If you saw my London Gifties haul you’ll get why I was ITCHING to use one (or more) of their stunning tapes ASAP! They inspired this whole storybook style layout for August, with its fantasy world impression. I’m so excited to start living in this layout! Check out the Youtube video below to watch it come together, or scroll down to see detailed photos of each spread and page. Scroll right to the bottom for links to all the items I used o make this theme happen!

Cover Spread and Quote Page

I love the “Colourful Windows” PET tape that features on the quote page so much, and I knew they’d be a great basis for a theme… but I really wanted a big one to feature on the left side for my cover page! I knew I didn’t have the art skills to attempt this one on my own just yet (or the time to execute it - July has been busy so far!) so I tried something very new for me - an AI generated version! I used Midjourney to create the lovely window featured on the cover page, and while I did tweak the colours in photoshop a little, I didn’t have the PET tape with me at the time so it ended up much lighter and bluer than the stickers throughout the rest. I’m actually OK with it, I still think it looks lovely! I did up a cute August header using a font called Floral Caps Nouveau as well, then printed both of them on sticker paper and cut them out with my Cricut Explore 3. I love how it came out! I know there are plenty of people who are wary of AI in artistic spaces, and I totally understand their concerns. I’m personally very intrigued by it, for personal use cases like this one.

For the quote page, I went with a quote that has been in my head a lot lately. It’s from C.S. Lewis and seems to sum up the life stage I’m in right now - I’ve been reading lots of fantasy books, so I guess I really am old enough to read fairytales again!

Calendar Spread

She’s a classic spread - the calendar or monthly overview spread! I’m keeping things quite simple, since my stickers are so detailed and have a fair bit of visual weight to them. I’ve used this text-print paper on every spread to give the feeling of being inside the pages of a book - though if you look closely, it’s actually printed with dictionary definitions!

Sleep, Habit and Mood Tracker Spread

I haven’t included a sleep tracker in about a year, but my sleeping habits have been all over the place, so I knew I wanted to start tracking again! I also knew I wanted to include a mood tracker, but I couldn’t for the life of me decide how I could incorporate a cute one… so I went for this circular tracker. I’ve actually never tried a circular tracker before, and I made it very imprecise - it actually ended up with only thirty days, and August has 31, so it’s not ideal but it will have to do!

Meal Planner and Spending Log Spread

I’ve used the same meal planner as last month, and the spending log is the same as always! It was tricky to get my decorations onto these pages but I made it work! I picked up the stunning stamps I’ve used for my capital letters here while I was in England back in January, and I’d been planning to save them for my new journal at the beginning of 2024 (I only got the first letters of each month - I don’t have a full alphabet’s worth of them) but I found out the hard way on my quote page that stamping them directly on the page with the calligraphy ink I’m using made for some epic bleeding through the page, so I’ve been keeping them to leftover scraps of sticker paper instead! The centre of some of the stamps are quite flat, so I really found I needed to massage the paper onto the stamp to get a nice clean transfer. Sometimes it even took two tries!

Content Planner Spread

Where all my Instagram, Youtube and blog planning magic happens! If you’d like a more in-depth look at how I use this spread, you can check out this post. I like to keep my content planner boxes at 4x4 spaces, so I have a row within each box for each of the four different accounts I plan for. This leaves lots of room on the sides for decoration! I’ll use the space below the calendar on the right side to add a key too - I like to colour-code my social accounts to match the theme.

Weekly Spread

I knew I wanted lots of room to show off more window stickers, as if they were built into the wall of my weekly. It’s quite a minimal layout, and I love how clean and calming it looks!