My Practice Bullet Journal
First of all I’d like to begin with what exactly is a practice bullet journal? Isn’t making mistakes and finding what works for you the whole point of a bullet journal? Well, yes it is. So why do I use a practice bullet journal?
To define what a practice bullet journal is in the simplest of terms, I would say the following:
A practice bullet journal is a journal used to store ideas, doodles and templates for future reference and/or inspiration.
I use my practice bullet journal for 4 main things:
- Digital ‘stickers’
- Spread templates
- Lettering and banner ideas
- Literal practicing!
To begin, many analog bullet journal-ers like to use stickers in their notebooks. Obviously, that’s not going to work on a tablet! Instead, what I like to do is take a stock image from the internet and just copy and paste it into my bullet journal, as you may have seen in my September Gratitude Log instagram post!
Now, if I ever want to re-use these ‘stickers’ I can save them onto a page in my practice bullet journal and just copy and past them from there!! I can also save doodles to use a stickers as well, as you can see in my doodle post.
So when I want to re-use one of these doodles, I can select it using the Lasso tool and just copy and paste onto another page in my bullet journal!
I also use my digital bullet journal as a place for the original versions of my spread templates. This way, I can always access the original in case I notice a mistake, or I just want to change what isn't working anymore.
I also use this notebook as a place for me to experiment with lettering and banner ideas. I spent an afternoon once just thinking of different ways to write the date in my weekly spread!!
And lastly, I use it for literal practicing of drawing techniques, handwriting techniques and etc. There isn’t much to explain about this purpose for a practice bullet journal, but I will mention that the old saying is definitely true: ‘Practice makes perfect!’
Personally, a practice bullet journal is the perfect place for me to look back at when I’m stuck on inspiration for a theme or a banner design or lettering style. I can save anything that I want to this space and look back on it in the future. I can even create a whole page of ‘stickers’ to be used for my next theme. I can save any of my favourite random little doodles onto a page so that I can reuse it again and again! I can edit and practice with my bullet journal templates, so that I can tweak them to work perfectly for me!
All in all, it’s a place for organizing all the random little ideas I have. Its like my archive of bullet journal dreams!
It’s so easy to set up too! You don’t need to create any logs or an index if you don’t want to. All you need is a notebook! In this case of digital bullet journaling this is as simple as pressing a button. In the analog world its as simple as going to your bookshelf and finding a notebook you don’t use anymore. It doesn’t have to be pretty, you just need a place to store your ideas. You could even use scrap paper that you find when an idea strikes you, and then save it in a file folder after!
The ways to do this are endless, and can be as simple as possible. I would suggest to any and every bullet journalist to keep some sort of record of their ideas and inspiration, as an outlet for all thoughts related to bullet journaling. Especially for digital bullet journalists, it is a way for you to keep track of things to reuse in the future or things to motivate you as you create new spreads!
Happy Bullet Journaling!
To download the app I use to digitally bullet journal click here!
In : Bullet Journal