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Adorable Tropical Fruit Bullet Journal PWM

July 15, 2021 Elizabeth Ghekiere

After writing my Poooli Print review, I was inspired by the yellow paper. So, I tried to think about what I could do with yellow paper that would be summer-y. I had the bright idea to focus on citrus and began my search to find cute citrus or fruit doodles that I could buy instead of making them myself (to save time and effort). And thus, my tropical fruit July bullet journal theme was born.

Products I Used

Tropical Fruit Theme Breakdown

As I mentioned, this theme was inspired originally by the yellow Poooli Print paper. However, it truly became a concrete idea after I began looking for tropical or citrus fruit doodles. I took to Creative Market, which is my favorite place to find digital elements for my creations. In my search, I came across some regular fruit illustrations and some tropical fruit illustrations by the same creator, both of which I purchased and used.

These illustrations fit my style perfectly! While I love the colored portions, I was looking to print in black and white. But I was inspired by the lose colored backgrounds and decided to try to recreate that with my Crayola Supertip markers. Now, there are various aspects of this theme and my inspiration, which were successful and various, which were failures. Let's talk about it.

The Failures

Not every part of my tropical fruit bullet journal was successful or looks nice. The first noticeable fail was using gold lines. I first started writing headers in gold and outlining boxes in gold. Keep reading and I will get to why this is a failure in a moment because, on its own, the gold lettering is not a fail.

I also decided to use the seamless patterns that came with the fruit illustrations to create a sort of fruit wall. Additionally, I thought it would be good to print the fruit in parts on yellow paper and then use the colored pens over some of the fruits as if I had printed the colored versions of the patterns. However, once I started piecing the design together, I found some errors in how I had lined them up. Then, when I started adding color, it did not look how I had envisioned. This is where it all went downhill...

At first, the gold lettering looked cute with the yellow paper (despite it being poorly lined up); however, once I started adding other colors, it started to look bad. I am not happy with this part of the theme. But, once I went over the gold with the black ink, it started to look more put together.

The Successes

The obvious first success is covering up the gold ink with the black ink. This really created a more complete visual. Then, I decided to outline the entire fruit wall with black, which added some clarity to the page.

But the real success lies in using the semi-transparent paper to include the fruit doodles and then the shadowing I added with the colors.

I printed all the fruits in black and white on semi-transparent printer paper for the remainder of my tropical fruit bujo. Then I planned out their locations and colored underneath them using the five colors I had picked out (mauve pink, light blue, orange, purple, and a sort of teal green color). I left most of the fruits without color to add some depth and variety. This was a success.

Then, after I had added all the fruit, something still seemed to be missing. So, I decided to add shadowing! I shadowed the cover page header and the weekly boxes. This seemed to really complete the theme.

I am a little disappointed that the yellow paper did not work out; however, I am pleased with how the rest of the tropical fruit bullet journal turned out!

image of open notebook to weekly log week 26 and 27 header in script "July" and fruit doodles scattered through the rest of the page. image tilted right

image of open notebook to weekly log week 28 and 29 header in script "July" and fruit doodles scattered through the rest of the page. image tilted left

July 2021 Layout Explanation

Usually, this part of the article is fairly boring because I don't ever really make any changes. However, this month I decided to make some changes. The overall set-up is the same: cover page and weekly logs.

But, what I did do differently is in the weekly logs. This month, I decided I was too busy to check my planner daily, which had become far too overwhelming. So, instead of having a single space for each day of the week, I decided to leave the entire page open for the week to use the page more for a weekly reference than a daily reference and reduce my overwhelm.

Otherwise, I chose the same lettering and overall structure as my previous months.

Products I Used

This Layout Inspired Some Stickers!

Inspired by this very layout, we decided to create some fruit and tropical fruit stickers! Of course, we made the stickers far better than we made this layout, so you don't have to worry there, plus, you get 3 sticker sheets with each order (AND some freebies!). Check them out and few other ideas below!

Love my layouts? Check out the rest of my planner!