Bullet Journal for Creatives

1. Intro to Creative Bullet Journaling: welcome back to know the lesson. My name is Johnny and I am an artist living in Dallas, Texas. Today we're gonna be tackling a very popular subject, and that is bullet journaling. May have seen this everywhere from Instagram to YouTube to pin dressed seems very popular with creatives thes days and is a really great way to help you get organized in life. Today I'm gonna be showing you how I use bullet journaling and how it has helped me to stay creative in my daily life. I want to show you some of the pages that I have created, Inspired by many of the works that I have seen online may find that this could be a very time consuming process. But if you're creative like me, any time doing something creative is time well spent Now, Hillary joining is a great way to organize your ideas from all in one spot. For a while, I did think that I could do this, you know, with my iPhone and taking notes and things like in my phone. But I have found that being a traditional artist and loving the tactile nature of a pen and paper, I find a bullet. Journaling is actually a much better way and much more pleasing way for me to get my thoughts organized, because I do enjoy it writing and I enjoy decorating. The pages are coming up with certain themes using art media and my bullet journal. To get by thoughts form and to give them give them a place that I want to come back to to look over with that Let's get started. So there's a lot of different tools you can use and bullet generally the main ones. I like to use our inexpensive tools as it is a journal and not really suited for finished or permanent type works. Um, and as there will be a lot of writing, you don't want to spend too much on the writing tools and the drawing tools as you will use them up. However, if it is your preference to use more archival works, you definitely can argue more cable tools You definitely can. In this one, I will actually be using an expensive tools such as the dice. Oh, pens, not these pens are about a dollar 50 pens that you can get at the dice. Oh, store. Now that is a Japanese dollar store that is local to me. Here in Dallas. You can also find cheaper pens like that. But what I do love about these is that the pen is very, very fine. Tip and I do like that in writing in some of the small grid lines that you'll find or the greed of the dots that you'll find in bullet journals. You can also use small name micron pens I love my companions on. These are a bit more expensive about 2 50 to $3 depending. And with these you get archival quality, which means they last up to 100 years. Archival just means that it is professional quality and is meant to last a very long time. Now there's a lot of other pen options to use with your book journal, but like I said, the finer the tip for me, the better when writing because the grid lines can get very small. And I like to maintain order and a thin line when writing lists a big fan of reading lists . So, um, definitely do that in there. Um, also a big must for bullet journaling is washi tape. Now, I've spoken about watching tape a few times in my videos. Um, this is some of my favorite media to use in bullet journaling and sketch booking. Um, adds a bit of life, and I've had my bullet general for a little over a year now, and the Washington that I've used inside of it has stayed pretty well, but Washington is temporary tapes like masking tape, and so it's not meant to last forever. But the fact that is a closed book and is, um, you know, pact between the pages pretty well. The tape doesn't really have much opportunity to move around and be, um, and be disturbed very well, So it stays pretty well inside of a bullet journal. So I do like invalid generally now, also in my bullet journaling, I will use from very like wash and what color. And you want to use this sparingly unless you're using like a bullet general that has very heavy paper. That's for watercolor. But I'm using one I found at Michael's, and it is this and it is just like a full leather, uh, binding, and it has very, very thin pages, and it is the grid pages on the dot grade, So it's a little bit open for drawing as well as writing lists, which I will show you the pages in just a moment. Bullet German can be a very fun past time, whether you take it seriously or not, whether you just want to organize your ideas for the moment, I find it very useful for me and making lists and making plans in organizing my ideas in a very thoughtful and colorful way. Thanks so much for watching this lesson. I hope you found it useful and sparking some of your own creative ideas with bull. Eternally, Um, it's a really fun thing to do, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Thanks so much. 2. Pens, Pencils, Markers, Journals: There's a lot of different tools you can use and bullet generally the main ones. I like to use our inexpensive tools as it is a journal and not really suited for finished or permanent type works. And as there will be a lot of writing, you don't want to spend too much on the writing tools and the drawing tools as you will use them up. However, if it is your preference to