It’s my favourite time of year so I am celebrating with a fun with fungi bullet journal setup! I have chosen mushrooms for my September Bullet Journal setup. I’m feeling so silly being self conscious about my mushrooms since they are super popular right now, but it’s too late now! It’s all done! I will be trying something different for this blog post, talking more about the measurements of my various setups, as well as the time it too, and dealing with the annoyances of the various products I used – side eyeing the Acrylographs! I am sharing my setup video over on YouTube for you to check out, but let’s get into it!
Fun with Fungi Supplies
- Archer and Olive B5 dot grid notebook (NML10 for 10% off – affiliate link)
- Archer and Olive Acrylographs in various colours (NML10 for 10% off – affiliate link)
- Amy Tangerine alphabet stamp set (discontinued)
- The Pigeon Letters Studio Mono Line pens in sizes 07 and 09
- Archer and Olive script lettering stamps (limited release)
- Studio L2E Simple Letters alphabet stamps (discontinued)
- Natasha Miller Creates Basics washi in black (coming back soon)
- Natasha Miller Creates fun with fungi stickers (available for free for a limited time for Blank to Brilliant Subscribers)
- Pencil, scissors, glue
September Bullet Journal Setup
I felt pretty frustrated throughout this setup since a lot of things went wrong. Like I mentioned above, I am feeling very self-conscious about my mushroom drawings. This is also the first time in months that I have used colours that aren’t pastels. If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll remember I don’t like pastels so this was a super new quirk for me!
I will definitely revisit these mushrooms for prints, and maybe a pattern or two, but I need to let it simmer a bit. Maybe find a colour palette that inspires me. But let’s talk about this setup.
Calendar Page
I use 2 full pages for my calendar layout, or monthly view. Each calendar square is 6 x 6 boxes and the top heading box (for my days of the week) is 2 x 6 boxes. Depending on the number of weeks, I’ll use 4-6 rows of these boxes. In my B5, this leaves some space on the side for a to do and a notes box – roughly 15 boxes by 16 boxes.
I have a space at the top for the month heading and then space at the bottom to decorate. I decorate with washi and stickers but you can also add quotes, affirmations, goals, whatever you want to use for the month.
Notes Page
This is the simplest page of them all. I stamp out my heading and then decorate with some washi and stickers. Previous months, I included a box to capture stand action items but I found I wasn’t using that box, so I dropped it.
Fun fact about my august notes page – I sat down for a meeting with my notes page open and ended up using a notepad instead! So that notes page is still currently blank but I have multiple notepad pages and post it notes scattered around my work area. The intention is there but mow I actually need to use it – a mini superficial goal for September.
Weeklies
Now into weeklies, I am using a different setup to last month. I always like to change it up and try something new. I have my favourites I will revisit now and again, but I like to experiment here.
This month, my daily boxes (Monday – Sunday) are 10 x 20 boxes. On the left, I am including a calendar box which measures 8 x 11 boxes. My to do boxes are split up in this layout. The idea is to split up my to dos based on the first part of the week, and then the second part of the week. The “To” box on the left is 8 x 25 squares and the right hand box, the “Do” box is 8 x 20 boxes. With the remaining space on the right hand page, I include a box for next week. This measures 19 x 20 boxes.
It was more important for me to have a Next Week spot when I wasn’t setting up entire months at a time. So, they’re more so for future rather than specifically for next week.
The rest of the space I am using for decorating. Although, at the time of writing this, I have gone back and stamped focus in the left-hand space since I decided to use it as a weekly focus spot. Again, you could add affirmations, goals, quotes, anything you want. I finished off this fun with fungi bullet journal setup with some stickers for a pop of colour and fun.
Fun with Fungi Whoopsies
This setup had a ton of issues and mistakes, so I wanted to address them and some of my work arounds.
- I used too much water when painting on the cover page
- I basically just plopped a giant blob of water straight onto the page and it ended up bleeding through, ruining my calendar.
- I cut a piece of the Archer and Olive Notepad out and glued it over top of the bleed through.
- Now September 14th is, well, kind of highlighted. The irony in this having happened is that September 14th is my grandma’s birthday and she passed away last month so this quick fix turned out to be bittersweet for me. (This was some of what made me disappear online for July and parts of August. I alluded to some of it before but this was the catalyst for a lot of what I was feeling this summer.)
- Stamping
- If you want the perfect layout with perfect lines, and perfect lettering, then stamping is absolutely NOT for you! Lol! I used to think you have to be able to stamp perfectly to do stamping but that is a lie! The more you do it, the better you get!
- This is most obvious in the script letter stamps I used. The first layout I used them on was my calendar page and they are kind of all over the place. By my week 4 layout, I almost had the letters flowing perfectly into each other.
- Biggest stamping advice – PRACTICE!
- Acrylographs
- Where to begin! Lol! Sometimes I feel like the only person on the planet who likes them. Yea they can be cranky pants high maintenance, but there are work aroun
- For one, when the tip needs to be changed, change it. I am so lazy when it comes to this and will scratch the page to death instead of just cleaning/replacing the tip.
- A great workaround I have found through this laziness is to just use a paint brush. Especially for my painted tabs, the ink that makes it onto the page gets spread with a paint brush. You’re done in half the time using half the amount of paint you normally would.
Painting with Acrylograph ink has become one of my favourite ways to use them. I use palette paper and a bit of water when painting and it works great! I’ve been using the same page of my palette paper for months now since, once dried, it’s hard to reactivate the Acrylograph paint. I’m planning on using the palettes paper as a mixed media art piece!
Wrapping it up my Fun with Fungi Bullet Journal Setup
Overall, I am happy with how this month’s setup turned out. It’s not my favourite, I think that still belongs to August! But its… growing on me (ba dum tss). Moving forward, I really want to figure out my issue with these mushrooms since I am eager to do something more with them. I already have my October theme started since I wanted to use the mushroom elements with the October elements for my next big collection.
My last big collection was fruit bowl, which I created a year ago now, so happy birthday fruit bowl I guess! Lol!
Anyway, hope you enjoyed today’s setup. Let me know if you like this format better. If you use the printables, or recreate any of these layouts, I would love to see it. You can tag me @natashamillercreates on Instagram or feel free to send an email if you are not comfortable sharing in public. If you are an email subscriber, you can just hit reply.
Thank you so much for your time today and I will see you in the next one!
