Summer Flowers -- A Journal
Assalamualaikum everyone.
Did you guys know I started bullet journaling since April this year? Eheh! Probably not.
So, I bought this one cute A5-sized book with blank, lined, black and squared pages. The cover reads SUMMER FLOWERS and there are illustrations of flowers and leaves. I bought it at MPH maybe late 2015 or early 2016, I can't remember.
Here's the cover page.
Being me, I usually buy a loooooooooooooooooot of blank books (they might be needy later in the future, as I always say to myself) and end up having no idea what to do with them. So, at the start of 2017, I wanted to do something like "One day one doodle" on that SUMMER FLOWERS book. It started off great, until...
Well, until I had zero creativity and became very the malas to think of what to draw. The first page I drew some New Year's greeting, and the next pages were of some doodles that I saw online and decided to try them out.
The one on the left is from a doodle I Googled, and the wording/typography next to it is a quote from Anna Quindlen: "Books are the plane and the train and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home." If you love books as much as I do, you'd find the quote to be relatable as well.
Ugh, ok then by mid January I was like, this is tiring -- both for the mind and body! HAHAHAHA bye because once I'd skipped one day, I had to do two doodles the next day and the next thing I knew, I had a pile of doodles to finish for the days I skipped. It's like when you do your assignment, you procrastinate until the end of the term and BAM 100 assignments are piling up.
Around April (WELP, that's a bit LATER than January isn't it) I got kinda interested with bullet journaling. I watched Amanda Rach Lee on Youtube, she does bullet journals every month and shares them on her channel.
You can see her channel here.
I really like her channel because it's freaking organised! And she's awesome, so creative, pretty and her voice is just like the sound of great melody (okay this is a lil exaggerated but you get my point). I think she's very pretty and uh I like how she does her face every time, simple but still attractive.
Since it was April, I decided to start on bullet journaling for April. January, February and March had passed so there was no point on dwelling on the past. Lol.
I started out really awkward. I couldn't do shiz hahahahahah well except for the stars. The constellations were quite jerky but the most horrible one was the hand-lettering. Ya Allah, I sucked really bad at them before. But I moved on.
At the time, I didn't have enough tools for all the hand-lettering, colouring, drawing etc. It was just pencil colours, some simple Faber Castell magic marker pens, a bunch of water-based marker pens (Stabilo 24 colours and ColourMax Jumbo 24 colours) so I did what I could with them. LOL NOT ENOUGH RIGHT HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
That calligraphy handwriting (Expense Tracker) was done by my sister, Kakngah. She's an expert, unlike her chubby youngest sister T^T Okay, I followed a few of what Amanda did for her journal, like the expense tracker, period tracker and mood tracker. Of my own, I did some academic stuff (because I was still in my mid semester in April), TV series and book trackers, y'know, the dates of when the episodes were airing and books coming out. Just for fun.
I also drew this one dress I saw online. Well, I tried to draw sounds more likely.
For May, Amanda did the "wave" theme. I HATED MY WAVES THEY LOOK LIKE THEY COULD'VE BEEN 100x BETTER I CRY ugh and also the MAY lettering is just a NO-NO.
But by this time (May), I'd gotten myself a 6-colour Koi brush marker pens and three Copic black pens. (I'll do an entry of my stationery later on), also some glitter marker pens just because I'm a typical girl who loves glittery things.
*suddenly having a flashback of me searching for photos on glitter-graphics.com*
ANYWAY, here are the things I decided to put in May.
For the "Study" part, you can see it's a hectic month. OF COURSE I HAD MY FINALS DURING THAT TIME OKAY and it ended a few days before Ramadhan.
And, sadly, the TV series and Books part was declining in numbers because summer was starting. TV series usually reaches its finale at the end of spring (although we don't have the four seasons here in Malaysia, hmm). As for books, I think it was time to stop buying more. I have like, 10 books I haven't read and I still don't feel like reading them.
Probably experiencing a reading slump right now. Hence, the journal.
I really like the concept for June -- cities and towers and only consists of grey, black and white. I LOVE DRAWING CITY DOODLES asdfghjkl and Amanda did some of the colouring using water brush (I bought some online on Lazada). I like the June theme, and I think my hand-lettering of June is improving!
We celebrated Eid in June, so it became a photo journal for a few pages. Hehe.
I printed the photos on glossy papers (cheap ones) and GAHHHHHHH the ink smudges EVERYWHERE if I wasn't careful. One picture got smudged so much that THE PHOTO TURNED INTO A NEGATIVE PIC. So I had to print a couple of them some more.
As to avoid smudges and the ink sticking everywhere, I bought a packet of book wrappers and wrapped the pages with the photos. It made the journal thicker and it feels more like a journal EHEH!
For July, the theme was daisies in orange. I had fun drawing the daisies and the hand-lettering was starting to look good. OH! I also had changed from 6-colour Koi brush markers to 48-colour! The 6-colour one I'd given them to my sister. Therefore, I had more brush markers to paint my daisies and decorations.
