Hi there, lovely people! It’s been a hot minute since I was last active on here, and a lot has happened in the meantime! I hope you’re all well and staying save, given the current circumstances.
If you follow my Instagram account @stephiejournals you might have noticed that I took somewhat of a break on there, too, during the first few months of this year. That break was much needed, but I’m back to posting (sort of) regularly over there again.
Trying new things
Most of us have been spending more time at home these past few weeks than they probably would have if it wasn’t for this global pandemic. I’ve been trying to keep busy by creating and trying new things. One of the new things I’ve tried is creating stickers for myself. For April, I also tried going for a scrapbooking style theme for the first time when setting up my bullet journal for the month (after all, I needed a reason to use the stickers I made myself, right?).
In hopes of brightening up your journals and planners during these times, I decided to upload the stickers I made as a free printable for you.
During the month of September, I’m attempting an ‘A word a Day’ challenge for the first time ever. The main reason I want to give this type of challenge a try is to work on my hand lettering, and to step out of my comfort zone and play around with different kinds of fonts.
Fitting the theme I chose for September – Hufflepuff house (from the Harry Potter series, duh 😉 ) – I picked a word for each day, relating specifically to Hufflepuff house, or the Harry Potter series in general. Want to join me, and participate in this magical challenge? Here’s how to do it:
Below, you’ll find all the prompts from September 1st till 30st. When you post your take on the prompts on Instagram, use the hashtag #wordswithstephie for a chance to get featured in my stories!
This one is for all of you students out there – whether you’re still in high school or already off studying at uni or college! As a student myself, I can relate on a personal level to the struggles of staying organised and productive all the time. However, I’ve experimented with some study (or, if you’re not yet a uni/college student, school) related spreads in my bullet journal, and today, I’d like to introduce you to four of them, in order to hopefully make your everyday student’s duties a bit easier.
1. Semester Overview
A spread which I like to set up as soon as I know what classes I’ll have for the semester, and before classes actually start, is an overview spread. The central aspect of this spread is in my case usually my timetable for the semester. Another helpful feature I like to add to this spread is a section for all of my assignments, deadlines and exams. A little extra I like to add to my overview spread from time to time (usually at the beginning of a new academic year) are my academic goals for the term. That way, I see them actually written down every time I go back to my overview spread, which keeps them more present on my mind. In the end, you can add anything which seems helpful to have in an overview spread and leave everything out that doesn’t seem helpful to you.
One of my semester overview spreads
2. Study Plan
Another spread that has truly helped me staying organised and on top of my studying is a study plan. For this purpose, I usually create a table with all classes I need to study for in the columns and with one row per week (up till the week the actual exam takes place). That way, I can easily split up which topics of a certain class I study in which week leading up to the exam. Essentially, how this works is that writing everything down like this makes me hold myself accountable for actually getting my studying done. Furthermore, it also makes the whole study process seem more manageable since you get to study in portions (which also gets reflected in the table), rather than doing everything at once.
One of my study plans I created in the past
3. Assignment Planner
The probably most specific spread on this list is an assignment plan. So far, I’ve created such a spread for two papers I had to write (one of them was my Bachelor thesis), and both times, I found it to be extremely helpful, especially when it comes to time management. This spread helps me a lot with staying organised and on top of everything I still needed to do for my paper. Depending on the type of assignment you need to get done, on its complexity and lastly of course on your personal preferences, you can add various different elements to such an assignment plan. I few things I like to add are:
due date
research questions
points to discuss
structure
writing schedule
relevant literature
Example of an assignment spread I created in my bujo
4. Productivity Tracker
Last but most certainly not least, I found that tracking my productivity helped me a lot with motivating (and maybe even pushing myself a bit) to be productive. On the other hand, keeping such a tracker allows you to analyze in retro-perspective on which days I’ve been more productive than on others. Together with other habits you might track, this step hopefully gives us an idea of what we need to do in order to be more productive. What I mean by this is that maybe you notice after tracking your productivity for a while, that you were more productive on those days on which you worked out first thing in the morning, compared to the days you didn’t do so? Discovering patterns like the one in this example can actually help you establish a routine, which in the end effect hopefully gets you to be more productive.
Example of a productivity tracker
But – now that we’ve established why tracking your productivity might help you with being more productive in the future – there might be still another burning question on your mind. You might be wondering, “but Stephanie, how do I measure productivity?”, a question I’ve got pretty much every time that I’ve posted a picture of one of my productivity trackers on Instagram so far – and, admittedly, a good one. At first, I tried tracking productivity based on my subjective feeling of how productive my day had been. The scale I used varied from ranging from “- – -” (very unproductive) to “+ + +” (very productive) to being a scale from 1 to 5 (with 1 being very unproductive and 5 being very productive). Currently, however, I’m tracking my productivity in hours that I’ve been productive. As you can tell, there are various different ways to track, and not every way might be working for everyone. My advise is to play around with it: change everything about a tracker which you feel isn’t working for you (anymore), and try other options, until you find one that feels right and works for you.
