May 2022 Minimal Floral Bujo Setup with Stickers
Come plan with me for May!
You can always tell when my life is getting busy - my bullet journal becomes very simple!
In a bit of a nod to my January plan with me, which also featured a minimal layout accentuated with floral stickers, May has me getting back to basics. A few favourite coloured pens, a great fineliner and some sweet floral stickers are all you need to make this layout come to life!
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Quote and Calendar pages
I wanted a subtle quote page, so rather than featuring large lettering, I’ve kept it very small. I can’t completely confirm if this quote is really by Oscar Wilde - that seems to be how the Internet has it attributed but nowhere seems to point to where and when it was said - so if I’ve misattributed it I’m very sorry to whoever actually said it!
I tucked the text just above and below a collaged feature - it’s a combination of washi tape and stickers, and I was trying to lean into some autumnal colours since that’s the season we’re in for Australia right now! That said, our foliage never really turns red and falls off the trees here so the flowers don’t feel at all out of place!
I wanted lots of negative space on my calendar page, so I kept the boxes pretty small - just three spaces by three spaces. The big feature here is the floral wreath - from the Washi Tape Shop’s Delicate Floral Wreaths washi tape sticker roll. I’ve added some extra stickers to give the wreath a bit of a wild and overgrown look, and drew my handlettered “May” right over the top of the sticker.
Gratitude Log, Goal Setting, Currently & Habit Tracker
Ever since I saw Lenne of Lennezulkiflly’s currently bujo idea, I have had to have one. Lenne does a whole “currently” page in her journal, but I’ve condensed mine to a page with my gratitude and goals sections. I have just enough space to add a few words of gratitude each day. The goals section helps keep me on track for my annual goals, and the currently box is just for fun - I use it to note down whatever I’m into over the course of the month. That can be books, movies, music, TV, podcasts, anything at all!
The habit tracker idea came from my Phomemo M02 mini printer review pages - I’ve never done a habit tracker like this because I’ve always been too lazy to draw out these mini calendars, when I can print them on demand? Absolutely! The paper I’ve used here is transparent, and I think it would have worked better on opaque white paper since this one lets the dots show through underneath, but it’s totally fine. I’m excited to see if I vibe with this kind of habit tracker in May! It’s much faster than my usual setup!
A clean and cute bujo layout in two easy steps
Whenever I’m going for a minimal setup, I love drawing boxes around my page elements. If you can line up your top and bottom edges of those boxes across your pages, all the better - it gives such a clean and cohesive feeling to the whole layout! For instance, on the pages above, the top of the gratitude box and the bottom of the goals and currently boxes line up with the top and bottom of the habit tracker box. The left side of the goals box and right side of the currently box also line up with the sides of the gratitude box. All that lining up makes for a very calming and balanced looking page.
But how to make it cute? Add stickers - sparingly! Stick to small stickers on the corners of your boxes and you can’t go wrong.
Spending, Phone Use & Sleep Trackers
These two are always my most utilitarian pages, and they end up full of data, so I try to keep them pretty low-key. Once again I’ve lined up my boxes across the two pages as much as possible!
I like tracking my spending, mostly as a mindfulness tool - if I know I have to write it down and admit to myself where my money went over the month, I tend to think twice before I commit to a purchase.
Tracking my phone and sleep is also more of a reminder to myself, rather than a particularly important data set. I don’t tend to look back at this data, but as I fill it out it sometimes surprises me to see I haven’t been getting enough sleep, or I’ve been letting myself stare at my phone for much longer than I’d like, and being faced with that knowledge helps me choose to make a change.
Content Calendar Spread - best paired with erasable Frixion pens
After introducing erasable Frixion pens for my April content calendar, I will never go back to indelible ink for such a dynamic page. I plan out all my content over a full month on this spread, and I quite often need to rearrange things based on how much free time I have, brand requirements and all sorts of other factors. Between this blog you’re reading right now, my bujo Instagram, photography business blog and photo biz Instagram, I have plenty of content to keep track of so I find this spread essential!
Each of my Frixion highlighters is assigned to one of those platforms or accounts, and I keep those colours consistent from month to month so I don’t need to think about which one represents which. I also grabbed a Frixion fineliner so I can make my text erasable too.
Mood Tracker & Brain Dump
I LOVE a mood tracker that ends up beautiful at the end of the month… even if you had a really bad month. The illustrative element is what makes these fun for me - mood tracker graphs are just not a vibe to me - but I struggled with the concept for this one, since all my other decorative elements were… stickers. I ended up settling on the floral wreath idea, and used the super-fine Pigma Micron 003 to draw these sweet little flowers. The leaves aren’t part of the tracking part, they’re just there to balance out the design and give it context, so I’ve already coloured them in, but each flower represents a day in the month, starting from the 12 o’clock position and moving anti-clockwise around the wreath. I’ve also made it available as printable on my Etsy store, with versions for 31, 30 and 28 day months.
I’ve never included a brain dump page in my journal before… and to be honest, I don’t like the term “brain dump.” It makes total sense, since that’s literally how the page is meant to be used - a dump of whatever’s in your brain - but it doesn’t sound pretty, so I changed it to “May musings” instead. I’m not sure yet if I’ll love having such a flexible space in my journal or if I won’t even touch it - stay tuned on my Instagram if you want to find out!
Rolling Weekly
I definitely have a go-to weekly layout - it has the spaces for each day of the week on the left page, where I add events and reminders, and a running to-do list on the right. On the outside of both of those, I usually have plenty of space for decoration. And I have used that layout almost every. Single. Month. Since May 2021.
When you’re on to a good thing, you don’t want to lose it, but I also like to change things up to keep them interesting, so this weekly is a variation on that formula. It has 8 boxes on the right page - seven for the days, and one for some washi tape - a running to-do list box, and plenty of space to the right of the to-do list for decoration too.
Supplies I used for this layout:
Moonbeam journal from the Washi Tape Shop (no longer available! I can’t find it on their site at all!)
Delicate floral wreaths washi tape sticker set and fragrance washi tape set
Tombow dual brush pens in asparagus 192, carnation 761, baby pink 800, and purple sage 623
Monami Colour Twin Brush dessert pastel pen set ( specifically B42 soft blue delete and YO01 Castella)
Pigma Micron 03 fineliner for boxes and lettering and Pigma Micron 003 fineliner for the mood tracker page illustration
Just a couple of watercolour plants and flowers stickers from Notebook Therapy on the weekly spread - I wanted to use up the sheet!
Frixion erasable highlighters in soft blue, soft pink, soft yellow, and soft violet
Sakura sticker set (I only used a couple of these on the quote page)