Bullet Journalling 101: Tools to begin with

I've been bullet journalling for a fair few years and I'm not saying I'm an expert but I enjoy sharing what works for me and from my previous posts I know you enjoy it too! That's the thing I love about bullet journals; you can personalise it to your tastes and what works for you. So bullet journal tips and tricks posts are so useful as you can try out all the tips and keep what works!

If you need something more of an intro I've got a post over here with the details of my bujo. But today is all about the tools to get started. Obviously, all you need is a notebook and a pen to get started but if you want to upgrade your journal then here are some fab extras!

How To Find Inspiration For Blogging - Tips and Tricks

When you're creating, what's hopefully unique, content as frequently as we do there's bound to be a time you hit a wall. Writer's block, burnout, blogging fatigue - whatever you want to call it even the best bloggers have had it. So as well as taking some time out, do allow yourself to do that, here are some tips and tricks to find inspiration for your blogposts and give yourself a bit of a push in the right direction. Of course, this is what works for me so may not necessarily work for you but it's worth a try and do post a comment below if there's anything that works for you that I've missed! On with the show:

Free Fonts to Make Your Posts Look Pretty

While I usually use my own handwriting for my posts I realised that most of you can't do the same. So instead I've compiled a list of eight free fonts you can download that will do a similar job! Download whichever you fancy and play around with them to see what you like! 

Prata // Frontage Outline // Playlist Script // Quicksand // Quentin Script // Hilton // Signatura Monoline // Happy Camper  

If this is the sort of thing you'd like to see again or want inspiration on how to use them, let me know!

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Photoshop Basics: Resizing Photos For Your Blog

If you've managed to succeed in tutorials one and two, then this will be super easy for you. Hopefully ya know being a fab blogger and everything, your photos are perfect already but just in case here's how to make them fit perfectly inline with your blog. This is also the same way you can create sidebar graphics for your blog as well!

We're going to make a default post photoshop file, which you can then import any photo and make it the same size as all the other images on your blog. There are three ways to do this, two include knowing exactly how big you want your image (knowing your column width of your blog should give you the answer to this). Which you can do either by A. opening an image and resizing it in the canvas size (Image > Canvas Size) or B. making a new document to that size and importing your image. However if you're unsure how large your column width is then continue to the third way (and my personal preference as it's simple).

1. The first thing to do is figure out the size you want your images. To do this simply take a screenshot of your blog. Then in Photoshop, using the Marquee tool (M on your keyboard) you can select the perfect box for your images. The width is the most important thing here, height can be changed for each individual image but the width will stay the same.

2. From here you can crop using the crop tool (C) which will automatically crop to your selection. This is now your default file which you can save as a PSD file and open for each and every blog post and insert your images.

3. Simply open your image and drag it into the default file, or copy and paste it if you prefer. Then using the Transform tool (command+T) and zooming all the way out (command+0) you can then resize your image into your preset sized box. Remember to hold shift to resize without distortion.

4. Then you can edit, add text, and save your image perfectly sized for uploading to your blog. Make sure when uploading to choose original size (Apologies I'm not 100% if this is similar on Wordpress etc but for Blogger this is correct.).

How are you going, are you keeping up? Again let me know if anything is unclear, if you're struggling then probably others are too! This is the exact same method for sidebar images, just instead of selecting the rectangle of your posts, select a rectangle in your sidebar. If there's anything else you'd love to know let me know.

Photoshop Basics: How To Edit Blog Photos

There are probably thousands of blog posts already on how to edit blog photos, not to mention a load of YouTube videos as well, but these are just some of the adjustments I use on an everyday basis. I try to do as little editing as possible, as we all should really, but sometimes especially in Winter we all know that the lighting sometimes isn't as perfect as we would like it.

Levels (Image > Adjustments > Levels or Command+L)
This is the first thing I do to edit my photos. Sometimes if I've taken them in nice perfect lighting that doesn't need much editing this will be the only thing I do. Essentially this either increases or decreases the intensity of your highlights and shadows. So, makes the blacks more black and the whites more white, perfect for those beauty flatlays! As you can see in the example the white of my sketchbook looks bright rather than dull.