Today’s blog post is all about my favourite bullet journal (short: bujo) supplies. The stationery addict that I am, it was rather hard to narrow it down to a selection of some few of my favourites: to what I’d call my personal essentials for bullet journaling (instead of making this article sound like an inventory listing of an art supplies shop). Because at the end of the day, you don’t really need more to keep a bullet journal than a journal and a pen.
1. Journal
Let’s start with what’s probably the most central item on this list: a journal. My own current journal is a Leuchtturm 1917 dot grid one, and so far, I’ve been very happy with it. However, if you’d like to use water colour directly in your journal, this one might be not the right choice for you, since its pages are rather thin. Nonetheless, I really like the paper quality of the pages since they’re really smooth, which is great for brush lettering.
My current and my new Leuchtturm 1917 dot grid journal
2. “Regular” Pens
Another rather obvious category are “regular” pens for writing, planning and doodling. For all of the above, as well as for drawing the outlines of e.g. boxes or trackers, I currently have two favourites. One of them is widely known and loved in the bullet journal community online: the Micron PN. I’ve only started using this pen myself recently, but I can definitely tell why this one is so popular. My other favourite pen in this category is – to my knowledge – less widely known, but in my eyes undoubtedly as amazing as the Micron one. I really enjoy the smoothness with which the Uniball signo 207 writes, and it is definitely one of my most used pens, also for writing my class and study notes.
Micron PN & Uniball Signo
3. Brush Pens
Depending on how minimal you keep your own bullet journal, these might be nowhere to be found on your personal list of bujo essentials, but for me personally, brush pens are a must. I even always take a few of them with me when I’m travelling. I love to use them for writing headers or quotes, but also for drawings and to decorate my spreads. My two favourites within this category are the Tombow Dual Brush Pens and the Ecoline Brush Pens. Furthermore, a somewhat finer black brush pen (e.g. for week days headers) is definitely yet another essential for me.
Brush pens from the brands Ecoline and Tombow
4. White Gel Pen
An extremely versatile bullet journal supply and another one of my essentials is a white gel pen. Not only can you use it to add details and depth to drawings, or to decorate your headers, but a white gel pen is also extremely handy when it comes to fixing small mistakes. From all the white gel pens I’ve tried so far, the Uniball Signo Broad one is definitely my favourite.
Uniball Signo Broad white
5. Stickers, Washi Tape & co.
This last category is all about little things I like to use for quickly decorating pages in my journal.
There are so many (physical and digital) places you can get your stickers from! For example, you can find super cute and really affordable stickers on websites like wish.com or Aliexpress. But there are also many people in the (bullet) journaling community who create and sell their very own stickers (one of my personal favourites is @plantfulshop on Instagram).
Another easy way to decorate your bullet journal spreads is by using washi tape, which you can buy anywhere from DIY stores to webshops online, and sometimes even in supermarkets.
One last stationery product which completely changed my journaling experience is the Tesa Permanent Adhesive Roller. It allows me to stick pictures, tickets or any other thing I want to keep in my journal without actually having to use glue and wait for it to dry or have it causing the paper to wrinkle. Plus, it’s easily refillable.
Washi tape from wish.com and my local supermarket, as well as stickers from Plantful
If you got this far in the article, I’d like to thank you so much for reading. Like I’ve already mentioned in the beginning, this list is in no way meant to be me telling you which products you have to use in order to keep a bullet journal that’s helpful to you. It’s more so supposed to be a list of stationery items I personally like to use in my journal, and which make journaling more effective and/or more fun for me. Because essentially, all you need to keep a bullet journal is a pen and a journal.
Little DISCLAIMER to end this blog post with: This article hasn’t been sponsored in any shape or form; I bought all the products mentioned myself.
… and welcome to my little corner of the Internet! This very first blog post is meant to be an introduction of this blog and the person behind it.
You might have already stumbled across my Instagram account @stephiejournals, and maybe that’s how you found this article in the first place. Or maybe it was a happy accident that you discovered this page. Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
You might be wondering what you can expect to read and see on this blog? Well, the main focus will be laid on (Bullet) journaling, creativity and expressing yourself, but I’m also planning on exploring and covering other topics such as self care and other things I’m passionate about.
About me
My name is Stephanie and I’m a 22 year old student from Switzerland. I’m majoring in Communications and Management, and as my minor, I study Dutch Studies. I’ve started my very first Bullet Journal in January of 2018, and been hooked on that system of planning, tracking and organising ever since. I’ve always loved being creative in any possible way, and I hope that I can inspire people by sharing my creations and thoughts with the world.
StephieJournals 