With Christmas just around the corner there are a million and one things that I need to organise and prepare. One of them being my bullet journal setup for December and all the Christmas spreads I want to include in it this year. I decided to keep things simple and add only the most important spreads in my setup this time.

The theme for this month’s setup is ‘Christmas trees’ and I love the way it turned out! I kept my colour palette minimal to 5 colours — green, black, grey, gold and red. And I used a combination of my Tombow markers and my Faber-Castell Polychromos coloured pencils for all the pages.

You can find all the supplies I’ve used, at the end of this post.

So, let’s get started!

The first page is as always my cover page for the month. I wrote ‘December’ with my Stabilo black marker and created lots of different and quite unique looking Christmas trees around it.

I really love the colours on this page and how cute it turned out! Definitely one of the best cover pages I’ve created this year.

For my monthly spread I decided to do something different this time. Instead of my normal monthly grid calendar, that I usually create, I got inspired by the lovely @sheylara_shen and changed my layout completely.

So, I split the page into two sections. The one on the left is for all the appointments and things I need to do on each day. The one on the right, is a monthly to-do list that will be filled with lots of tasks and things that I need to remember to do during December.

I like the way it turned out. It’s simple, functional and cute. If you need more space to write things, then you can turn this layout into a two-page spread, very easily.

The next spread is a very important one, and that is the Christmas Cards List. I always make a list of the cards that we need to send to the people we love. Especially since we’ve moved to Cyprus, it’s very important to me to send cards to our families in Greece and in the UK. I created a one-page layout with lots of cute little envelopes and I also added some grey lines on the side. You can use each envelope for one Xmas card, and write the name and address on the space provided. Or, you can use the grey lines on the right to write only the names of the people you want to send a Xmas card to (which is what I usually do).

Moving on to the next spread and possibly the most important one of all — The Presents! Since I’m doing most of my Xmas shopping for presents online, it’s nice to have a list to write down my ideas and where I found them. It makes it easier to decide what to buy for each person and also to keep track of how much you spend and on what presents.

The last spread I’ve created for December is my mood tracker for the month. I added a cute little Christmas tree to keep up with the theme, and then I added some Christmas lights on the top of the page. I created one light for each day of the month that I’m going to be colouring depending on my mood. Like previously, I kept the key simple with only 3 choices — happy, neutral and sad — in order to not overcomplicate things.

And that concludes my Christmas setup for December. Are your ready for Christmas? Have you added any Christmas spreads in your bullet journal? Let me know in the comments below.

Christmas is a celebration of love and joy, and it’s always nice to create lovely memories with your family and your loved ones, that you’ll always remember. For me, that’s one of the main reason for these spreads as well.

I’m wishing you all an amazing month full of planning, presents and lovely memories 😉

Christina

SUPPLIES USED

Dingbats Notebook

Tombow Dual Brush Markers (243, N95, 990, 055, 835 and 452)

Stabilo Pen 68/46

Uniball Signo Sparkling Gold

Staedtler Triplus Fineliner — Olive Green

Faber-Castell Polychromos Coloured Pencils

-Dark Phthalo Green

-Emerald Green

-Raw Umber

-Dark Naples Ochre

-Warm Grey V

How to get your Dingbats* Notebook ready for Christmas was originally published in Dingbats* Notebooks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bullet journaling is a simple planning system on a notebook. You basically create your own planning layout and inserts according to your needs, and you can be as creative as you want. It can completely transform the way you plan and organise your day to day life. It’s an amazing tool that will help you to corral all your to-do lists, random slips of papers, notes, ideas, and recommendations into one place, and it will offer you peace of mind.

When it comes to boosting your productivity at work, a bullet journal can provide you with the clarity you need to get the most out of your day. It can really help you to be on top of things and to be even more organised. It’s a flexible way to log what needs to be done and when, and it’s suitable for any profession. Writing down everything you need to do and planning ahead can help you feel more prepared.