use more archival works, you definitely can argue more cable tools You definitely can. In this one, I will actually be using an expensive tools such as the die. So pens, not these pens, are about a dollar 50 pens that you can get at the dice. Oh, store. Now that is a Japanese dollar store that is local to me. Here in Dallas. You can also find cheaper pens like that. But what I do love about these is that the pen is very, very buying tip, and I do like that in writing in some of the small grid lines that you'll find or the greed of the dots that you'll find in bullet journals. You can also use small name micron pens. I love my companions on. These are a bit more expensive about 2 50 to $3 depending. And with these you get archival quality, which means they last up to 100 years are credible. Just means that it is professional quality and is meant to last a very long time. Now there's a lot of other pen options to use with your book journal. But like I said, the finer the tip for me, the better when writing because the grid lines can get very small. And I like to maintain order and a thin line when writing lists a big fan of reading lists . So, um, definitely do that in there. Um, also a big must for bullet journaling is washi tape. Now I've spoken about watching tape a few times in my videos. Um, this is some of my favorite media to use in bullet journaling, and sketch booking adds a bit of life. And I've had my bullet general for a little over a year now, and the Washington that I've used inside of it has stayed pretty well. But watching tape is temporary tapes like masking tape, and so it's not meant to last forever But the fact that is a closed book and is, um, you know, pact between the pages pretty well. The tape doesn't really have much opportunity to move around and be and be disturbed very well, So it stays pretty well inside of a bullet journal. So I do like impala generally now, also in my bullet journaling, I will use from very like, wash and one of color. You want to use despairingly unless you're using, like a bullet general that has very heavy paper. That's for watercolor. But I'm using one I found at Michael's. And it is this faux leather, um, binding. And it has very, very thin pages. And it is the grid pages on the dot grade eso. It's little bit open for drawing as well as writing lists, which I will show you the pages. But I just want to say that it doesn't really matter so much the, um, materials that you're using. I mean, you do want to be able to make sure that your pages aren't getting destroyed by using heavy media meant for stronger pages. But the main idea here is to get materials that excite you or make you want to keep coming back to the bullet journal because part of the process as a creative, I find that it's really important for me to like the materials that I'm using and to want to be able to keep on using them and come back to them time and time again. 3. Characterful Page Titles: So as you can see here, I've already got one of my lists started in my book. And what I do the top is put a title of what I think I want to make it. Sometimes I change this later, but the title of the list. So this is actually a list of fantasy creatures. So I just wrote fantasy creatures at the top. And then once I get ready to come back and do a official, um, title and colors and everything to make it more, uh, aesthetic, then I will come back in a race that and then start working in. So what I'm gonna do is put in basic distance or with of each letter where I wanted to be to try to make sure it all fits in place. Just a quick tip here. I'm using a blue lead pencil. I usually like to use Blue led when im sketching because I think that it looks okay if it doesn't disappear so much, especially after racing, because Blue led can be a little bit difficult to erase. But because of the blue and I like blue, then I don't actually mind that thes sketch marks still show up underneath what I'm doing, but even still, I'll go back in the race most of it because I can be a bit heavy handed, so I'll go back and erase some of it if I need to. But I kind of like the way it looks, regardless of whether it disappears or not. So that's why I'm using a blue led here and blocking end letters. So I have a general idea of what actually want him to look like. That's why I'm kind of putting in the general idea here, has a sketch form, but as always, I like to look at inspiration on Pinterest, So I recommend going to Pinterest and looking at different fonts. Actually, also, I want to show you this, our legal guys. So that does actually lettering work. He's on Instagram. You can see his name there at the top of the screen and there was this really cool in that I liked that I think really fit with what I was trying to go for. That one was pretty cool that when it's a valerian, but this is the one that I thought was really what I'm going for in my font here. So I'm going to try to see if I can find the actual alphabet for a fund that similar to this. And also, I want to look at some other funds that I could use his inspiration. This was actually really cool. I, like all of the monsters and illustrations drawn its each letter. This