At this point, I went for other Youtubers, and one in particular is Sara Zor El. I'd subscribed to her channel before Amanda, because I watched doodle tutorials on her channel and did some of them. I didn't focus on her bullet journals back then, but somehow I ended up doing a July calendar like hers.
And some more Syawal entries.
Next one is the expense tracker. And.... SABAH TRIP! Photo journal again!
The last one would be of Kem Profesionalisme (a leadership programme) that I joined at my secondary school, SHAMS. Didn't really know why I volunteered as a facilitator but I did... And I'm really glad I did.
I don't usually do a monthly recap because I don't know what to write there lol so yeah after that rant on Kem Profesionalisme, I'm gonna go straight to August (uh, I know it's in the middle of August right now but I'm too lazy to start this month's journal ehehe!).
Also, there's a video on calligraphy/hand-lettering on Amanda's channel that I've recently watched and my calligraphy handwriting is improving immensely. So, you could see for the Sabah trip photo caption and Kem Profesionalisme my hand-lettering is better compared to the previous months. YAY ME!
As I said earlier, the SUMMER FLOWERS have a few sections of different pages, right? If you don't get what I mean, here, let's take a look at these photos.
I loooooove drawing, writing, sketching etc on black papers. It gives a satisfying feeling of doing something classy and soothing.
There are lined pages and squared pages. SHAMEEEEE IT DOESN'T HAVE BULLET PAGES what do we call bullet journaling if the journals don't have bullet pages lol
I've been thinking, what's the difference between a DIARY and a journal? Because the concept seems similar to me. But maybe a diary is private? And as for journals, we can choose to make it private or public.
As for me, I just enjoy doing this. I've been longing to do something like this since forever, but I got dispirited every time I thought that I didn't have enough stationery AHAKS! Now that I've found out about Lazada and Shopee, I could easily get those stuff online. AS LONG AS THE PRICE IS IN THE AFFORDABLE RANGE -- THEY COULD GET SO EXPENSIVE *sighs*
For the next post, I'll post about all the pens and pencils and markers and whatnot that I use for my journal, okay? TATA!
Did you guys know I started bullet journaling since April this year? Eheh! Probably not.
So, I bought this one cute A5-sized book with blank, lined, black and squared pages. The cover reads SUMMER FLOWERS and there are illustrations of flowers and leaves. I bought it at MPH maybe late 2015 or early 2016, I can't remember.
Here's the cover page.
Being me, I usually buy a loooooooooooooooooot of blank books (they might be needy later in the future, as I always say to myself) and end up having no idea what to do with them. So, at the start of 2017, I wanted to do something like "One day one doodle" on that SUMMER FLOWERS book. It started off great, until...
Well, until I had zero creativity and became very the malas to think of what to draw. The first page I drew some New Year's greeting, and the next pages were of some doodles that I saw online and decided to try them out.
 |
| Happy New Year! |
The one on the left is from a doodle I Googled, and the wording/typography next to it is a quote from Anna Quindlen: "Books are the plane and the train and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home." If you love books as much as I do, you'd find the quote to be relatable as well.
 |
| Some more doodles, and sketches |
Ugh, ok then by mid January I was like, this is tiring -- both for the mind and body! HAHAHAHA bye because once I'd skipped one day, I had to do two doodles the next day and the next thing I knew, I had a pile of doodles to finish for the days I skipped. It's like when you do your assignment, you procrastinate until the end of the term and BAM 100 assignments are piling up.
Around April (WELP, that's a bit LATER than January isn't it) I got kinda interested with bullet journaling. I watched Amanda Rach Lee on Youtube, she does bullet journals every month and shares them on her channel.
 |
| Her Youtube channel! |
You can see her channel here.
I really like her channel because it's freaking organised! And she's awesome, so creative, pretty and her voice is just like the sound of great melody (okay this is a lil exaggerated but you get my point). I think she's very pretty and uh I like how she does her face every time, simple but still attractive.
Since it was April, I decided to start on bullet journaling for April. January, February and March had passed so there was no point on dwelling on the past. Lol.
I started out really awkward. I couldn't do shiz hahahahahah well except for the stars. The constellations were quite jerky but the most horrible one was the hand-lettering. Ya Allah, I sucked really bad at them before. But I moved on.
At the time, I didn't have enough tools for all the hand-lettering, colouring, drawing etc. It was just pencil colours, some simple Faber Castell magic marker pens, a bunch of water-based marker pens (Stabilo 24 colours and ColourMax Jumbo 24 colours) so I did what I could with them. LOL NOT ENOUGH RIGHT HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
 |
| April |
That calligraphy handwriting (Expense Tracker) was done by my sister, Kakngah. She's an expert, unlike her chubby youngest sister T^T Okay, I followed a few of what Amanda did for her journal, like the expense tracker, period tracker and mood tracker. Of my own, I did some academic stuff (because I was still in my mid semester in April), TV series and book trackers, y'know, the dates of when the episodes were airing and books coming out. Just for fun.
