With May being my birthday month, I figured it was time to host a little party in my journal. I filled the pages with balloons, cupcakes, birthday candles and other items that help to get us in the mood to celebrate life.

On the quote page I paired the Bold Loop colored font that I chose for this theme with my stamps, which I painted with the same watercolour paint before pressing them onto the page. I actually really like the result, although I do want to find a better application method for the stamps. Brushing it on isn’t very effective and dipping the stamp directly into a puddle of watered down paint creates a smudgy result. I will be experimenting with this concept a bit more in the future.

I kept the title page simple, with a couple of cupcakes and the bold balloon letters. I added the sprinkles long after I had already moved on to a different page, because it only occured to me then that the chocolate frosting looked… well… shitty. Oops.

I scanned this page before adding my actual goals and health triangle graph, but I don’t mind the additional privacy. It’s actually been a bit uncomfortable sharing them anyway, hence the occasional blurring in past versions.

While this page looks quite uneventful until it’s filled in, I imagine that it will look really fun at the end of the month. On days that multiple things are applicable I will end up using stripes, dots, or other fun patterns to make the flags look cute.

I generally have mostly ‘more good than bad’ days, so I expect this cake to have a lot of green candles when the month is over, with the occasional yellow or blue. Knowing that was partly why I chose pink frosting, because it contrasts well with those shades.

I regret including the ‘meds’ habit again this month, because I haven’t been taking them for a good while and it feels redundant here. I’ll probably end up replacing it starting next month.

I didn’t plan for room to put the legend, which is why it’s kinda squished in between two calendars. Oops again. I kind of like the irony of this page by the way, communicating pain as a gift haha!

Adding the border around each page really adds a lot to the designs in my opinion, I’ll try to remember to do that more often. For my daily musings I just made pages like the one shown above, with different coloured triangle flag garlands. I just hope I left myself enough space to write, but it forces me to be brief, which is the point for this section for me.

I hope you enjoyed seeing what I did this month and that it inspires you to celebrate each day as well. 🎉