one has just a dragon. Actually, that f is perfect. I think I love that F. So we're gonna try to modify that after a little bit for this, and then some of these letters will do pretty well. So, yeah, I like to pick and choose different letters, different fonts on what I do is kind of get inspiration from some of them. And then I'll try to modify as best I can to make the my own and put them in to my bullet, as you might have guessed. Um, the font aspect of bullet journaling is the whole art into so and it's part of the process that I like the most, because I do like different kinds of bonds learning how to let her, and I think I would take a few classes on lettering myself just to get better at that. But the part of it that I like the best is the illustration aspect. Because even if you don't no lettering that well, I always used to do bullet letters and, um, come from bullet letters. You should dio balloon like balloon lettering and things like that when I was younger. So E should draw a lot of alphabet type things, and people's names and things like that was when I was younger. So I have a lot of experience doing that for myself, but in my sketchbook or doing it within character drawings, making sure the thought went with character in some cases. So this is where I'm coming from When I'm in my bullet journal, I'm I'm kind of just illustrating letters, not necessarily trying toe. Let her the way you might see people doing script lettering or calligraphy. That stuff is really beautiful, but that does take a little bit of time to learn and to perfect and get good at it. But the issue that I have with it for myself with bullet journaling is that I find that it's more inspiring to me to make everything fit the list or the page that I'm doing it for , so I don't necessarily want everything to be in one style. So I like the aspect of beginning to draw and be creative and seeing my bullet journal as a place to explore these other kinds of ideas. Like like typeface and font. Illustration like that goes with what? What's on the page and they have it. This is how I finished most of my title pieces in my bullet journal. But you know, I'm a little bit extra, so sometimes I will take it a bit further, as you might you see in some of my other pages. But here I have a high later I got from Die. So it's one of the dice. Oh, hi. Later it comes in a pack very cheap. I think this whole pack might have been a dollar 50. I'm not sure, but it's three tips. Like a three tipped highlighter, she should be able to get three different kinds of lines on it's really strangely shaped and kind of get a little take a little time to get used to. But it's very interesting to have the different options in a single writing utensil, so I'm gonna use the very thinnest tip on one tied and just go around the letters and we're going to make these letters glow because their fantasies. So why not? And they have a guy's time. I do my title pages and really, the sky's the limit for us. Great duty with this kind of thing. So don't be afraid, Ridge. Blore. Um, I do a lot of exploring in my sketchbook, which we will get to in the next section, but I want to show you some of the pages that I haven't here. So this is my artist eight page that Goes with the Artist Way book by J, um, by Julia Cameron. And she has this awesome book, um, about following artist path. Because when I favorite pages the commission's page where I used a lot of thesis reflective washing tape and I cut it up into strips and points so that it makes it's kind of cool effect. And this is big wash and gel ink. This one is in black marker and highlighter and gel ink. Um, this one is, I think, my most favorite one in my blood General to the very front and This is my painting tracker . So I have, like, different sizes of paintings, and then I'll fill in with a different color when I finished it. But it just tracks my progress and painting, and I used all washing tape, cutting out the washing, taper each of those letters, and it takes some fairy a long time, and it's really tedious. But I think the product was gorgeous and I loved it so much and it, like I said, it's one of my favorite pages. 4. Journal Level Up! Some Further Study: I've seen how a typical title can go. So this so I want to go take a little bit further, more of a deeper study in this way. I want to show you what I usually go through when I'm developing entitle that is a little bit more intricate. And this one I'll be working on another list in my boat. Ah, very similar to the fantasy creatures. This one is, um, like monsters more humanoid than animal. And I'm going to be putting in, um, monster as the title. So I want something similar to what I did for fantasy creatures, but I'm going to make a little bit different with just the one word. So we got our man sketchbook, and I'm gonna be sketching some of the inspirations that I got from the pictures that I got on Pinterest. I just want to reiterate that these are some method that, um I find helpful on fun for creative to take on because and it was a little bit more of the illustration factor when dealing with the words and drawing and drawing things in the book along with