So, let’s see why and how you can turn your Dingbats notebook into a very powerful tool, with the use of the bullet journaling system, in order to boost your productivity and be on top of things.

Putting pen to paper

Putting pen to paper can really increase your productivity and make you more efficient and effective with your time. Writing things down sets a strong intention and focus. Simply by viewing your notes will help you to be more organised, set priorities and focus on the most important tasks. It will also help you to plan and use your time effectively and efficiently. Writing things down allows for mental clarity and a deeper understanding of our thoughts, ideas, to-do’s and goals.

Effective Journaling

The ways you’re using your notebook can really help you to be more effective when you plan your day or your tasks.

• Make use of the core aspects of the bullet journaling system (Index, Future Log, Monthly Log and Daily Log). They are the perfect tool for project management.
• Make a list at the start of each day with all your attainable goals. That will put you in the right frame of mind.
• Keep a record in your notebook of all the ideas that come up throughout the day or the week. You’ll be amazed at how many good ideas and solutions to problems you’ll find on that page when you get back to it!
• Make a list of all the positive things that you’ve accomplished throughout the day. Set a positive attitude towards your work and feel good about your accomplishments — big or small.

Separate notebooks or not?

You can choose to have one notebook for both your personal and professional life. The versatility of bullet journaling makes it the perfect companion to every aspect of your day. Plus the fact that you can create any spread you want, gives you the freedom to juggle both personal and business tasks in one notebook. You can also use different signifiers or colour code your tasks and projects to separate them.

However, there are instances where circumstances don’t allow you to have both parts of your life in one notebook. For example, your work environment could be more strict than others and only work related items are allowed. Or there might be security reasons, since your notebook can’t be kept as private as you’d like. Also, some people prefer not to take work at home, and so they like to leave their work bullet journal there. In that case, you might consider separating the two, and have one for your personal life and one for your work.

Either way, keeping a bullet journal is very functional and can help you stay focused and organised.

Keep it simple

A lot of people associate bullet journaling with all the fancy layouts they see online, and that deters them from even starting using the system. They consider it time consuming and believe that it takes too much effort to keep one. Therefore, they think that bullet journaling is not for them.

However, you shouldn’t be intimidated by it. Once you learn the system and become aware of it’s uses and functionality you’ll be amazed by how easy it is to implement and adjust to your needs.

Just take a step back and see that bullet journaling in it’s core is a very basic system. Keep things simple and minimal while creating your work pages in your notebook, and just focus on how this system can help you be organised and more productive.

Use Tabs

Tabs are such an amazing feature that can really help you to archive and index your pages. The Dingbats* notebooks have this feature already implemented in their pages, which makes things so much easier! These tabs are on all the pages in the notebook, and so, as you write in your journal, you apply the appropriate colour to the tab on that page. So, even when your notebook is closed you can easily identify items through the colours on the visible edge.

Use Tabs to categorise. Decide on a colour coding system and use the tabs to separate personal from work pages, if you’re using one notebook for both. Otherwise, you can use the tabs to note different sections of your work, to separate the pages by month or you can even use one tab per project.

Some Page examples

In this section I’ll share with you some spreads that you can create in your Dingbats notebook and use for your work. These are pages that I create in mine all the time and use them almost daily.

WORK LOG

A work log is where I plan my month ahead. I have a clear view of all my appointments and my deadlines and I know how to plan my days accordingly.

Of course you can change things around to suit you. You can use different sections, instead of ‘Appointments’ and ‘Deadlines’, depending on your work and what you need to use this page for. You can choose to use only one page and one section. You can add both sections on one page or you can even add 4 sections in the spread. It’s all up to you and you can totally personalise it and make it work for you.

A work log definitely helps me to keep on top of things and not to miss anything during the month.

