Bullet Journal: October Set Up

I don't normally go for the artsy spreads in my Bullet Journal, but this month I've decided to try mixing things up a little bit, beginning with my month overview page.

If you remember, for the last few months I've adopted this as my monthly overview spread:

It's taken a bit of tweaking to get it the way I wanted it, giving me enough space for everything I need and it's great.

But this month I moved away from it for two reasons. Firstly, it's a wee bit boring and I decided I wanted to go for something a little more interesting, and secondly, I've just not had that many things to schedule in recently so it felt like a bit of a waste of two pages. I'd carefully lined out September's Overview and only really used the Work column and then odd days here and there so most of it was blank.

Each month I pick a selection of colours to use for my theme. These have ranged from every shade of green in my collection to just the colours of the rainbow, to autumnal shades. Without a doubt, I knew this month would be black and orange, with a hint of green and purple in it. So when a pen pal sent me some Halloween-themed washi tape, I knew I had to include it in my Bullet Journal this month.

And since I was going Halloween-themed, I figured I would include one of my favourite October films, Nightmare Before Christmas. Which is how this happened:

I'm ridiculously proud of this page, particularly old Jack Skellington himself.

I'm not an artist at all. I used to get really frustrated when I was younger, I'd have an image in my head but would be completely unable to transfer what was in my head onto the page.

But, I'm pretty good at copying simple line drawings.

I've spent the last few weeks saving interesting looking fonts on Pinterest and copying them for my daily headers in my Bullet Journal. I stumbled across the Nightmare Before Christmas font so used that for the header page here. Then I figured I might as well include Poor Old Jack.

The picture above is my third attempt at drawing him, well, technically fourth. I made two attempts in the Bullet Journal; first I drew him too high up the page so he was just floating in the air, second his head was in the right spot, but his legs were comically short. Then I had the bright idea to draw him on some scrap paper and trace it onto the page. And he turned out pretty damn well, if I do say so myself.

The only other thing I've added to my Bullet Journal this month is a variation on my Habit Tracker. I don't have a photo of it yet since it's all in pencil still, but the basic idea is that the month is laid out as it is above and instead of colouring in a little box each time I do something, I'm drawing a little Halloween-themed doodle when I do it instead.

Once I've got it all inked in I'll share it. I don't think it's the sort of tracker I'd like to use every month, but I can see it coming out again in the run up to Christmas.

Have you got creative in your planner this month?