Hello everyone! Today I am going to share about how I did my future log for my bullet journal. It took so long to get done but now I am satisfied with how it turned out. I will be keeping it for the whole year so I guess it is worth it at the end.
The Future Log
The future log is a useful part of bullet journaling. It is a list of upcoming important dates to remember. It can be a worldly event like a festival or special date of personal life such as anniversary.
Uses of the future log:
- It gives an overview of the whole year.
- We always have a hardcopy of all events under the same calendar.
- We can easily refer back to the future log while making upcoming plans in our bullet journal.
- This is piggybacking on the previous point, but it helps us to keep planning organized.
The Process
I usually use pencil to draw these vertical lines. However, this year I used a black gel pen so they look more prominent and not dull. These lines create the sections for each month.
These are the list of things I wanted to include in my journal. They consist of events, festivals, dates of prayers, public holidays and birthdays. I know that you can't probably read it but I wanted to show the real process of how I do my logs which is why I am including this raw scribble that only I can understand.
Aherm... I know this is a lot :D This is my whole washi tape collection and there are about 160 rolls or so. I use them very often and almost daily so I will be using one to two rolls in each set for my future log list.
These are the tapes that I have shortlisted for my months of the year. Last year I used large tapes but this year I am further minimizing my layout so that I can maximize the space to write more. Hence, I picked the smaller tapes for the name of the months. I arranged them in such a way so that the pattern alternates between light and dark colours.
This set is special as it only has 8 tapes and not 10 like the others so it doesn't have the small sized tape like I picked earlier. The smallest is too small while the others are too large. So I selected the medium one filled with circle patterns entirely for the number of the months. I did something similar last year but then I used the circles to write the first alphabet of the month in capital.
So this is how it turned out. These will be the first 6 months of the year. I cut the circles precisely to make them smaller and pasted the patterned tapes next to them. The circles come in blues and oranges so I pasted them one colour each alternating so the pattern and colours don't repeat.
These are the last 6 months of the year. By the way there is only one circle in the special tape that I can't use as it comes with the number 16 printed on it. I don't understand why they did it that way so I had to cut it out and just leave it there until I find a use for it.
I wrote the numbers of the month in gold metallic marker on the circle tape. Then, I used a black gel pen to write the name of the months on the washi tape strips. If you do the same, definitely remember to allocate plenty of time for the ink to dry so you don't accidentally smudge them and create a mess when you turn the page.
I wrote the calendar dates for all the months. It was so time consuming, but worth it as it will last for the whole year. This is a comparison on how I did my monthly titles and the calendar for the last two years and this year. In 2021, I used highlighters mainly as I didn't have many washi tapes. In 2022, I used medium tapes and while in 2023 I am using small tapes and I pasted them above the lines to save space.
This is a closer look of the first 4 months. I have already marked all the events in the calendar and wrote what they are for below it. I colour coded every event.
Colour key:
- green - public holidays
- blue - days of prayers
- purple - events and festivals
- red - birthdays of family and friends
At the bottom of the page, I included dates and zodiac signs of the upcoming full moon and new moons. I like to keep track of the moon and I notice that sometimes auspicious festivals fall on the days of new moon. Perhaps that is how they are calculated. I used the colour of gold for full moon as it illuminates the night while silver for the new moon.
This is my completed layout of the future log from January 2023 to June 2023. I am glad that this year I made the titles smaller so I got more space to add more events, as they pop up while going with the flow. I didn't have much space to write more last year.
Similarly, this is the completed layout of the future log from July 2023 to December 2023.
I noticed something special! There are two full moons coming up in August. That rarely happens so I find it special to note. Last year, there were two new moons in the month of May. Also, it seems like there are no lunar eclipses in this year, at least none that I know of so far, which differs from last year as there was one in May.
I really enjoyed making this post and writing about what I did with my bullet journal. I hope that you enjoyed reading it. Thank you for dropping by and I wish that you have a great day ahead :)
