For the new year I am ready to start using a brand new journal, given to me as a birthday gift. It is an A5 journal from Mellow Days with a beige vegan leather hardcover. Its 160 pages are made of 160gsm FSC certified, acid-free cold-pressed watercolour paper. They are printed with sepia coloured dots that are spaced exactly 5 mm apart.

For my theme I wanted to use the name of the journal, ‘Rêverie’, which is printed on the front and first page. It means ‘Daydream’ in French and I decided to create book themed yearly spreads to reflect that. Over the past year I’ve started reading again and I really enjoy the feeling of losing myself in a story.

View the resources used in this theme:

The first spread consists of a calendar and a multifunctional interactive page, which holds a fold-out with my monthly spreads (shown unfolded in the next image) and a pocket to hold my grid spacing guide. I show how it works in the video at the end of this post.

For this journal I made a custom double sided grid spacing guide in Inkscape, with lots of options, intricately indicated. I’ve made it available as a free download on the brand new downloads page, which I’m planning to fill with assets developed for my own themes over time.

The inside of the fold-out page includes another decoration as well as a schematic to help me remember my monthly spreads. Not only will this remind me which pages to create, but it can also help me with the different keys and legends. I’ve found it challenging to include those in highly decorated spreads, so with this I might be able to leave them out.

My plan for this journal is to select six children’s books that are in some way meaningful to me and create themes around those. This way I’m hoping to create a cohesive theme throughout the first half of the year, which will be collected on the theme index.

A new page is this so-called ‘self care bingo’. While the goal is to get at least four in a row, I’m encouraging myself to get as many of these checked off as I can. Instead of neglecting my wellbeing and losing myself in work, medical stuff and other daily activities, I’m looking forward to taking extra good care of myself this year!

My goals are usually related to keeping myself happy and healthy, and captured monthly with a so-called health triangle. Ever since my first journal I’ve included a page with definitions of what health means to me, so that I can always relate back to it when setting goals. I’ll also be experimenting with a so-called mindmap to help me identify ways in which I can break down big goals into smaller, achievable ones.

I’m really looking forward to filling this journal and hope that you’ll continue to follow along. The video below shows a flip-through of this yearly theme. Enjoy!

Video credits
A preview of the grid spacing guide that can be downloaded for free.

Enjoy this free download of my
custom made grid spacing guide.
No strings attached!

Download