My May 2023 Cottagecore Bullet Journal Theme (with Fairies!)
I’ll let you in on a secret: my bujo themes are usually inspired by one particular piece of stationery I really want to use in the coming month! When a sticker sheet or a certain paper is calling my name, I usually just pull out any and all supplies that look great with it and run with that - and that’s exactly how my theme for May 2023 came about.
If you’ve seen my recent Grabie and JournalSay videos, you’ll know I’ve found myself with an overabundance of magical stationery recently - fairies and butterflies and mushrooms abound! THEN I went to a sewing destash market, and found amongst the fabrics this stunning rose paper and it all just came together. And here we are - with a green and yellow cottagecore magical bujo theme for May! Check out the video below to watch it all come together, or scroll down to see photos of each spread. Links to everything I used (that can be linked to) are at the bottom of the post!
Cover & Quote Spread
This cover spread is actually so simple - just a long bit of paper torn in half, some gold floral stickers for texture, stamped heading and quote on Daiso frame cards, and some fairies and butterflies to taste. It’s so sweet!
Monthly Calendar Spread
I was feeling loose and flowy when I set this up, so I’ve used a brush tip paint marker totally freehand to set up the lines for this calendar layout. It’s a very similar layout to the cover spread - just with paper decorating the sides of the pages instead of the top and bottom! I love a torn edge on all my papers and often on my washi tapes too.
Tracker Spread - Habits & Mood
I think I might love my craft market paper a bit too much - I was scared to “waste” it so I supplemented it with this plain creamy yellow paper - even though I have SO much of the floral paper still leftover! I’ve thermal-printed my habit calendars, and my mood tracker this month is an illustrated door I’ll colour in a panel of each day - it’s a little nod to my LOTR-inspired hobbit hole door mood tracker back in September 2021!
Goals, Favourites & Musings Page
I always love looking back at this page! I don’t always achieve my goals but it helps so much just having them set. It’s always interesting to see what I was enjoying in any given month - from movies and TV to music, books, food and more. The musings section is a monthly snapshot of my mind - what I’m worried about, excited about, thinking about.
Spending Log
If it’s not broken… you know what they say! While it’s decorated differently each month, this page functionally stays the same. It will stay the same until I find a reason to change it - it just works so well for me! I track and categorise everything I buy on this page. I usually only fill it out in bursts a couple of times a month - it’s definitely not an every day page - but I wouldn’t be without it!
Content Planner Spread
I’ve harped on about this spread so many times, so I’ll give you the elevator pitch today - planning and pre-scheduling social media posts is the best! It’s time consuming in the moment but makes life much easier later. This spread helps me do that.
Meal Planner Page
I’ve NEVER, in all my five and a half years of bullet journaling, had a meal planning page before - but I think I should have! I have some pretty bad habits around eating (in that I often just… don’t) and I hate cooking, so writing down a plan and meal prepping what I need to prep to stick to it will (hopefully) help me live a lot healthier! I’m trialling it in May - you’ll know if it worked or not by whether or not I include it in my June pages!
One Line a Day
In another lifetime (ie the 2000s mostly) I was a poetry fiend - I channelled all my creativity into words in countless notebooks (the notebook part hasn’t changed) and even posted a lot of my teenage angst to DeviantART - yikes! In April I’ve noticed lots of NaPoWriMo posts on Instagram (National Poetry Writing Month) and it made me long to return to my poetic roots. The concept of a One Line A Day page isn’t new, but I’ll be executing it with a twist - I’ll write one line of a POEM each day. It doesn’t need to be good - it just needs to be.
Weekly Spread
I went back to my creamy yellow paper here, but I wish I’d mixed a bit of the floral paper in with it. This spread is a bit too yellow for my taste now! I’ve used my favourite @ruthie.journals weekly layout - it lays the days out as squares, with empty squares around them perfect for decoration. I think of decorating this spread a bit like the bujo equivalent of an Ikea Kallax shelving unit! You just add two or three decorative elements and you’re done!
Everything I Used to Make this Setup:
Stickers, washi & papers:
• Floral printed paper: thrifted
• Frame cards: Daiso Australia (I can't link these, sorry!)
• Butterfly PET stickers *
• Fairy PET stickers (green)
• More fairy stickers * (white)
• Gold gilded floral washi stickers (similar style) *
• Long leaf & gold PET stickers *
• Light yellow A4 paper sheets
• Fragrance (daisy) washi tape (part of a set) *
• Gold shiny frame clear stickers: purchased from Lincraft originally several years ago - I can't find anything similar to link sadly!
• Autumn bouquet washi tape sticker set *
• Green oasis washi tape sticker set *
Pens & Markers:
• Sakura Pigma Micron 03 fineliner *
• Sakura Pigma Micron 003 fineliner *
• Artistro brush tip paint markers *
• Tombow Mono Graph mechanical pencil *
• White Uni Posca paint marker - for fixing mistakes!
• Tombow dual brush pen in 312 holly green
• Tombow dual brush pen in 192 asparagus
• Tombow dual brush pen in 228 grey green
• Tombow dual brush pen in N89 warm grey
• Tombow dual brush pen in 910 opal
• Tombow dual brush pen in 991 light ochre
• Tombow dual brush pen in 131 lemon lime
*= gifted
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