Tag: journal

How to doodle: Macarons, Bees and Ice Cream

Hello, beautiful people! It’s been a while, and I hope you’re all doing well! As you might know, I really enjoy decorating my bullet journal with doodles that fit my theme, and they’re most of the time quite simple to draw. If you’re looking for some easy and cute doodles to decorate your journal or notes, or just to try for fun, then keep reading!

Macarons

The first doodle (one that’s perfect for all my fellow pastel lovers out there) is probably the easiest of the three. I find it easiest to start drawing macarons from the bottom part, and then build them up by adding the filling and the top part. A little bit of shading with a slightly darker shade will give them a more three-dimensional look. With a white gel pen and a black fineliner, I like to add some structure to the parts just above and underneath the filling. Ta-dah, you got yourself a cute little macaron.

Bees

This doodle might take a bit more patience to create than the first one since it’s a bit more intricate. In a first step, draw the little head of the bee, then, add the body structure. Add the little antennae and the wings. Fill up the wings with some geometric patterns in order to create more structure and dimension. Then, add the bee’s legs, before it’s time for the fun part: adding colour and more details! For the wings, try filling some of the geometric shapes you created in step four with a slightly darker shade of blue than the rest. In order to make the bee’s body look somewhat fluffy, add short strokes with a black fineliner when you’re creating the darker parts of the bee’s body. Create as many as you want – the busy bee gets the honey!

Ice Cream

Last but not least, and perfectly fitting with the heatwave we’ve been experiencing these past few days, these ice cream doodles are the perfect addition to any summery notes and journal pages.

You can keep it basic with one of these three basic shapes, or add little details, such as chocolate glaze, little floral decorations or melting ice cream droplets. Warning: You might be craving ice cream every time you look at your doodles, but in my opinion, they’re totally worth it! 😉

Thank you so much for reading, if you made it this far. If you’re looking for more doodling inspiration, check out my Instagram account @stephiejournals or come and say hi on my YouTube channel.

Talk to you soon,

XX Stephanie

My Bullet Journal Essentials

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.