Tip #1 // Change the background of your Photoshop to the colour of your blog to make sure your photos work nicely once uploaded. To do this right click on the grey background space surrounding your image and click custom. I make mine white so I can tell how bright my photos will look once uploaded.

Brightness/Contrast (Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast)
If you've played around with the levels and still feel like your photo still needs a bit of dimension then the brightness and contrast filter is where you should go next. You've all played with Instagram and essentially this is the same, but remember less is more. Don't go overboard with the contrast.

Tip #2 // Work at 100%, I'm not sure if this is a fave for all but personally seeing my image how it will look on my blog makes it so much easier to edit. That added to having the custom background means it's really easy to see how it will look once uploaded to your blog.

Photo Filter (Image > Adjustments > Photo Filter)
This will all be down to personal preference but I like my photos to be more on the cooler side, so depending on when/where I took my photos sometimes they'll lean more towards the warm side. This is where the photo filters come in, if my photo is a little warm I'll add a blue filter. The thing to remember (which is pretty obvious if you use these) is to only use them on a really low opacity.

Tip #3 // Sometimes not all of the photo may need editing, for example if you have a lot of white that part may need more brightening but less of the photo filters. You can separate parts of your images using the selection tools and edit them separately. For example I cut out the sketchbook with the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L on your keyboard) so I could edit the background with the photo filter and the white part would stay white rather than tinging blue.  

After that it's all a case of going with whatever adjustments you feel you need to do again to make it perfect. But remember less is more, you don't need to use all of them, you don't have to use any of them too much to make a big difference. If your photos need a LOT of editing in order to get them to your liking than maybe you need to change the way you take photos to make the post production simpler. It all takes practice and my photos still aren't perfect, hell sometimes I'm not happy with them at all but we'll all get there in the end if we practice. Once it's edited you can add text and a watermark like in the first Photoshop Basics post.

Let me know if you have any problems. Or if you feel you use a different adjustment you find works better for you I'm sure we'd all love to know, I know a few people love the Curves adjustment but I'm not personally a fan. Feel free to try out all the adjustments on your next photo and see what works for you! Next week is all about resizing photos so stay tuned!

Photoshop Basics: How to use text and create watermarks

Using Photoshop is pretty simple for the most part, however it just takes a lot of learning and practice. I've been using Photoshop for over 10 years now and I'm still learning. Adding text to your images and making them into watermarks is pretty simple and great for blogging. Hopefully the instructions below will help you on your way to being a text whizz!

1. Open your image. File > Open (or Command+O on your keyboard)

2. Add text by clicking on the text tool (or pressing T)

3. Then dragging your cursor over the area you want to add text. This will form a text box.

4. Add whatever text you like. Edit font, size, orientation, and colour in the top bar.

5. For more custom options open your character window (Window > Character) for line spacing, character spacing, and options such as strikeout and underline. The paragraph tab with it will allow you to turn off hyphenation if that is a problem.

6. To add a watermark, do steps 2 - 5 for your text. Then using the opacity settings set them to around 30%, depending on your image brightness it may be higher or lower. The sofilly.com in the main image is set at 20% due to the light background, how light you set it is up to you.

7. Use the move tool (press V) to move the text wherever you want on the canvas.

8. Save and continue your fab blogging!

If you have any problems or questions please let me know so I can edit this tutorial accordingly! Hopefully it all went well though, and you can now add watermarks to all of your blog photos and even your Instagram photos if you want to edit them on the computer too. I'll have more tutorials coming soon and at the moment I'm planning on the basics, but if you have anything in particular you want to learn please let me know!

How I Organise My Blogging Schedule

1. Excel is great! 
There's so many blogging calendar apps and websites and everything but seriously I find Excel so much easier and simpler. I've tried so many other ones, like Trello for example, and believe me I'd love it if an app was easier for me but alas that's not the case. I love seeing everything all in one place and it's all separated into months so I can easily look back and see what I posted on what day.

2. Colour co-ordinate everything!
If, like me, you post a range of content and want to try and post regular content of each theme then colours might be for you. I mainly post about design, books, and lifestyle so each of them have a different colour mapped out on the calendar to make sure I'm posting a fair amount of each. I try to post three times a week which allows for a post of each, however currently Uni work is making it that much harder to post so the grey missed posts unfortunately this month have all been design related. To make up for that I've made two out of three posts next week design related (just a little preview!). As you can see lifestyle posts are posted more often as quite a lot of topics can fit into lifestyle so it allows more variety for you guys, especially if you're not one for design or book related posts! I also use grey for missed posts that can be used next month, and a darker grey for those I may have missed twice or more. This may mean it's more than just uni work getting in the way and I don't actually want to write that post so it gets scrapped.

