4 Halloween Bullet Journal Techniques you have to try!

This guest post is written by Megan from @goodlookingjournal

It’s officially spooky season! This means it’s time to give our journals a healthy sprinkle of Halloween! Thankfully my Yop and Tom journal’s robust pages are able to withstand the many creative elements I threw at it, allowing me to come up with some really fun Halloween spread ideas. I so enjoyed creating these layouts, and I hope they come as some inspiration to you. They vary in difficulty, and I’ve also tried to include a couple of options that rely on very little crafting equipment, so whether you have a cupboard full of paints, or simply pen and paper, there should be something you can get your fangs into. 

Stickers and Washi Tape

I have a very large wash tape collection, but when it came to making this spread I realised I didn’t have anything particularly spooky! But I thought this green washi tape looked a little like dead trees you might find in a haunted forest. I like to use washi tape to divide the page up, and here it acts as a fab frame for my fun Halloween poem. Special occasions like Halloween allow you the opportunity to devote a whole spread to practicing your lettering, so that’s exactly what I have done here. Finish it off with two of your favourite spooky stickers in the corner. 

Pen and Paper

Here I’ve tried to create a spread using as few materials as possible. Start by sketching out a silhouette scene of a haunted house/town/castle along the bottom of your page. Colour this in with black felt tip (trust me, Yop and Tom’s pages can handle it and it won’t bleed through!). I finished this section off using a white gel pen to add some detailing on the top, but it looks really cool left as a blank silhouette too, so don’t worry if you don’t have a white gel pen.

Then sketch out some little ghostly figures on some plain white paper, as well as a circle to act as the moon in the top corner of the page. Add little details like the ghost’s faces - you can be really playful with their expressions here - and also the witch flying through the night.

This can be used as a title spread, but I’ve turned it into my Halloween weekly spread by adding my black and white days of the week stickers which can be found on my Etsy page.

Watercolour Paints and Pencils

One of my favourite things about this journal is its ability to hold its own against watercolours! Most other journals I’ve tried in the past crumble to a pulp if you try and paint directly in them, but not this one! I started by using watercolour paints to mark out the basic shape and colours of the pumpkins along the bottom of the page. Don’t worry about being too precious about detail or shape, you can add more precision later and if they are a little messy it adds to their character and vibrancy.

I then used watercolour pencils to bring out more shading and the colours, before finally using a black fine liner to create depth and more distinct shapes.

I popped a spooky poem by Walter De La Mare onto this page, as well as plenty of space for me to write a journal entry.

Paper Cutting and Scrapbooking

This was perhaps the most ambitious of my four styles, and one I was excited to try. Firstly, make sure you skip TWO pages ahead and then sketch out the cobweb from the bottom of the page. This is really important otherwise when you come to cutting out sections of the paper you will be cutting through your work from the previous page!

Carefully sketch out the cobweb, making sure to mark which sections will be cut out, and make sure all the parts of the paper you are leaving are attached to the centre of the page.

Put a cutting board underneath your page and cut away with a cutting knife. This can be fiddly so take great care!

I finished it off by sticking some starry tissue paper and some brown paper underneath, adorned with some creepy crawlies. I’m really happy with how it turned out!

I hope you’re feeling creative and I look forward to seeing what you come up with this Halloween! Be sure to take some photos and tag myself (@goodlookingjournal) and Yop and Tom (@yopandtom) on Instagram so that we can see!