Here's another sunflower design for this summer.
I wasn't sure what theme to do for my August journal design. So, I had my friends decide for me. I gave three choices: sunflowers, coconut trees, and knitting. One friend immediately replied with "sunflower," and that's I went with for next month's journal design.
The Design Theme
I'm glad my friend chose sunflower because it's one of my Mom's favorite flower. Mom had a sunflower as part of our home's decoration when I was young. Sampaguitas (Jasmine) is her other favorite flower.
When I first got my Cricut machine, I created sunflower decals I placed on her landline phone and travel mug. In fact, that old craft project was the inspiration for last week's Sunflower Travel Mug Cricut Project.
Before I asked my friends to select from the three options I presented them, I sketched the basic layout of calendars and boxes on my overview, trackers, and websites & stuff pages. This didn't take long. I simply referenced my July journal setup to determine what sizes I wanted things to be.
Once I sketched my basic layout of calendars and boxes, I began sketching sunflowers on each page. I originally intended to have a full-sized sunflower on the title page with "August 2020" in a blank space somewhere.
I ultimately decided to add the text across the center of the sunflower's head and petals after watching videos on slicing and splitting images in Cricut Design Space to add text in the center of the images. I don't regret this decision.
It made sense to me to have sunflowers on most pages, especially for my mood tracker. When I sketched the sunflower for my mood tracker page, I made sure there were thirty-one petals, one for each day of the month. I'll color-in a petal based on one of four moods for that day: good, meh, bad, or sick.
I used my Artist's Loft beginners' acrylic paints and a mix of Tombow brush markers, Firefly brush markers, and Pen Gear pens for setting up this month's design theme.
I experimented with the acrylic paints because I wanted to see how much the pages would warp. In my old journal, the application of acrylic paints, even when I didn't use water to apply the paint colors to the page, warped the pages. Fortunately, the higher GSM of this new journal allowed the pages to remain flat.
The Contents
The title page is just an art page for me. I never reference this page after I create. Perhaps in the future when I'm looking back at my journal the title page would be helpful. Otherwise, I could easily scrap this page and note the month's name on the calendar overview pages.
The calendar overview is where I note important dates, such as appointments and birthdays, things I should do that month, and things that are coming up in the next month.
Each day, I write a line of text highlighting one good thing about that day on my highlights page (not pictured). Since I fill-in the journal pages at night before I sleep, I sometimes feel better after I've written something good about that day. Even on the worst days, I realize there's a little glimmer of happiness that I can write about. Usually it's something simple such as how I love having my dogs by my side.
I track my hobbies and things for my dogs on my Trackers page. While many journal enthusiasts track multiple habits, I like tracking my favorite hobbies since I sometimes forget to take time to have a little fun. There's often a correlation with my mood for the day and what hobbies I did, if any. As for my dogs, I track the following:
when they go for a joy ride,
when they received teeth care with brush chews or tooth brushing,
when I've cared for their coat with a brush, leave-in shampoo, or bath and
when they participated in extended or extra playtime.
For the mood tracker page, I'll color-in a petal based on one of four moods for that day: good, meh, bad, or sick. Sometimes I'll overlap colors, especially on days where I may've felt meh, but also a little sick. For any day I feel sick, I'll write my symptoms in the colored area or off to the side with an arrow pointing to the correct day. I suffer from migraines and stomach issues, so I'm usually noting headaches or nausea.
Finally, I have a page devoted to updates and changes I make to my websites & stuff. By "stuff," I'm referring to my uploads to YouTube and Instagram. I haven't uploaded anything to Instagram in weeks. I may minimize the size of that box in next month's design.
My Thoughts
I'm really loving this new journal! I wouldn't have been able to do as many small acrylic paintings on several pages without the pages warping. The only page that warped was my title page, but it was minor and easy to flatten by closing the journal and placing a heavier book on top for a few hours.
My favorite part of this design was practicing my painting and artistic skills in my journal. I'm no expert by any means, and I feel like some of my sunflowers look like they've starting wilting. However, I'm curious to see how my skills evolve overtime in my journals.
What's Next?
I'm thinking about making a few changes and additions to next month's design. I'm curious to know how much time I've put into writing my blog posts and editing videos. I've never created a time tracker, but now's a good time to give it a try.
What are some things you track in your own journal? Login and Sign up to describe what you track and why you track it.
Don't forget to subscribe below to be notified by email when I post something new.
Thanks, and have a great day!
Simply Jelly Jam
Comments