state of the bujo


published: 2024.08.09
tagged: journaling
by mana

pastel music notes now playing ā€“ heart attack by chuu (loona) pastel music notes

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

retrospring is shutting down on 1 March 2025, sad times. sad cinnamoroll the good news is thereā€™s some replacements springing up here and thereā€¦ >w< Iā€™ve already begun migrating to melospring and changed my footer to reflect that. Iā€™ll still be on retrospring until itā€™s taken offline next year, but melospring is where Iā€™ll be from now on.

I kind of fell off the habit of bullet journaling recently; itā€™s a little difficult to maintain bc Iā€™m still deciding how I want to track my days, so Iā€™m a little sporadic about maintaining it, but Iā€™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 donā€™t really do enough to take up a whole page (which isnā€™t really true, but Iā€™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 bottleā€™s worth).

Speaking of bujo: Iā€™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, Iā€™ve been looking at a bottle of memory ā€˜acaciaā€™ ink, since I really like the shading of these inks, and theyā€™re pretty cheap on aliexpress (~$8 for 18ml); which reminds me: I have a bottle of memory ā€˜philodendron,ā€™ a lovely lake blue color headed my way, along with two more platinum little meteors (the other two sanrio special edition collaboā€™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!) cute yay

my current pen collection
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 Iā€™ve ordered are all gorgeous, so I feel okay splurging a little and spoiling myself. cuteyay

speaking of which, people have asked to see my stationery stash, so hereā€™s a photo of my stationery drawer currently (thereā€™s more than this, but itā€™s put away in my crafting room until I use these up >w<) (as you can see itā€™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 Iā€™ve gathered from aliexpress, with the exception of the glue stick, which my husband grabbed from a local crafting store. (thanks husband!) cuteyay

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!