state of the bujo

published: 2024.08.09
tagged: journaling
by mana

now playing – heart attack by chuu (loona)

this entry is image-heavy, apologies for those with screen readers! I’ve done my best to alt-text the images!

retrospring is shutting down on 1 March 2025, sad times. the good news is there’s some replacements springing up here and there… I’ve already begun migrating to melospring and changed my footer to reflect that. I’ll still be on retrospring until it’s taken offline next year, but melospring is where I’ll be from now on.

I kind of fell off the habit of bullet journaling recently; it’s a little difficult to maintain bc I’m still deciding how I want to track my days, so I’m a little sporadic about maintaining it, but I’m trying to get back into it. What better time to pick it back up than bujo day (8/8)?

the state of my bujo layouts — where we are now.

the daily log style I used to use — how it started.

lately, my daily logs are looking pretty minimal and a big change from how they began.

as a disabled person, an entire page for each day feels a little wasteful, since I don’t really do enough to take up a whole page (which isn’t really true, but I’m not in the habit of filling it out every day and that does feel wasteful). I have a bad habit of getting very focused on whatever thing I am working on and forgetting to eat, and keeping a food diary helped me make sure I was eating enough every day, same with the water drop stencil; I was using it to track my water intake (each row is one water bottle’s worth).

Speaking of bujo: I’ve been buying some new inks, and even received one for my birthday~!

my new inks — from left to right, back row to front row: "memory" branded Chinese ink in 'hyacinth orchid,' and 'jade dew,' PenBBS ink in 'Chongqing City Blue', "collection traced" inks in 'sakura dream' and 'peach fog,' Sailor ink studio in "130," and a bottled mixture of Chongqing City Blue and memory hyacinth orchid.

older ink samples — writing sample of the first few inks I purchased, top to bottom: memory hyacinth orchid & jade dew, PenBBS Chongqing City Blue.

pink ink samples — samples of the pink inks I got for my birthday, top to bottom: collection traced sakura dreams & peach fog, sailor ink studio 130.

mixed ink sample — writing sample of the ink I mixed by hand, a blend of PenBBS Chongqing City Blue and memory hyacinth orchid.

I would like to get one more dark colored reddish ink for mixing some of the lighter pinks and deepening them without altering the color too much, I’ve been looking at a bottle of memory ‘acacia’ ink, since I really like the shading of these inks, and they’re pretty cheap on aliexpress (~$8 for 18ml); which reminds me: I have a bottle of memory ‘philodendron,’ a lovely lake blue color headed my way, along with two more platinum little meteors (the other two sanrio special edition collabo’s I want, a blue one for cinnamoroll, and a purple for hello kitty - these do not come with converters in case you were looking at them!)

my current pen collection, from top to bottom: Three Jinhao 82s, a M nib in rose pink, and two F nibs in transparent peacock blue and transparent rose red, and a Platinum Little Meteor Sanrio special edition in My Melody pink.

yes, I realize this is probably more pens than any one person needs, but I am still very much learning & playing around with inks and the pens I’ve ordered are all gorgeous, so I feel okay splurging a little and spoiling myself.

speaking of which, people have asked to see my stationery stash, so here’s a photo of my stationery drawer currently (there’s more than this, but it’s put away in my crafting room until I use these up ) (as you can see it’s mostly stickers, followed by washi, with a spot for my bujo and regular journal (under the sumikko gurashi sticker booklets)

pretty much everything here I’ve gathered from aliexpress, with the exception of the glue stick, which my husband grabbed from a local crafting store. (thanks husband!)

my stationery drawer in my desk. — my stationery drawer in my desk

a closer look at the stationery drawer — a closer look: rolls of stickers, a box of washi, deco tapes, my pens, and more!