Starting a NEW BULLET JOURNAL _ easy setup & spread ideas

The title of this video is kind of spoiling the news, but I am starting a new bullet journal. Super exciting stuff. I have been using My Girl Hazel here for the past six months, and she is practically full, so it is time to let her go, even though I have loved every page with her. Hazel is an Archer and Olive dotted notebook, and this journal is just such high quality. The pages never gave me any ghosting or bleeding issues, and I loved how white the pages were. It's like a very small detail, but sometimes in certain journals, the pages are like an off-white. This is a crisp white situation, and it just made planning a beautiful experience. Usually I do like to try a variety of journal companies so that I can just kind of see what's out there, but I actually had an extra Archer and Olive notebook laying around at my parents' place, and it's gorgeous. So I am going to use it for my second journal in 2020. Clearly an Archer and Olive year for me. I'm very excited. It's a beautiful red color, and I love this gold page detailing. Come on, look at that. Look at it. We're hitting that point in the month where I'm usually putting out a plan with me with all the monthly spreads for the next month, but before I put out my July plan with me, I wanted to do this video where I could just show you some of the first spreads that I'm doing in my bullet journal. Traditionally, when people start a journal, they create spreads like an index or a key, but that is not the sort of spreads you'll see me create today. I really just focus when I'm starting a new journal on creating the tone that I want this journal to have. So whether you're at the beginning, middle, or ending stage of your bullet journal, hopefully there are some ideas or inspiration that you can get from this video. So with that being said, I will let you guys dive right in. As you are seeing, I'm immediately pulling out the craft paper. Craft paper is heavily used in these spreads. I just love the scrapbook look it gives to my spreads, so it's really hard for me to stop using it right now. I bought a big stack of craft paper online, so I'll have a link to it below if you want to check it out. I have everything that I used in today's video linked in the description box below as well. I'm going in with a white pen from Sakura and using the size 10 to boldly write out the name Harlow because that's the name I decided to give this bullet journal. I remember when I first started naming my bullet journal on this channel, I did it randomly just for fun. One time when I was doing a voiceover and the habit just kind of stuck, but now I find it so entertaining to find comments that are like, oh wait, like who's Harlow? Who's she talking about? Because it's an indicator that that's someone new to the channel. So kind of, kind of cool to see those comments or to see some of you actually interact with my bullet journals. Usually I use size five or eight when I'm writing with a white pen, but size 10 works beautifully for creating bold lettering. I was so in love with how this text turned out and it really got me excited to keep using this size pen in the other spreads. I could have just left it as is, but I decided to outline the lettering in black and I'm really glad that I did that because I think it helps the text really pop out and just cleans it up a bit. It's definitely an easy way to hide mistakes as well. You could do the same technique on white paper by just using a colored brush marker to hand write something and then going back in with a black pen to outline it. But I am obsessed with this and I need to do more of it in my journal because I just think it looks so cool. On the next page, I wanted to create mini calendars for the rest of 2020. I personally like having a year at a glance view or I guess in this case, a half a year at a glance view because it makes creating future spreads super easy. If I had made this a two page spread, I would have had enough space to also insert birthdays and special events, but I really just wanted something really clean. I added a splash of color with the Tombow Dual Brush Pen in the color 312. It's a really beautiful blue green color that complements the warm craft paper nicely. You'll see this color pop up again in the other spreads. And then I went in with a white pen on top to write out each month. It didn't pop out as much as I'd have liked, but I'm still able to read it. So I decided not to trace over it with a black pen. The calendars themselves are very minimal. I like how clean they are, but I do think adding another line between the days of the week and the number part of the calendar would have looked a bit better. So I may go back and add that line in there. The finishing touch to the spread was a little mini black drop shadow that I did with my Micron pen in the size 08. The 08 size of this pen is my go-to for outlining, bold text headers, or quick drop shadows. I've spoken about it before, but I find drop shadows to be one of the easiest ways to elevate a spread. So if you're looking at a spread and thinking, hmm, something is missing, I encourage you to try adding a drop shadow because more often than not, that ends up being the difference between me thinking of one of my spreads as meh to, oh, that's kind of cute. Since I have been pasting craft paper a lot into my journal recently, I actually get left with tons of scraps. Rather than throwing those out, I save them for future spreads. These particular scraps came from my previous plan with me, and I decided to use them in this spread to create some fill-in boxes for a goals check-in spread. I mapped out where I wanted them to go, and then I started pasting them in with some glue. I decided to mix the black and white pens by using the white pen in the size 05 to write out the prompt for the box or the question for the box, and then afterwards, I went in with a black pen to fill in my