Goodbye gold corgi journal!

[terriko]

This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.

As expected, I finished my bullet journal, just barely managing to fit an entry for Sept 30th, 2024 on the last page. It was started on January 1, 2023, so it lasted just under 2 years. The corgi design is from Kela Designs, and I bought it for myself on the condition that I actually *use* it and not have it wind up in the unused notebook stash.

Image Description: A pair of A5 journals and a clear writing board. On top is my new journal, a Rhodia softcover, and underneath is my hardcover corgi journal from Kela Designs. Both are sitting on a quilt a friend made for my wedding.

I’d never actually done a bullet journal when I started this, though I’d written short journal entries on and off since I was a kid. I hadn’t really made much effort in tracking stuff but it seems like such a part of bullet journal culture that I figured I’d try it out, and some of it worked for me and other parts didn’t. It was great treating each month as a new event where I could set up different pages and iterate rather than sticking with a layout preset for the whole year. Those big blank pages also gave me more space for doodling, stickers, washi tape and eventually fountain pens.

Image Description: A doodle of a husky dog with hearts, drawn in fountain pen with some pencil for colour. It is surrounded by some red text from a journal entry.

Mostly my journal is for me and me alone, but in celebration of this one getting filled up I thought I’d share some doggust doodles and other marginalia as a bit of a send off. Most of these were drawn from random cute dog pictures I found via image searches.

Image Description: Doggust drawings from 2023. Doggust is a “draw a dog every day in August” art prompt series. Here I’ve pasted in a dog drawn on a scratch-off note card, and a painting of rainbow spotted dalmations.

Image Description: A doodle page in my bullet journal with fountain pen drawings. It features a corgi, miscellaneous house items, leaves, stars and abstract shapes, a copying of an alphabet/number font, and another small dog.

Image Description: A small cartoon potted plant with a happy face on the pot. It is drawn in green and purple fountain pen, and is surrounded by other text in my bullet journal.

And a bonus: my kid’s first fountain pen drawing! He wanted to try my new glow in the dark pen, although alas I don’t have glow in the dark ink.

Image Description: A small smiling sun drawn in green fountain pen by my then 6 year old kid. His first time using a fountain pen! If you look closely you can see where he made a dent in the paper instead of a line near the top of the sun.

While half of the “bullet journal method” wasn’t for me, I’ve found that I do love the dot grid format, and I’ve got a new journal set up to go for October now! My post about auditioning new bullet journals can tell you about how I chose my new notebook, and I also talked about the calendar part of my bullet journal journey in I hate the “future log” of my bullet journal. So this time I’ve got a smaller calendar and a listing of my fountain pens/inks for October!

Image Description: A beginning of the month page in my new journal, featuring halloween themed stickers, a small calendar, and a list of pens and inks. There’s a green TWSBI Eco fountain pen with a glow in the dark green cap propped against the next cream coloured bullet journal page.

I’m excited about my new setup and thankful for my first journal for the past two years together!