WORK FLOW

A work flow is a chart where I create a list of each step of my work process horizontally and then I can make another list, with all the different projects where this process can be applied to, vertically. Then I just cross off each step as I’m doing it.

That way, I can take on multiple projects and keep up with everything that needs to be done. I apply this to my freelance work, all the time.

TIMEFRAME

This is another spread I create very often. It’s a great way to illustrate, schedule, and evaluate your project’s progress. I use a timeframe to display a list of tasks in chronological order vertically. And then I create a long horizontal bar labelled with the days of the month I’m working on.

Then I mark the time I need to accomplish each task in the order they appear. That way I can see how long it will take me to finish the project and to be accountable on the time I have for each task.

This is a great way to plan multiple projects as well. You can see straight away how busy you are each day, and then plan the rest of your projects accordingly.

Of course you can use any time scale, depending on your project. So, for example the vertical timeline can be changed to weeks, or even months depending on how long your project will take to be finished and how log each task needs to be done.

Having a visual timeframe for my projects can help me see clearly the important steps and tasks that need to be done and when, and it’s an essential tool for successful planning and project management.

SUPPLIES USED

Dingbats Notebook (Earth Sky Blue Great Barrier Reef Journal — Dotted A5)

Stabilo Pen 68/46

Tombow Dual Brush Pens (N95, N75, N15)

Tombow Mono Drawing Pen 0.1, 0.3, 0.5

Other Page ideas you can create

There are so many other page ideas that you can create in your Dingbats notebook and use for your work. Each one of these pages you can change and adjust according to your needs in order to boost your productivity.

Future Log

Master To Do List

Statistics Log

Productivity Tracker

Finances Page

Insurance Info

Savings Goals

Budget Tracker

Monthly Goals

Monthly Review

Monthly Analytics

5-Year Plan & Goal Tracker

Future Project List

Year in Review

… and so many more! These are a just few of the pages that you can create in your notebook and which can help you with your work. The possibilities are endless and you can create and adjust any spread you want!

So, these are some of the ways you can turn your notebook into a very useful tool, that will help you focus, be organised and boost your productivity.

We’d love to see how you use your Dingbats notebook for work. Which are the spreads that help you to be more productive?

How to use your Dingbats Notebook at work and how it can help you speed up your productivity was originally published in Dingbats* Notebooks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In today’s blog post, I’d like to show you how I’ve setup my bullet journal for October using a Halloween theme.

I’m using my Dingbats* Notebook as my 5th bullet journal and I am in love! I have chosen the ‘Great Barrier Reef’ design from the Earth Collection in A5 size with dotted pages, which comes in this lovely sky blue colour. The pictures just don’t make justice of how pretty the colour and the design of this notebook is! I’m really impressed with the quality of the paper, and the pens simply glide on it.

So, moving on to my bullet journal setup, we start with the first page I make for each month which is the Cover Page. This is the page that I create in my bullet journal in order to signify the start of the month. On that page I can create any design, depending on the theme I’ve chosen. I love the fact that I can be as creative as I want, and it also adds a fun aspect to my bullet journal. Of course you don’t have to create a Cover Page, if you don’t want to. For me personally, it has become a habit and it’s actually one of my favourite pages that I like to create each month.

So, since for October my theme is ‘Halloween’, I wanted to choose something relevant to add to this first page. There are so many elements and designs that you can associate with Halloween that, to tell you the truth, I had a hard time deciding…! Before I start creating a design on the page of my notebook, I usually play around with the theme in my sketchbook first, in order to decide on the final design. And as I was doodling and adding designs, I realised that I liked all of them and I couldn’t choose just one. So, in the end I made the choice to add them all!!!!

I always like to create my designs in my notebooks with pencil first. I’ve had too many disasters in the past few years with designs that have gone really bad, when I attempted to create the design with a pen straight away on the page. Therefore, I’ve learned my lesson and I’m always sketching my design with pencil first, before I go over it with my colours and my drawing pens. It might take a bit more time than usual, but having an almost perfect page in the end, makes it worth it.

