JULY PLANNER SPREADS 2021

July Calendar

For my first month at a glance in this bullet journal, I opted for a two-page calendar set up— one of my biggest problems with a two-page monthly layout is the fact that, with seven days in a week, it’s impossible to make the two pages symmetrical, so I created an eighth column next to Saturday dedicated to writing any big to-do items for the month. Not only does the extra column provide more room for writing notes down, but it also makes the spread balanced.

Instead of writing July in big letters, I thought it’d be fun to just messily write July over and over again on the upper left corner and I’m obsessed with how this turned out. For the pop of colour I brought out one of my archer and olive acrylograph pens in .7mm — I’ve really been loving experimenting with these pens, and I find they’re inspiring me to try new things in my journal.

Normally I’d be tempted to fill in the white space around the calendar with my design elements but I kind of love the fact that the star of the show gets to be the calendar and it also brings the eyes attention to the July collage….it’s one of my favourite calendar setups that I’ve done in a while!

Mid-Year Review + Self Reflection

On the left page, I created a spot to record a mid-year review. Last Friday I posted a video on my channel centered all-around how to get back on track with your beginning of the year goals, and a large part of that involves some reflection over what the first half of the year has looked like. The layout consisted of three larger rectangles for journaling about a description of a proud moment, a habit I want to strengthen, and the best memory of the year so far.

On the right page, I want to keep the theme of self-reflection going so I felt like it was about time to come up with some new journal prompts. I’ve been a little off my game this year with free-form journaling where I just set a 10-minute timer and let my brain spit out whatever it wants to spit out about a particular topic or question, so I’d like to get back into the swing of that process because it can be so enlightening.

Spending Tracker

It’s halfway through the year so I think it’s time for a financial check-in, and one of my favourite ways to do that is by monitoring my spending. Often when I create spending trackers, I add on a mini-budget layout, but this time my main focus wants to solely be on logging purchases.

The little globs at the top are so fun and I love the juxtaposition of this cool, bright doodle element being used for a spending tracker (a spread that most people wouldn’t necessarily be thrilled about filling in).

The layout is a simple one: a column for a date, a description of the purchase, and the amount spent. And then at the bottom of the right page, I brought back the pink pen to create a rectangle that will eventually house the grand total of money spent in July.

Weekly Layout

It’s been a while since I’ve done a dutch door in my journal so I figured it’d be exciting to play around with it for July’s weekly layout. I put my focus first on designing the first side of the dutch door with some blue waves and adding in a simple inspirational quote: ENJOY THE NOW.

On the other side of the dutch door, I drew out mini habit trackers to record hydration, meditation, expressing gratitude and reading sessions. And then below the habit tracker, there’s a spot to write down which book I read that week and my rating. I keep track of my reading on Goodreads, but it’s fun to add notes about what I was reading on a given week for a “future Caitlin” who scrolls through my old journal.

To create the rest of the page I relied once again on my black pen to handwrite the days of the week and create the rectangles that will eventually be the home to to-do lists and due date reminders!