How to setup your Dingbats Notebook for October using a Halloween theme

October is one of my favourite months. I love the colours, the smells, the leaves that fall from the trees and of course… all the pumpkins and Halloween decorations! But I also like October because it marks the start of the last quarter of the year. The last three months are incredibly busy. With all the holidays coming up and all the preparations for Christmas and the New Year, it’s easy to lose track and fall off your planning schedule. That’s why I have my trusty bullet journal with me always, to help me along the way. I use it to stay focused on my goals and do more planning, in order to finish the year strong!

In today’s blog post, I’d like to show you how I’ve setup my bullet journal for October using a Halloween theme.

I’m using my Dingbats* Notebook as my 5th bullet journal and I am in love! I have chosen the ‘Great Barrier Reef’ design from the Earth Collection in A5 size with dotted pages, which comes in this lovely sky blue colour. The pictures just don’t make justice of how pretty the colour and the design of this notebook is! I’m really impressed with the quality of the paper, and the pens simply glide on it.

So, moving on to my bullet journal setup, we start with the first page I make for each month which is the Cover Page. This is the page that I create in my bullet journal in order to signify the start of the month. On that page I can create any design, depending on the theme I’ve chosen. I love the fact that I can be as creative as I want, and it also adds a fun aspect to my bullet journal. Of course you don’t have to create a Cover Page, if you don’t want to. For me personally, it has become a habit and it’s actually one of my favourite pages that I like to create each month.

So, since for October my theme is ‘Halloween’, I wanted to choose something relevant to add to this first page. There are so many elements and designs that you can associate with Halloween that, to tell you the truth, I had a hard time deciding…! Before I start creating a design on the page of my notebook, I usually play around with the theme in my sketchbook first, in order to decide on the final design. And as I was doodling and adding designs, I realised that I liked all of them and I couldn’t choose just one. So, in the end I made the choice to add them all!!!!

I always like to create my designs in my notebooks with pencil first. I’ve had too many disasters in the past few years with designs that have gone really bad, when I attempted to create the design with a pen straight away on the page. Therefore, I’ve learned my lesson and I’m always sketching my design with pencil first, before I go over it with my colours and my drawing pens. It might take a bit more time than usual, but having an almost perfect page in the end, makes it worth it.

For the design I used loads of doodles — from pumpkins, spiders, ghosts and sweets to cauldrons and potions — that I randomly placed on the page. For this month, I decided to use a more fun and bulky font. And I added some lines on one side of it, to add more dimension.

So, after adding colours this is how the Cover Page looks. I have to say that I LOVE how it turned out, and the colours really make it pop. For the colours, I decided to go with a very traditional palette full of oranges, black, purple and bright green. You can see all the supplies I used at the end of this post.

Even though I prefer my pastel colours most of the times, I have to admit that these bold colours make the picture come to life! I love how busy and cute it looks.

The next page I created in my notebook is my Monthly Log. The Monthly Log is a type of future log and helps you organise your month. It provides you with a bird’s eye view of everything you have to do in the month and the time you have to do it. There are lots of different layouts you can use for your monthly log. I tend to prefer the grid layout for some reason. And lately, I like to use only one page for my month at a glance.

Because the Dingbats* notebook is a bit bigger than all the previous notebooks I’ve used in the past (it has 28 squares horizontally and 39 squares vertically), I could make the table a bit bigger than I normally do — which is always a bonus! So, I could add a month at a glance calendar and use all the width of the page. In order to create the calendar you see in the picture, count 4 squares horizontally and 5 vertically for each box.

Also, don’t you love it when the month starts on a Monday? I’ve mentioned this before, but I really, REALLY like it when this happens. It’s just perfect for us bullet journalists! New month, new week and everything fits on the pages like a dream!

For the decoration of the page, I decided not to add all the elements of the first page again, but to choose only a few. I didn’t want to make the page look too busy and I wanted to make sure I won’t lose track of what’s important — the planning of the month. So, I just added at the bottom of the page a cauldron and lots of potions.

The next page is my Mood Tracker. I very rarely use mood trackers in my notebook. However, I had this idea in my head of creating a mood tracker with lots of different sized pumpkins, that I knew I had to create it in my bullet journal. And I have to say that it turned out even better than I had imagined it!

As you’ll see, for all the titles of the pages I chose the same font that I used for the month, in the Cover Page. I like having some consistency with a few of the elements on the pages, in order to show that they are part of the same month. So, I filled the page with lots of pumpkins in various sizes, and I added the number of the day at the bottom of each pumpkin.

For the key I kept it simple with only 3 choices — happy, neutral and sad — in order to not overcomplicate things. So, the plan is to colour each pumpkin according to the way you feel that day. However, since the pumpkins have different sections, you can even take it a step further and colour them according to the way you feel during the different parts of the day — morning, mid-day, afternoon and night. Intentionally I chose the colours of the key to be a gradient of orange shades. That way, the pumpkins look good no matter which way you choose to use your mood tracker. (Tombow Dual Brush Markers no. 946, 025 and 055)

As always I keep a Notes Page in my monthly layout. I think every one should have a page like that in their monthly setup. It’s such a useful page, that keeps all my random thoughts and notes in one place. One of the most functional pages I create each month, for sure!

I used the same font for the title as before and I added a cute little ghost at the bottom. I also like to add light grey lines in intervals on my layout. It adds something more to the page and I like the way it looks.

Lastly, I created the first Weekly Spread of the month. I went with one of my favourite horizontal layouts and I decided to keep it quite simple, both with the decorations and the colouring. So, I went ahead and I added a spider web with a cute spider on it, and I drew some parchments as banners for the different sections on the sides.

Of course, you can change and personalise this weekly spread any way you want. You can add your own sections on the side, and instead you can have, for example, your tracker, your weekly menu and the weather tracker. I kept it simple and I only used some beige colours and some light purple to add some colour to the page.

So, this is how I’ve setup my bullet journal for October in my Dingbats* notebook. I hope you find some inspiration in all the above and that you’ll use some of the layouts for your own bullet journal. If you do, make sure to tag us at @dingbatsnotebooks. We’d love to see your recreations! Also leave a comment below and tell us what is your theme for October.

Wishing you all an amazing month, full of planning and organisation.

Christina x

SUPPLIES USED:

• Dingbats Notebook
• Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pen in M, S, F
• Tombow Dual Brush Markers (942, 992, 452, 946, 025, 055, 985, 173, 665, N45, N15, N75 and N95) )
• Sakura Pigma Micron 0.2
• Zebra Mildliner in light purple
• Parker Fountain Pen with black ink