks look (and it is super easy to hide the ends in amongst all of the floats!), so I can’t complain!

New Techniques

There were some new techniques to me in this pattern, as well as some opportunities to practise techniques I’ve previously met (as always, previously encountered techniques are marked with an *):

• Provisional cast-on*
• Picot edge
• Folded cuff*
• Stranded colourwork* (but new, two-handed method used for this!).
• Short row heel
• Wedge toe
• Grafting*

Final Thoughts

Overall, even though the fit isn’t perfect, I am in love with these socks: I think they’re SO cute, so fun & summer-y, and I really enjoyed the process of knitting them. I know colourwork isn’t for everyone, but it’s definitely for me: I really love a colourwork project, and this particular one just flew off my needles.

I really like the contrast picot edge: a picot edge is definitely something I can see myself incorporating into more of my knitted ankle socks in the future (it’s just so fancy and pretty!), but I think that the use of a contrast colour for it here really adds to the effect and makes it pop, particularly when paired with the colourwork elements throughout the rest of the sock!

If I made these socks again, I’d be tempted to use my beloved Shadow Wrap Heel instead of the Short Row Heel, and a Rounded Toe instead of the Wedge Toe, just because I prefer knitting/wearing both of those and I think it might help with the general fit. I’d also be tempted to use a different yarn, to see if that would help too.

If you're interested...

You can purchase the Itty Bitty Berry Socks pattern by Stone Knits on Ravelry here.

You can find the Ravelry project page for my Itty Bitty Berry Socks here.

Gemma

xxx

Wimbledon is synonymous with a lot of things: grass courts, Pimm’s, all-white outfits and, most significantly, strawberries! I’ve done some pretty explicitly ‘Wimbledon’-themed bullet journal setups in the past (see my July 2023 setup here on the blog) , but this year I wanted something a little more subtle, so I decided to really embrace the strawberry vibe and make a whole setup dedicated to the fruit!

After the rather… labour-intensive… process of my 2025 Mid-Year Bullet Journal Setup, I desperately needed something quick and easy for this month and this might just be my quickest and easiest bullet journal setup yet! It uses just 5 pieces of equipment (3 pens, 1 pair of scissors and 1 corner rounder, to be exact) and I set the whole thing up in one speedy sitting. The dream!

Table of Contents

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

Equipment

To make this setup, I used the following equipment:

• Crayola SuperTips, red & green.
• Sakura Pigma Micron black fineliner, size 10.
• Scissors.
• Corner rounder.

That’s it!

Cover Page

I saw this bullet journal page on Pinterest recently and really loved how the strawberries were drawn, so I wanted to mimic that style in my own setup. To draw the strawberries, I doodled some slightly rounded triangle shapes with my red Crayola SuperTip, added some leaves with the green SuperTip, then used my black Sakura Micron pen to doodle the outline over the top. It was so easy and, as an added bonus, they were supposed to look wonky, so I didn’t have to worry about making them perfect!

For the Cover Page, I doodled a wave of strawberries right across the double-page spread, then wrote the ‘July’ heading in the space at the bottom right, using my Sakura Micron. I had initially planned to add a ‘Things to Look Forward to’ section on the left-hand page, as I did with my June Setup, but I really liked how this spread looked as it was: super clean and minimal, so I opted to leave that section out and give it its own page later on!

Monthly Calendar

Onto the Monthly Calendar now and I’ve used my classic grid layout (where each box is 6×6 dot grid squares). Instead of drawing out all the lines, I opted to just mark the corners of each box using my Sakura Micron, which really did help to speed up the process. I added a tiny strawberry doodle to the top right of each box, then wrote the corresponding dates over the top (this was a slightly less speedy/minimal decision, but I think that it does look kind of cute!). To finish off this page, I added some more strawberry doodles around the edge of the calendar, plus the ‘July’ title at the bottom.

Things to Look Forward to + Daily Sunshine

Now we come to the aforementioned Things to Look Forward to page! I kept this page super simple, just putting the heading in the middle (using a mix of fonts, which I LOVE doing!), then adding a couple of strawberry doodles for good measure. I’ll fill the blank space around the heading with little notes of all of the things I have to look forward to in July: I did this last month and really enjoyed having it there, so I wanted to include it this month too!

Alongside that page is my Daily Sunshine spread, which has been M.I.A. for a few months, but is back now! I’d been having trouble keeping up with spreads like this that require consistent, daily input, so I took a little break from it to relieve some of the (completely self-inflicted) pressure. I’m determined to get back into it though and, so far this month, it’s been going well! Each day, I write down one positive thing that happened: a little ray of daily sunshine. This is a great mindfulness exercise, plus it’s super nice to look back at and see a whole cluster of positive things in one place.

Weekly Spreads

Into the Weekly Spreads now and, as always, I’ve trimmed down the central pages to make room for master task lists on either side of my daily boxes. I used my corner rounder on the trimmed down pages to soften them up (and reduce my risk of paper cuts, because I have a deep, irrational fear of paper cuts…).

Much like with my Calendar spread, I just marked out the corners of all of the boxes in these spreads, as opposed to drawing out the full lines. I think this is perhaps more effective here than in the calendar, because the boxes are larger and more spaced out, so the pages look less overcrowded.

For all of the headings/subheadings in this section, I used a combination of a block capitals and a cursive-style font, both written using the same Sakura Micron pen. I love combining fonts like this: I think it adds interest and makes everything look just that little bit more fancy!

In each daily box, I added a large dot of red/green (alternating the colours as I went) using my Crayola SuperTips. I wrote the corresponding initial of the day of the week and the date itself over the top of those dots, using my Sakura Micron.

On the final weekly spread, I included the first 3 days of August, just because I quite like being able to see the whole week at a glance, even when it falls across two months.

July Review

The final spread in this setup is my July Review page, which contains all the same elements as its previous iterations in recent months.

On the right-hand page, I have the heading (written in that same combination of fonts, using my Sakura Micron) and another cascade of strawberry doodles. This leaves me plenty of space to stick in a polaroid from the month: the strawberry doodles decorate the page in the meantime and will still peek through around the polaroid, decorating the page later on too, even when it has been filled in!

On the left-hand page, I have my typical 4 sections: ATP & WTA Top 10, #1 Memory and July Playlist. The tennis top tens are just for fun, because I like to look back at them and see how they’ve changed over the year. The #1 Memory is a fun way for me to sum up the month gone by and the July Playlist allows me to keep track of my favourite songs throughout the year (I have space to jot down my top 6 songs from the month!).

To tie the left-hand page into the rest of the setup, I’ve used the same Sakura Micron to write all of the headings and mark out the boxes, added more strawberry doodles and used my red and green Crayola SuperTips to highlight the different subheadings throughout.

Final Thoughts

This setup was so unbelievably easy to create (and actually very freeing— as I said, the strawberries are supposed to look messy and imperfect, which means, excitingly, you have to be messy and imperfect when you doodle them!). I love the minimal vibe it has going on: it’s clean and modern, but also fun and whimsical (strawberry doodles have that effect), which I think is such a fun, unexpected combination.

I realise I’m posting this setup quite late in the month (naturally, I fell behind), but it’s nice because I can also tell you how functional I’m finding this setup: as I mentioned, I have actually been keeping up with my Daily Sunshine page so far and I’ve found the clean, minimal vibe super conducive to effective planning and organising!

All in all, I really like this setup (and I like it all the more for how easy and speedy it was to create!). I hope you do too!

Gemma

xxx