For the design I used loads of doodles — from pumpkins, spiders, ghosts and sweets to cauldrons and potions — that I randomly placed on the page. For this month, I decided to use a more fun and bulky font. And I added some lines on one side of it, to add more dimension.

So, after adding colours this is how the Cover Page looks. I have to say that I LOVE how it turned out, and the colours really make it pop. For the colours, I decided to go with a very traditional palette full of oranges, black, purple and bright green. You can see all the supplies I used at the end of this post.

Even though I prefer my pastel colours most of the times, I have to admit that these bold colours make the picture come to life! I love how busy and cute it looks.

The next page I created in my notebook is my Monthly Log. The Monthly Log is a type of future log and helps you organise your month. It provides you with a bird’s eye view of everything you have to do in the month and the time you have to do it. There are lots of different layouts you can use for your monthly log. I tend to prefer the grid layout for some reason. And lately, I like to use only one page for my month at a glance.

Because the Dingbats* notebook is a bit bigger than all the previous notebooks I’ve used in the past (it has 28 squares horizontally and 39 squares vertically), I could make the table a bit bigger than I normally do — which is always a bonus! So, I could add a month at a glance calendar and use all the width of the page. In order to create the calendar you see in the picture, count 4 squares horizontally and 5 vertically for each box.

Also, don’t you love it when the month starts on a Monday? I’ve mentioned this before, but I really, REALLY like it when this happens. It’s just perfect for us bullet journalists! New month, new week and everything fits on the pages like a dream!

For the decoration of the page, I decided not to add all the elements of the first page again, but to choose only a few. I didn’t want to make the page look too busy and I wanted to make sure I won’t lose track of what’s important — the planning of the month. So, I just added at the bottom of the page a cauldron and lots of potions.

The next page is my Mood Tracker. I very rarely use mood trackers in my notebook. However, I had this idea in my head of creating a mood tracker with lots of different sized pumpkins, that I knew I had to create it in my bullet journal. And I have to say that it turned out even better than I had imagined it!

As you’ll see, for all the titles of the pages I chose the same font that I used for the month, in the Cover Page. I like having some consistency with a few of the elements on the pages, in order to show that they are part of the same month. So, I filled the page with lots of pumpkins in various sizes, and I added the number of the day at the bottom of each pumpkin.

For the key I kept it simple with only 3 choices — happy, neutral and sad — in order to not overcomplicate things. So, the plan is to colour each pumpkin according to the way you feel that day. However, since the pumpkins have different sections, you can even take it a step further and colour them according to the way you feel during the different parts of the day — morning, mid-day, afternoon and night. Intentionally I chose the colours of the key to be a gradient of orange shades. That way, the pumpkins look good no matter which way you choose to use your mood tracker. (Tombow Dual Brush Markers no. 946, 025 and 055)

As always I keep a Notes Page in my monthly layout. I think every one should have a page like that in their monthly setup. It’s such a useful page, that keeps all my random thoughts and notes in one place. One of the most functional pages I create each month, for sure!

I used the same font for the title as before and I added a cute little ghost at the bottom. I also like to add light grey lines in intervals on my layout. It adds something more to the page and I like the way it looks.

Lastly, I created the first Weekly Spread of the month. I went with one of my favourite horizontal layouts and I decided to keep it quite simple, both with the decorations and the colouring. So, I went ahead and I added a spider web with a cute spider on it, and I drew some parchments as banners for the different sections on the sides.

Of course, you can change and personalise this weekly spread any way you want. You can add your own sections on the side, and instead you can have, for example, your tracker, your weekly menu and the weather tracker. I kept it simple and I only used some beige colours and some light purple to add some colour to the page.

