Pretending I'm a Cottage Lady

Maybe it was a protest against the amount of white space I had in the last journal, but I decided for this go around that every cover page would be a dutch door.

This is a decorating element I had not used in three years, and as I am writing this I realized this brand of journal was also the last time I used a dutch door.

Normally, I use Archer and Olive notebooks, but I do have a small collection of Notebook Therapy notebooks. It's just it takes a bit more planning to use Notebook Therapy notebooks due to the slightly smaller page count.

The change in design for this tracker is mainly because I wanted it all on one page. Primarily because by this point I was really tired of this set up.

Not because it was boring, but because the PET tape was a bitch to deal with. If you've handled a lot of these PET and washi tapes you'll get a sense that they're not all created equal.

While PET tape has always been difficult to peel, which has resulted in the popularity of the already die cut tapes, normally they're not that bad for me. However, occasionally, due to the plastic or some other reason, it can be very hard to peel, and that was the case for this botany themed flora tape.

Instead of graph bars, which I have traditionally done for three years for my discomfort tracking, I am just putting a number from 0-10. For those who hate this type of pain scale, I'm doing this for two reasons.

One, it is faster, and will help me if anyone asks me that question in the future. Two, I actually made a discomfort/pain scale describer card for myself for my last journal. That card is going to get migrated into this section both for reference and as a bookmark.

As for why it's not divided by months, it was primarily in case I needed to write more. So there are more lines than the number of days for 6 months.

This does mean that I run the chance of some pages (or many pages) being blank, but these medical trackers really exist to force me to ask myself these type of questions everyday (sometimes even twice a day).

Fun fact, it wasn't until I was done did I remember I have vertical number stickers for this very thing and didn't have to do this by hand.

I did this though, because my memory can be a sieve sometimes. Apparently in the last journal, because I had no dates to reference, I would think I had filled it out when in reality I didn't.

And this is where my design idea started to together. The lines on this page are irregularly dotted giving the set up a hand drawn look. This especially does look like an herbal log book of some sort.

I had this page in the last journal, and it's very useful to keep, in case you need to tell people information or check yourself. Most normal people probably only two need pages, and I might not use all three, but in case I get sick and require a lot of tests, I have spots for it.

The other reason why I have this set up though is because last year there was a supply shortage. Knowing what item is short, and when it started is important when pushing back at companies. Last year one of my items was on backorder for 8 months, and while I was able to get the item here and there occasionally it was touch and go since I was also sick often that year.

One of the interesting things about setting up this journal is that I brought back certain design elements that I haven't used since I first started journaling back in 2023.

The first, is the dutch door, or waterfall tab page. It's where you cut off a bit of the side to reveal the page underneath. Now, the medical log cover page doesn't really take advantage of this design element, but it is pretty.

Also, the second page underneath the cover page actually has the tape wrapped across the back and front of the page. This is why when I was showing off the side view of my journal it looked like it had stripes.

Because I wanted a cover page for my medical logs, I needed another page, so I made this one. Normally a page like this is meant for tasks that have not exact due date.

They're also known as the "Problems for Future Me List'.

However, this weirdly just became a list, list page. So, it has lists for larger tasks that need to be broken down further, a list of people I need to check in with and even a list of cafes that I should try to visit.

And now you get to see why I chose this particular tape for my beginning collections, it is a lily of the valley time themed tape. Tapes that have images meant to decorate a journal are some of the most interesting and sometimes strange pieces of stationery I own. Their themes can get really strange sometimes.

Also, I don't know what it is about my future logs, but I've never managed to set them up correctly. They're still usable, but weird?

Like, I was correct in that you wouldn't put down the month you started the journal in, but still got the wrong month? This actually should have had August as it's starting month, because July is the month that kicks off this journal?

As a result, anything for 2027 is in the first page and a half of this future log, otherwise nothing would get filled out.

The "Instead of Doom Scrolling" page is actually just a variation on my things I'd like to do list. It is a smaller list, because I still managed to overdo it on the last journal, but it's also because I wanted to keep it to one page.

The first page in a journal is often kind of awkward to write in, so most people either glue it to the other side of the cover page like I have here, making my second page, my first page in the journal, or they have made a mini front pocket out of this page.

Since I am working off of an A5 that I plan to take around with me occasionally, I could have made a pocket instead, but I do like this list. Best of all, since it is glued to make it the first page, it's very easy to get to.

By the way, the way I use these lists is that I will pick one or two things from this list to populate my weekly log's For Fun or Personal Projects categories. I then, when I plan my day to day, purposely try to make time for that thing.

The inside cover, along with the rest of the full journal collections are using this Lily of the Valley tape that I had. It's actually a sample tape, with the exception of tapes from the Washi Tape shop (and questionable purchases from Paper Games) I tend to buy sample tapes, or single loop tapes.

If you do the math, it is not the cheapest way to buy your tapes. In fact, it's cheaper to buy the whole roll, and then sell off samples of that roll once you don't feel like using it anymore. However, the latter is a lot of work and I cannot be bothered.

So, I had thoughts about designing a vintage like journal in terms of how the text boxes and themes were laid out. Sometimes, when I get a crafting idea, it takes a hold of me, and I must make it into reality. It's the ADHD, it does dumbass things to me, and it happened during my holidays.

However, due to how I had imagined it, the journaling set up process was much quicker, even with me doing some more complex arrangements. This is because I had narrowed down the scope of the pens I was using to a single black fineliner, and whatever the colour of the month Tombow marker. In addition, I stopped caring that every single day of the week had equal amount of space, as long as there was enough room to write.

This resulted in a set up that was so fast, and I enjoyed so much that I decided to do the whole damn journal.

(Side View of a Fully Set Up Six Month Journal)

By the way, you're not actually supposed to do that with this system. This system is designed to be set up in chunks of time, how much time varies on your comfort level, schedule and need. This is to give the person setting up the journal more flexibility in case they are not as busy in a certain month or more busy in a certain month. Or if there is something else happening they would like to keep track of.

By setting up for six months, I am (more or less) locking myself into that set up for six months. There is a bit of leeway, none of the exercise trackers are being set up until the week before in case I have to build myself up again, or something else happens.

In addition, there are five blank pages each month in case I forgot something. If they are not going to be used for anything, I am hopefully going to use them for memory keeping. This didn't go really well last time I had planned this, but it may have more to do with the page size.

This is a standard A5, so hopefully it'll work better.

That violin is not as centred as I would like it to be, however that is also layered with another sticker and pulling it up would mean making sure both were aligned properly. That sounded like a nightmare.

This is one of the Washi Tape Shop's newer tapes, and yes, I use their tapes a lot for card making, but that's also because I tend to buy their tapes more for card making.

By the way, I love the bottom flowers for card making so much that when I used up the tape, I went out and bought another. Both tapes are from the Washi Tape Shop, but I don't know if the bottom is just not as popular as I think it should be or if it's one of those tapes that the shop will continuously stock.

This card is actually one of a set that I'm in the middle of making at the moment.

I'm not sure why, I wanted to see if I could make a set from one loop of tape. This is though, the type of card where one or two images are the focus and there are flowers circling it.

I think this is from a tape set I used last year.

This also was an experimentation on how I would just fill out a card with images rather than use one or two main images and then frame that image.

The first method will mean that I use very little of one tape, but a lot more of another tape. It's not a bad thing, but if I want to use up a tape in my collection (because this roll was huge) I would like to decorate with just one of the rolls.

The other thing that card making is reminding me of is how much I like doing these borders with flowers. I find it very satisfying to cut the tape edges and then find places to put them back on to create this border.