answers. So some of the prompts or questions I used were, write something I'm proud to have done so far in 2020, how have I been feeling, a word to describe the year, something I want to work on in the second half of 2020, and a habit I want to cut. I think it's so important to take those moments to give yourself a pat on the back, and something I'm really proud to have done this year so far is launch caitlindasilva.com because, as I've mentioned on this channel before, it's just been getting me in the habit of writing again, and I realized that was something I was really missing. Emotionally, I think many of us have been struggling this year because of everything that's going on in the world right now. I know personally I've also been struggling with a creative slump, and I've begun doubting my intuition when it comes to my work especially. So I've been working my way through that, and have been getting back into the swing of things, but I really wanted to document those feelings on paper because when you're in the middle of it, you don't feel like yourself, and I think it'll be helpful for a future Caitlin to look back and see, oh yeah, here was a period where I wasn't operating at 100%, and I was able to get through it. I'm sprinkling in some leaf doodles. Big shocker, I know. It's funny, I talk about loving leaf doodles because they're foolproof doodles for me, but somehow I created one of my least favorite leaf doodles ever on this spread. It looks so awkward. I don't know what happened between my brain and my right hand. They were clearly not speaking the same language. What's better than scraps of craft paper, you may ask? A whole page of craft paper, apparently. I got really excited here and decided, as you are seeing, to glue just a huge page of craft paper in here, and the first thing that I did was I started adding some line work to the top and the bottom of the page with a white pen. I decided I had wanted to use this spread as an opportunity to highlight a quote, so I didn't want anything design-wise that would distract too much from the quote itself. Recently, I've been loving this Instagram page by Morgan Harper Nichols. She creates these absolutely stunning quote and art illustrations. I've saved so many of them on my phone, but I wanted to write this particular one down because it seemed extra relevant to my life right now. The quote goes like this, I will trust that I do not have to have everything sorted out perfectly in order to come alive to this season wholeheartedly. It's so beautiful. If you're wanting some inspiration on your Insta feed, then I would definitely go give her page a follow. It will be linked in the description box below. On the next page, I wanted to create an area to track some movies and books I want to read. This isn't month-specific, so it's just meant to be a place to drop some titles when they come up and I don't want to forget them. So I didn't make the list super lengthy, but this is going to be an easy one to duplicate in the future. I've been reading a lot this year, so that's exciting. My original goal for the year was to read 60 books, but I feel like I'll absolutely be able to read more of that by December. I also am thinking that I'll be posting a half-year reading update with some of my favorite books I've read so far in 2020. So let me know if that's something you're interested in. It's been a lot of fun having a Goodreads this year, too. I used to have one years ago, but then I went off of it and now I'm back on it. And it's great to track my reading progress and also to see what you guys are reading. So if you're not already and you are a reader, then Goodreads is a great place to go check me out. Link will be below. I don't know if you were able to notice, but I was really struggling with this glue stick throughout this video and a few other videos, to be honest. So thankfully, I found out that I had some mounting squares, adhesive squares that I could use, and wow, what a game changer. I do love a good adhesive that isn't glue because sometimes glue just is not the move. So it saved my life here. I'm adding some more craft paper because this is going to be the section where I write down my writing prompt. This is a spread that I wanted to include because I've been making a point to add more journaling to my planner. To-do lists and habit trackers are great. I love them. But I also want to track down thoughts and ideas. I had actually cleaned out my childhood closet a couple months ago. There's a video of me doing that. And I found my first journals and was able to spend time reading all of my entries. And it really hit me how special it was to have access to my brain from when I was a kid. So I want my bullet journals to be that same sort of experience for me 10, 20, 30 years down the road. So I want to be writing more in it, and having writing prompts ready to go will make me more likely to get that journaling in. Some of these prompts are things like, what's a thought, person, and or thing preventing me from prioritizing myself? And describe the day of your ideal self. What's a small step to becoming more like that person? I think those will be interesting answers to read down the line once I'm older. So there was your introduction to Harlow. She is a beaut. I always just get so excited when starting a new journal. There's so much potential for all of Harlow's pages. A new plan with me will be coming out very soon. So make sure if you don't want to miss it that you are subscribed and you hit that notification bell because you'll be alerted right when it goes up. Hit the like button if you enjoyed this video and let me know in the comment section down below what is the current journal you are using? Are you a dotted, graph, blank paper kind of person? What company is your journal from? Do you like graph paper, dotted paper, blank paper? Tell me all the things. And I will see you very soon with a new video. Until then, bye everyone.