Hello scrappy friends! How is this first month of 2017 treating you? Are you working hard on crafty resolutions? I’ve spent most of this month up to my neck in planner videos, Instagram feeds and Facebook groups. The perfect setup exists … and it’s out there.  😉

If you haven’t seen any of my previous planner posts, check out a few here and here. Today, as I got ready to set up my planner for February, I realized I hadn’t really talked a lot about how/why I got into bullet journaling. So here we go!

“The Bullet Journal is an analog system designed to track the past, organize the present, and plan for the future.” – Ryder Carroll

Tell me that doesn’t speak to your scrapbooker’s heart? Even though I discovered some of the more artsy bujo-ers before I dove into bulletjournal.com – Ryder Carroll’s original website – that description sealed the deal. People like Boho Berry, Pretty Prints and Paper and Tiny Ray of Sunshine inspired me with these amazing layouts where planning, brush lettering and colour worked together. How could I not fall in love with this idea?! (Scrappers take note: even Amy Tangerine keeps a bullet journal.  🙂

“The System – The Bullet Journal is a customizable and forgiving organization system. It can be your to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary, but most likely, it will be all of the above. It will teach you to do more with less.”

I love both the flexibility and simplicity of the system. All you need to get started is a notebook and a pen. It doesn’t have to be fancy or colourful or anything that doesn’t inspire you. It’s completely personal. If you go back to one of my earliest planner posts, I was doing a pseudo-bullet journal before I knew it was a thing. It didn’t have a key or an index or a lot of collections (browse the website to learn more about those components) but I was tracking the past with weekly gratitude lists and organizing the present with to dos and appointments; the only thing missing with planning for the future.

In recent months, I’ve been using a traveller’s notebook setup for my bullet journal. It allows me to have several notebooks in one place, and each one can hold different ideas. Everything from daily planning, monthly calendars, letting practice to gratitude and future goals can be in one place, and with me at any given time. If you’ve seen my Instagram posts, you know I converted several ring bound planners into traveller’s notebooks and I love them all! I even made my own, using leather and fabric from Michaels.

My February journal is this gorgeous one from Jane Davenport. (Her collection with American Crafts is available at Michaels. It’s gorgeous.) I have a monthly notebook (the *actual* bujo), a training notebook (to track my workouts), a One Little Word® (I am not doing Ali’s course this year, as I have in years past) notebook and a place for randomness. Life is random, after all!

Here’s a peek into how I set things up. Thanks for checking it out!

Supply list: Jane Davenport Butterfly Book, elastics, charms, and pockets, Simple Stories Snap page protectors, We R Memory Keepers page protectors, Heidi Swapp Memory Planner pages and dividers (I used the black and white boxed kit that is no longer for sale at Michaels, this one is quite similar), Kaisercraft All About Me Capture Moments kit, Recollections Enchanting tassels (I cannot find this online anywhere), Maggie Holmes for Crate Paper paper, Allison Kreft for Webster’s Pages transparency, random stickers and charms

~ Cheryl

Scrapbooker + Story teller + Historian = Scrapstorian. Are you a Scrapstorian?