I wanted to make the setup for April soft and dreamy since this new month comes in at a time where everyone is isolating and sheltering in place. You can see how I planned this month and follow along.
You can watch my video set up above, or you can read and see the detail shots below.
For the cover page background, I scribbled in the first few stanzas of TS Eliot’s poem The Wasteland. It is one of my favorite poems, and I’ve used it for April in my past journals too, just because I feel like it is so fitting.
This is the first stanza:
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
I found this to be particularly apt in school, as April was the month your teachers would begin to pile on the projects and papers in prep for exams. People would ask me how it was going and I would respond, “well, April is the cruelest month…” like the sassy English major I was. I also think given all that is going on in the world that maybe a poem about endings and beginnings is appropriate.
I glued on a triplet of rosebuds that I had already cut out from a magazine. Those I arranged in a row and adding a title that says “Spring into April.” I cut that from another magazine, last year’s April issue of Dallas Modern Luxury. I backed that with a black rectangle that I colored in with my black dry erase marker to make it really pop and glued it in place.
On the other side of the page, I wrote out the numbers of the month and filled it in with the initial for the corresponding day. I find this to be easier than drawing out the calendar, both because this month is lighter on events due to COVID-19 and because I am bad at spacing the boxes in a way that doesn’t fill me with rage. I highlighted the Sundays on the calendar with my pink mildliner, that way I would know when each week started.
On the next page I laid out my mood tracker for the next month. I’ve dealt with mood disorders for most of my life, so a color for each day doesn’t really cut it. This tracker allows me to track my mood fluctuations throughout the day with a specific, fixed color code. I add a short note next to each day and longer, more specific notes on the opposite side of the page along with space I leave on the next three pages.
For this spread, I carefully marked everything out with a ruler and filled some boxes in with my black marker, going over it with my white Gelly roll for a standout look.
I set aside another box on each of the following pages for notes I want to give to my doctors, like any side effects from medications, so that I don’t forget to bring them up in my doctor’s appointments.
Next is my “running list” spread, which I use to keep track of ideas I have and that don’t necessarily have a due date. I have these flights of ideas that can be pretty distracting, so I make note of them here. Sometimes I’ll forget the idea the moment it passes, so putting it here means I can act on it later when I have time. I sort them by priority with letters. I have high, low, and mid priority levels and a star for things that need to be done immediately. I have further letters to delineate whether it is a task just for fun or whether it is something I actually need to do. I’ll list out items in this spread and check them off as I go.
My quote page reads “like wildflowers, you must allow yourself to grow in all the places people never thought you would.”
I wrote most of this in my black Crayola thin tipped marked. This was not the best for me as I rest my hand against the page while I write, and the Crayola created a lot of streaking. Luckily this comes off if you wet your finger a little. It was very annoying but it’s too late to go back.
I wrote the main nouns in my purple mildliner, which I then outlined in black fineliner. I paired the quote with some dark florals that I cut into long strips and staggered out with some dot patterns.
My weekly spread is pretty simple. I measured out eight boxes that were 10 dots high by about 13 dots wide. My journal is the Leucchtterm so it is 27 dots wide, thus one of the sides will be one dot wider than the other. I outlined six of the boxes, leaving alternating blank ones in the middle for a clipping and a doodle. I used these six boxes for the days of the week. Now I’m realizing I should have done 7 boxes but oh well. The other side has a long box for tasks and another one for notes. Both sides have floral collage details and are titled and the highlighted in pink.
I really hope you liked this dreamy, flowery layout for April, I know I did. Make sure you're staying safe, healthy, and at home during these strange, uncertain times. Thanks for joining me!
