Forgotten post! March 2018 Monthly Spread | Having fun with templates

I found a forgotten draft waiting in my dashboard – I never published it because it was waiting for Finnish translation and other things came up. As you can see I haven’t updated my blog for months, but will be updating it in the near future. I have been up to something new and kept a pause in blogging. Well, this spread is from last March and it is not that timely with its Spring colours, but I really loved the idea and how it turned out so I’d still like to share it.

My inspiration for March monthly spread started from the idea to use colours that would feel like spring. I also wanted to use my new templates and browsed through them to find a shape to fit my vision. I forgot about them when I created my last weekly spread so I did not want to miss another opportunity to use them, so I started from them. There are 24 different templates in two sets of 12, and I went for two sets and these are fantastic! I will post about these later in more detailed posts, but here is the link to set with designs 1-12 and designs 13-24 where I ordered them from.

The shape I used is from design sheet no 24, but also sheets 2, 6, and 15 contain similar shapes in different sizes. For me it was important to find a shape that is suitable size for being able to fit five days on one page and five rows as march is spread on five weeks.

After identifying this shape that for perfect for my idea I went for the spring colours. I am not a big fan of yellow, so I gathered some yellow and orange markets and all sorts of pinks I could find, and used them to create the grid. I used various brands, as long as the pen was not too dark: Stabilo Boss Pastel highlighter, Stabilo Swing Cool highlighter in neon pink, Tombow Dual Brush, Mildliner from the neon set, and several shades of Crayola Supertips from the 50 variety pack.

I coloured the shapes using the template as a sablon. I was using pastel colours to make the grid a bit  more flexible. If I need more space I can ignore the borders, because the grid is just some background colour.

 

The numbers are from design sheet 9 in the template set 1. I used Sakura Pigma Micron to trace the numbers. It is a bit slow to do, but the result is so nice.

I added week numbers on the left using a gray marker, but the spread looked too busy. So I covered them with white gel ink pen, Sakura  Gelly Roll, making them more subtle.

I think every other month I make the same mistake, I create too many squares in my grid. Noticing my mistake when I was numbering the days, I just wrote something positive there practicing my calligraphy skills.

Next, I added a monthly tracker. I am essentially tracking the same things as usual, but decided to try switching to a monthly tracker instead of weekly trackers, as this allows more space in my weeklies. Doing this, first use the Stabilo or any highlighter of your choice, and write the text on top of it. Otherwise you can expect a smudge.

The monthly tracker follows my simple concept of trackers that do not take too much space. I want my bujo to last long!

For the left upper corner I wrote the title using Tombow Dual Brush pen and Tombow Fudenosuke pen (black, soft version).

The only thing that bothers me slightly is that I did not have any space left for monthly goals and such. On the other hand I did wrote some down in my previous monthlies but I was not really using and reviewing them. I tend to be quite focused on weeks but now that I have figured that out I might later try to focus on monthly goal setting too.

I am very pleased with how the idea turned out.  I admire a lot of amazing pages on Instagram and Facebook groups, but I never start from a design that someone else designed. For me, the process of coming up with something you only have a vague idea about, or no idea at all, when you start, is rewarding and the process of creating the page is relaxing.