the words because it takes on the effect and takes on more of a sketchbook aspect. In that sense, this is definitely not something that you need to do when you're starting out. A bullet journal Mostly Bottle Journal will be about organizing ideas, making lists, making to do lists. Um, but mostly an organization of ideas just to keep yourself on track in your life as a creative I find it that I use it for both, and I like the sense of drawing in my bullet journalists well, because it gives me a simple idea to start with a Sfar as drawing some letters or using colors. And it's almost like a jump start point for when you start to draw are when you want to start creative work for the day. Um, you can take some part out of your day to do a bullet journal and kind of write down things . You might want to achieve things you might want to draw things, tasks or works that you want to get done on. Have a a little bit of time to do so. It's watching or a little bit time to do, uh, some colors and Grady INTs and work with your tools basically and kind of kick start, the creative juices going. - So as you can see, there's a lot more planning that goes into the color scheme of each page here. So I'm trying out different different market colors. Funny because I don't use markers very often. And now that I've Bean began to do diligently more often, I crave a lot more colors in my marker sets because I don't really use them very much, except for outlining or a little touch up here and there because I'm mostly a painter, so I find it very interesting. Now I'm I'm wanting a lot more market colors and different kinds of markers and trying out different kinds of markers so that I can be able to use them in this type work. So we're gonna add in some gel pens. These I usually mostly for highlight highlighting, um, shiny areas highlighting in gold or metallic other metallic colors, and some of them are opaque, so they will write over dark services. And since I have some dark colors and the letters, I want to make sure test out whether or not they can, which ones can go over the black of the dark areas. So I tried him over on the white part and on the black part that I could see which ones will show up the best. Some of these are just glittery, and some of them are opaque. So that's why I had to test them out to remember which ones are which. I think Joe colors are really awesome. Way to add very bright color because a lot of them come in neon colors and metallic colors and glaze on jelly roll. The brand specifically has a lot of different types of Joe markers or joke till Joe pins, and so they have a wide variety of uses. And I think bullet journaling is one of the biggest uses that they have or have had for me and it, apart from doing highlights in my artwork, they had a lot of color and a lot of differentiation when I'm trying to organize ideas. So I think jelly roll is a big way to start your bullet journal. If you are looking for one type of pen to go it, I would go with a pack of these because they usually come in a pack of a lot of colors and then not too expensive. Unfortunately, this one is dry, so I don't have a replacement for that color yet. Happens with a lot of my markers and, uh, pens like this because I use a lot of one particular color, usually in my regular work. Um, And like I said, now that I'm doing more bullet journaling, I'm needing more of the colors. And so a lot of the cultures that I've had for a while have dried out already. And I'm one of the markers that I've had old ones that I've had since college, and they've just been sitting in a drawer that I don't use very opted. And so now I need more color says I'm shutting. It finishes when I am noticing. I feel like there is a missing color here. I like the coolness of all the colors together, but I want to add a little bit of form on. So practicing in yours catch like this is why this is why I recommend Brexit, and that's because you can fill in things like this out. What I'm gonna do is make a few different radiance of the letters and then try out different colors. I think this is gonna be a really good idea for when you start to buy new colors of different kinds of things. You can have pages in your bullet journal where you swatch the colors and write the names of the color next to it, so that when you're looking for a particular color, we're looking for a thickness of line or whatever you may be looking for. You can style these pages and in many different ways, so that you can reference them like an index of colors. And I do the same thing when I'm working on my sketchbook. I'll do this. Were different paint colors or different market colors, and I think it be really useful if you are not keeping a sketchbook. But do you have a bullet journal and you want to make sure you're getting the right pen at the right time or the right style? The right color? Ah, lot of things don't match the cap color, so that's would be the good reason for indexing your your hacking tools. I had a funny thought as I was making this section that anybody who was gonna watch it was just gonna pick the colors that they liked and that they thought were going to be more harmonious. And