Weather tracker – CraftyArtistKC

April 2018 Bullet Journal Setup

Posted on April 1, 2018May 15, 2018 by Charity Woods

Disclaimer: I had thought this post actually posted and was curious as to why I wasn’t getting any responses. After some research, I realized that it was just in my drafts folder. I apologize for this being late.

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YAY! Another month, and already the 4th month of the year, can you believe it? Its crazy to keep all this together since in my blog and bullet journal I work in the present and future but in my accounting job, I work in the present and past. So let’s just say, month end is very interesting for me. However, I did decide to go ahead and work on my April 2018 set up. The weird thing about this month is that because Easter and April Fools fall on the same day this year, I have been swarmed by April fools day jokes to play on your family with an Easter theme! Don’t worry, there is none of that here. So let’s move on to it!

What is this months theme? – Pastels and Eggs (of course!)

The first thing that I think of when I think about April is “April showers bring May flowers.” But I didn’t want my entire bullet journal month to be dreary or sad. That is when I decided to move forward with the pastels. Easter is full of pastel colors in all of its decorating, so I thought it just made sense. The first thing I did, was created the monthly title page.

As you can tell, I used so many mediums. From fine liners to colored pencils, to metallic stickers. It was a lot of fun to create this and afterward, I even added some washi tape to tie it all together. (More on that later.) The next thing I wanted to do was my trackers. Although I really enjoyed the spread I did last month for these trackers, I thought that I would mix it up in order to find out what works the best. So below you can see my weather and mood trackers. Each square allows me the opportunity to draw in the weather using the weather index I created at the beginning of my bullet journal. You can find that here! Instead of not giving myself to write down my mood, I thought, I would give myself a line, it happened to fit perfectly with this being a month of even number days.

Sharing the two-page spread with the trackers above is my “A Line a day’ spread. I enjoyed this so much, I love looking back at the wonderful things that happened over the month of March and I like that it is keeping me sane. One line also forces me to look beyond the good, the bad, and the ugly to find the most memorable thing of the day. My personal thoughts can be shared in another place, typically I do that on my phone using my Google Drive. I decided to keep it the same as last months, but decorated new!

The next tracker is my Social Media Schedule as well as my Brain Dump. I chose to put these two together so that I could organize the brain dump thoughts within my schedule as I saw fit! I can’t wait to see how this two-page spread works out in comparison with them being separated from each other like they were in March.

Here is my big oops! I started my dream journal and skipped two pages. So I decided the best thing to do was to do a washi tape collection. The reason I wanted to put this collection in this bullet journal is that when I start my next bullet journal, I want to see how far I have come in my collection. As of right now, I have 67 different rolls! How crazy is that! Now, you may ask where I got all of this washi tape, but let me tell you, I can’t tell you. I get them from all over. In the clearance bin at craft stores, in a full set from Micheals, and then I also got some from Wish.com. Wherever I got them, I hope that the spread brings you as much cheer as it brings me.

Next, I moved onto my dream journal. Last month I gave myself two lines for every day. The problem with this is that I didn’t remember my dreams every day and I felt like there was a lot of wasted space. So, I have decided that now, I will create a number for the date and a box around each dream and leave the journal open-ended so that I have as much space as I might need.

What was your favorite part of this setup? Did you see anything you want to try? I would love to know your thoughts in the comments below!

March 2018 Bullet Journal Set up

Posted on March 15, 2018March 15, 2018 by Charity Woods

When you think about the month of march, what comes to mind? You got it! St. Patricks Day! So it only seemed fitting that I design my month around this special holiday. I know it is already the middle of the month and I am a little bit behind, but in my defense, I didn’t get my notebook until around the 2nd of March. Anyways, I hopw you enjoy what I have to offer this month. The first thing is always the title page, Look above! The next obvious choice is the monthly calendar. I decided to just do this one as simple as possible. I might get more bold later, but for now, lets just be happy its done.

I had this idea that I would like to see what things had the most affect on my moods. That is when I came up with this two page tracker spread that tracks my period, sleep, weather, exercise, and mood. This way I can see, every day that the weather was this, my mood was that, or whatever it was that was affecting me the most. The line a day, also helps me put in one major event for that day and that will also help me out. This month we have a parade and an after-parade BBQ we were hosting. This causes stress but seeing how the other things work in with that is what I think is interesting. This may be the only month I do this, but I thought I would attempt it anyways.

The next step in my monthly journal is to keep a collection of my favorite quotes for that month. So as I go through life and see something that makes me say, “hmmm” I write it down. No fancy faux-lligraphy here, just my normal handwriting. I decided that besides alternating colors, I would also alternate font. There are three ways that I write consistently, all caps, normal print, and cursive.

The next item I wanted to track were my dreams. I am known for my vivid dreams. Even though this layout only gives me two lines for each dream, I write them in more detail on my phone memos when I first wake up, so I just want a place where I can put a snippet in. The most interesting thing about the dream. Then, I can flip back to the weather and events of the day to see if anything is having an affect on the types of dreams that I have. This may be way more in depth than some of you want to go, but this is all an experiment. I think that you should experiment with the different trackers you do until you find what works best for your schedule.