So, this is how I’ve setup my bullet journal for October in my Dingbats* notebook. I hope you find some inspiration in all the above and that you’ll use some of the layouts for your own bullet journal. If you do, make sure to tag us at @dingbatsnotebooks. We’d love to see your recreations! Also leave a comment below and tell us what is your theme for October.

Wishing you all an amazing month, full of planning and organisation.

Christina x

SUPPLIES USED:

• Dingbats Notebook
• Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pen in M, S, F
• Tombow Dual Brush Markers (942, 992, 452, 946, 025, 055, 985, 173, 665, N45, N15, N75 and N95) )
• Sakura Pigma Micron 0.2
• Zebra Mildliner in light purple
• Parker Fountain Pen with black ink

How to setup your Dingbats Notebook for October using a Halloween theme was originally published in Dingbats* Notebooks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I have always loved stationery, pens and especially notebooks. A blank notebook is a beautiful perspective for developing my creativity, for taking care of myself with writing, and be more organized in my everyday life. Since 2015, I left my agenda, planners and organisers for a bullet journal. It was the perfect support to freely express myself. I tried and own lot of notebooks, and I developed a lot of criterias a notebook should have for perfect journaling. And I’m happy to say today the Dingbats Wildlife notebook is the highest-ranked notebook I have ever tried. Here some reasons why :

• First of all, the size : A5 is the perfect one for my use. I can carry it in my purse, and I have enough space to express myself. You can choose a A4+ or a A5+ size for the Wildlife serie notebooks. The Reporter notebook in A6+ size is quite cute too, so basically everyone can find its perfect matching size of support :)

• Then, the paper. I have HIGH standards with the paper quality, because I love using lots of different techniques, pens and pencils to write in it. One day, I’ll be interesting in brush lettering, the other day with aquarelle painting. And nothing is more disappointing than a paper which can’t do its job : bleeding, feathering and ghosting are my three worst nightmares !

So I took the notebook, grabbed all the material (pens, pencils, painting…) I had close at hand, and wildly covered the pages with all I got :D Here is the result : no bleeding, no feathering, and a very light and subtle ghosting. I was so happy when I saw it !

And little surprise, ALL THE PAGES are removable ! So convenient when you are not happy with your page, or if you want to cleanly remove a sheet to give some notes to your friend/coworker or to frame a piece of art you’re very proud of ;)

I love dotted paper because it’s a great compromise between a free plain page and a gridded one : I can draw straight lines or totally wildly without a disturbing grid.

• Customization and details : the Wildlife serie is very aesthetic and neat because of its details. It starts with the cover, strong enough to protect and keep your pages in line and well ordered, and very soft and pleasant to touch. The little details of debossed animals, or the patterns inside the cover, change with the design you chose. Whale, bear, tiger, deer… it’s up to you to adopt your favorite animal (or adopt them all :) )

The pages are not numbered and there is no index pre-created. I thought it was weird at the beginning, then I had an epiphany : I CAN DO ALL I WANT ! If I want a light or a big index, how it will look, and I can remove the pages without breaking the streak if I numbered them :D

And if the freedom of creativity is a conveying value in this notebook, here are some more :

• a cruelty-free notebook : the leathered cover is vegan (PU leather)
• the paper is FSC-certified : sustainability, outstanding durability, and environment friendly.
• the cover and the paper are biodegradable and recyclable !
• the brand work with eco-friendly factories, where water and air emissions are strictly controlled, and the used water returns to the nature even cleaner than when it was taken out

How could a notebook with such great qualities not be a perfect partner for your organization and creativity ?

Here is how I adopted my new Dingbats notebook as a bullet journal :

Now… You just have to try it by yourself and express your creativity ;)

Camille from PassionCarnets

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About the author : I’m a french blogger, and I love notebook, stationery and journaling. I also created the #YearInPixel concept. You can find me on my blog and on Instagram @passioncarnets where I’m the most active :)

New Quality Paper Launched by Dingbats* — A PassionCarnets Review was originally published in Dingbats* Notebooks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.