I could just imagine people watching this and being like, oh, picked this color, I wouldn't. I want this color or I want I would use this color. No, don't use that color. Um, we're all gonna be different. Obviously, I couldn't really decide even with all of those watches that I made, which one that I like the most. But I narrowed it down to those three at the bottom, and I'm going with a warmer color to detract from the coolness. So I want some of the green. I want some of the cream color. It's the cream color, I think is the one I like the best. It has a a warm aspect to it without being so different from just having the white there, but adds enough contrast for me. What I think I will do, though, is just add the glow effect we did on the other letters, and I'll use a combination of greens and yellows for this and make a very cool radiant for the letters. All right, so I have a few options here that I'm going to go off. Um, it'll look something like this that exact like this, cause this is kind of a sketching of what I colors that I wanted to put together to see how they came across. But I will go with some of parts of this in the bullet General. So let's head over to the bullet journal here, and then I'll start to sketch in the lines for the letters. I think I only changed a couple of things a few things here and there, and then the colors. Ah, tweak Just a little bit. But a I think I did decide that I'm gonna use the cream color, um, for the kind of the light aspect in the center of the letters, and then go ahead with the green greens and yellows for a glow effect, and then mostly used some of the gold and the silver Joe pens for highlights inside the letters. So see how that turns out? - No . So I was I was making this, um, I realized that I didn't go with the plural of monsters because I was actually going to write, um, like, manual like monster manual or Monster Guide. or months like another word underneath Monster. So that, um, and make more sense. Because otherwise, if my left monster there, it was gonna be, you know, monsters like a list of monsters. But I made the letters so big, I completely forgot that I wanted to do that because I want it. Like in my sketchbook. You saw how I wrote monster in just the just a plain writing. So I was gonna do something like that, but I left no room at all underneath my title, so that's okay. Um, what I'm actually gonna do is you can write it on the side. So it's another idea, like you can write it down the spine of the book or on the edge of the boat, just going downwards, or since my list is probably not really gonna get much longer than what it is because I made it a pretty comprehensive list. So I still have room to add quite a bit more, but I don't think it's going to get that much longer, so I can actually write manual at the very bottom and just have it be the top and the bottom just encasing the list so I think that I feel pretty cool and I haven't done that yet, so we'll see how that looks. Um, but they had just another idea for you to put in Ah, title somewhere on the page. That's not the typical place. I think I actually I'm going to try to put a title down the edge on one of my pages and see how that looks. So here I am, going through some ideas. Just we're fine. This is where sketch but comes in handy. But you could also put this interior bullet general and just try out layouts for fund. But these are just different list types on different ways to make a list or make it look different. Um, some of these I've used in some of my haven't I love using the watching tape. I think that is a really cool way to add color. Here's some of the layouts that I've done on this one super non list like, but I love the way that turned out. I could just add all over both of those pages on and fill it up. And before I even got into bullet journaling, I made this work schedule for working on my artwork between my day job, and when October came up, I made this list of different kinds of witches I could draw. And then I found this on one of my sketchbooks, the like a mind map up different movies and books that would inspire some artwork and realize that I was into the bullet journaling before it was cool. But I really hope that inspires you to make some lists of your own. And that's it. For now, get onto the conclusion. 5. Colorful Conclusion: blood. German can be a very fun past time, whether you take it seriously or not, whether you just want to organize your ideas for the moment, I find it very useful for me and making lists and making plans in organizing my ideas in a very thoughtful and colorful way. Remember that the Blue Journal can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Is your place for your thoughts and ideas And, uh, whatever helps you get back to it and form this as a habit is the most important thing, and it is simply a turn to help you. Thanks so much for watching this lesson. I hope you found it useful and sparking some of your own creative ideas with bull. Eternally, it's a really fun thing to do. And I hope you enjoy it as well. Thanks so much. Oh, before I forget, show me your best titles and best layouts in the project section. Okay, Bye.