Remember that a bullet journal is not a chore, its a life-line. Use your bullet journal any way you want to and in the style you want to. There are a lot of overwhelmingly amazing spreads on pinterest, but if you constantly compare your skill level to theirs you won’t follow through with the journal. I would like to make a comment about the fact that you don’t see any weekly spreads from me. Weekly spreads are something that I will hopefully add in the future, but for now, I find it overwhelming. If you have any comments or suggestions about things you would like to see me track in the future, don’t hesitate to comment below and let me know what you want to see.

2018 Bullet Journal Set up!

Posted on March 14, 2018March 14, 2018 by Charity Woods

Bullet Journal Bandwagon time!!

Yes, you’ve seen some bullet journal posts from me in the past, but this one is going to be a little different. I bought this amazing notebook from MintPrincess, you can find her Etsy shop here.

I must say that I absolutely love it. The review for this book is short and sweet. “Buy it!” The spiral bound notebook is amazing for every page laying flat and being able to actually use the full page for a spread. It comes with a ruler that fits nicely in the spirals as well so you can always take it with you without the fear of losing it. The pages are thick enough that I have used almost every pen I own on it and I haven’t seen any bleed through except with my copic marker, which you will see below. Other than that, its great dotted paper and I have really fallen in love with it.

Ok, so lets get started with the cover page. I believe that everyone should use the first page of every journal or notebook to claim it. Put your info on this page to ensure that if lost, it is returned. I wanted to make the information stand out and make sure that it was very noticeable.

After this page was out of the way, I thought that the year at a glance was the next spread. I wanted these two spreads to sorta match since they shared a view, so it wasn’t hard to use the same colors when I did the yearly calendar. Now, you will see some fancy schmancy fauxligraphy here, but I assure you, it is just me faking it until I make it! Honestly, there was even a point where I had a tween moment and put a heart as the dot above the I, but…I recovered quickly.

The next spread I decided on was the birthday calendar. I didn’t want to squish them all on one page so I just split the pages up in six areas each and did one month for each area. Two-page spread with plenty of room for all the birthdays I had to put on there. Let me tell you, June is full! For your viewing pleasure, I took photos of the spread before I put any birthdays on it.

Ok, moving on to the next spread, cleaning schedule. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the amount of cleaning that has to be done in my house. I end up spending my entire weekend off, almost spring cleaning my house. So, I did a little research and came up with a game plan, so to speak, so that I did not feel so overwhelmed every weekend. Of course, I use this as just a suggestion and it may change and adapt over time, but for now, I think its just fine.

Since I had my cleaning schedule in place, I believed that the next thing I needed to do was to try to work on a daily schedule. There are clear objectives in my day, and planning them out is a great way for me to see what I need to accomplish and when. Although there are some things that are adaptable, I can at least have an outline laid out for me to refer to and hold myself accountable to.

Ok, now lets move onto some trackers that will help me out in the new year. One of the main trackers that I have been wanting to do is tracking my reading. I fell off the wagon last year and couldn’t even get through one book. This year, I have a goal of 10 books, with plenty of space for improvement on that number. This gives me about a month to get through a book, whether it is a physical book, ebook or audio book! When I complete one, I will write the title on the book and move on to the next one.

Since I am working on goals for the new year, why not make a full spread of some of the goals I have been setting for myself. These include creating 100 mandalas as part of the www.100mandalas.com challenge, Sing like no one is listening, Sell one of my artwork projects, practice my handwriting and learning a full song with both hands on the piano. I play the piano, but I am completely self taught and have relied heavily on cord progression with my left hand, but I would like to work on getting away from that a bit more. I also have some emotional goals such as stressing less, loving myself a little more, being more kind and less judgemental and speaking out when something is upsetting me, or when I have an idea that I want to share.

And in keeping with my goals of “stressing less” you will see the bleed through on my next spread. I created a lot of borders, corner decors and hanging decors that I can add through my bullet journal. Putting them all in one place for reference was for the satisfaction it gives me to create art and be able to share that with others.

Since I was in the mood to create reference points, I also decided to do it with the weather and moods. The reason I put this in the front of the journal is so that whichever way I decide to track these things, which i’m sure will change monthly, I want to have a specific theme all the way through. I made the weather and moods simple, to the point, and generalized so that I didn’t have to account for each type of weather, like sunny yet snowing, which changes just like moods.

The next tracker is a Social Media tracker. I figured the last day of the month, I will just write down where I am at with each social media. Where will I be at in a year? I hope that the numbers will rise much further than they are currently. Still a baby at this blog thing, I am almost embarrassed at my stats in comparison with some of my blogging idols. I even took a little bit of time to create each logo with my own twist.

The last two trackers are Savings and Expenses. I have a small goal for myself to save at least $100/mo. This might seem like a drop in the bucket for some, but for me with our large family, it’s a small step we can take that will help us out with those emergencies that like to creep up when you least expect it. Each square represents $10 and hopefully by the end of the year, I will have $1200 put away in savings. I wanted to track it by a smaller amount because I like to see the progress no matter how large or small within a month. The bill tracker is something that I saw on Pinterest somewhere I’m sure. I like the big picture. I like to know how a bill has changed throughout the year. I like to know where my money is going. So if I know that over the course of a year my mortgage takes up x% of my income, I will know to better plan the other expenses so that we know where to eliminate waste. This is an easy way for me to also see what bill has been paid and how much was paid last.

This brings us full circle for the yearly tracking that I have already created at the beginning of my bullet journal. I would love to know what you think about each spread and which is your favorite, let me know in the comments below. Also, do you have a suggestion of a tracker that you would like me to tackle? Let me know that too!