I also drew this one dress I saw online. Well, I tried to draw sounds more likely.
 |
| Got this pic on Twitter |
For May, Amanda did the "wave" theme. I HATED MY WAVES THEY LOOK LIKE THEY COULD'VE BEEN 100x BETTER I CRY ugh and also the MAY lettering is just a NO-NO.
But by this time (May), I'd gotten myself a 6-colour Koi brush marker pens and three Copic black pens. (I'll do an entry of my stationery later on), also some glitter marker pens just because I'm a typical girl who loves glittery things.
*suddenly having a flashback of me searching for photos on glitter-graphics.com*
ANYWAY, here are the things I decided to put in May.
For the "Study" part, you can see it's a hectic month. OF COURSE I HAD MY FINALS DURING THAT TIME OKAY and it ended a few days before Ramadhan.
And, sadly, the TV series and Books part was declining in numbers because summer was starting. TV series usually reaches its finale at the end of spring (although we don't have the four seasons here in Malaysia, hmm). As for books, I think it was time to stop buying more. I have like, 10 books I haven't read and I still don't feel like reading them.
Probably experiencing a reading slump right now. Hence, the journal.
 |
| JUNE! |
I really like the concept for June -- cities and towers and only consists of grey, black and white. I LOVE DRAWING CITY DOODLES asdfghjkl and Amanda did some of the colouring using water brush (I bought some online on Lazada). I like the June theme, and I think my hand-lettering of June is improving!
We celebrated Eid in June, so it became a photo journal for a few pages. Hehe.
 |
| My handwriting sucks so bad in this |
 |
| Anyway, I'm very satisfied with the final look |
As to avoid smudges and the ink sticking everywhere, I bought a packet of book wrappers and wrapped the pages with the photos. It made the journal thicker and it feels more like a journal EHEH!
For July, the theme was daisies in orange. I had fun drawing the daisies and the hand-lettering was starting to look good. OH! I also had changed from 6-colour Koi brush markers to 48-colour! The 6-colour one I'd given them to my sister. Therefore, I had more brush markers to paint my daisies and decorations.
At this point, I went for other Youtubers, and one in particular is Sara Zor El. I'd subscribed to her channel before Amanda, because I watched doodle tutorials on her channel and did some of them. I didn't focus on her bullet journals back then, but somehow I ended up doing a July calendar like hers.
 |
| This took a lot of sweats and tears -- but WORTH IT! |
And some more Syawal entries.
Next one is the expense tracker. And.... SABAH TRIP! Photo journal again!
The last one would be of Kem Profesionalisme (a leadership programme) that I joined at my secondary school, SHAMS. Didn't really know why I volunteered as a facilitator but I did... And I'm really glad I did.
I don't usually do a monthly recap because I don't know what to write there lol so yeah after that rant on Kem Profesionalisme, I'm gonna go straight to August (uh, I know it's in the middle of August right now but I'm too lazy to start this month's journal ehehe!).
Also, there's a video on calligraphy/hand-lettering on Amanda's channel that I've recently watched and my calligraphy handwriting is improving immensely. So, you could see for the Sabah trip photo caption and Kem Profesionalisme my hand-lettering is better compared to the previous months. YAY ME!
As I said earlier, the SUMMER FLOWERS have a few sections of different pages, right? If you don't get what I mean, here, let's take a look at these photos.
 |
| Black pages -- I was testing the white gel pen I bought from Art Friend |
I loooooove drawing, writing, sketching etc on black papers. It gives a satisfying feeling of doing something classy and soothing.
There are lined pages and squared pages. SHAMEEEEE IT DOESN'T HAVE BULLET PAGES what do we call bullet journaling if the journals don't have bullet pages lol
I've been thinking, what's the difference between a DIARY and a journal? Because the concept seems similar to me. But maybe a diary is private? And as for journals, we can choose to make it private or public.
As for me, I just enjoy doing this. I've been longing to do something like this since forever, but I got dispirited every time I thought that I didn't have enough stationery AHAKS! Now that I've found out about Lazada and Shopee, I could easily get those stuff online. AS LONG AS THE PRICE IS IN THE AFFORDABLE RANGE -- THEY COULD GET SO EXPENSIVE *sighs*
For the next post, I'll post about all the pens and pencils and markers and whatnot that I use for my journal, okay? TATA!
p/s: remember the damaged lens? I bought a new one already, yay!
CANTIKNYAAAAA GOALS SANGAT NI!! bullet journal saya hmm macam budak sekolah rendah punya je hahaha insecurenyaaa rasa. post banyak2 lagi eh and pasal handlettering sekali ;)
ReplyDeletehahahahahahah tengok youtube je mostly utk bullet journal ni. beginner kan.. tahun depan la baru create idea sendiri huhu. insyaAllah posts akan datang pasal journal & handlettering (kalau rajin ambik gambar ahaks) hihi
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