3. Checklists are so helpful! 
As mentioned before, now Uni work is taking over my life I find if I have a spare couple of minutes I can simply look at my chart and see which posts are coming up soon and which need photos or which need content etc. Then I can use those spare minutes to quickly spell check a previously written post, write up a structure idea, or take some photos for a couple of posts depending on the time allotted. I currently have structure, images, content fully written, scheduled, social media, and live on my checklist. Also colour co-ordinated!

4. TweetDeck is also really great! 
For scheduling and blogger chats TweetDeck is awesome. I know there's a couple of scheduling type websites out there for Twitter and other social media, but TweetDeck is just what I discovered and loved and haven't stopped using. I rarely use the proper Twitter.com page anymore. As you can have columns for each and every hashtag you want to follow it's such a simple way to have all my blogger hashtags and uni hashtags all in one place and simple to read. You can also schedule tweets well in advance so whenever I finish writing a post and set it for post I set up the tweets along with it at the same time. It makes it a hell of a lot easier than remembering to tweet whenever a post goes live, or to aim at those audiences around the world.

Take from this what you like, if anything happens to work for you let me know. Or if you know of anything that can help my organisation further, a new program for example totally comment. Course you can always do most of this by hand in a journal or diary, don't think you have to be all digital! I'm currently looking at how people work for my uni work so dissecting how I organise my blogging is totally uni work right?

Is Bullet Journalling For You?

As I was embarking on my major project this year, and basically wanted to get myself hella organised so I wouldn't end up in a balled up mess crying in a corner at the end of it (let's be honest that'll still probably happen) I came across the idea of Bullet Journalling on Pinterest and started to give it a try. In case you have no idea what I'm on about I'll let you in on the details then let you know how it's been treating me.

What is it?
It's pretty much a simplified planner/diary with coded bullet points; take any notebook and turn it into a to-do list, sketchbook, diary, and notebook all in one. The idea is that it takes all the effort from planning and organising and let's you use that effort for the important things, like actually completing those tasks. You begin with a month to a page type view, where all general appointments and big important tasks are included, here you can see all the meetings I need to go to and that my car rego expires this month and needs to be renewed. Then you get onto the daily pages, you can customise this all how you feel best but it's the bullet points are the key here. Tasks are set with a dot, once completed they become an X, no longer relevant tasks are crossed right through, there's also arrows that mean task migrated and task scheduled but personally I don't use these. Then there's events, represented by a circle, written in the briefest way possible however you're welcome to write about the event in a more diary type entry - personalise the way you run your journal to you. Any notes are given a dash, these should be things to remember for the future. These can also have signifiers, priority etc, however I don't use that. If you want to know more, as I probably haven't explained it in the best way, check out the website.

How am I going with it?
I personally use my bullet journal to handle all my University things going on, pretty much using it as a slightly complicated but easy to understand to-do list. Not only do I use the bullet point system in my journal but I use it throughout my University workbooks as an easy way to look back through my work and see what was just an 'in the moment' thought and what I needed to remember for a future time. I'm actually really enjoying it, I've only been going since the start of March, so not even a month, however after the first few days I just naturally started using the correct symbols in my work and especially in my bullet journal. Each day when I sit down at my desk to do University work I copy a set of tasks onto my weekly desktop planner (also coded in bullet form) and get them done. I don't know if this will still work as well when I'm at that 'balled up mess crying in a corner' stage of the year but I'll let you know how it works out.

Have any of you heard about this technique and given it a go? I'd love to know how you went. Also if you haven't heard of this, have I converted any of you?

The Ink for Lettering

While it's probably no secret around this blog that I have a bit of a love for hand lettering. It's been going on for around two years now and I'm happy with how I've improved over the time. I'm still not the best but I'm happy to post my work over the internet so that's saying something. Over the time I've tried out a lot of pens, brushes, inks, combinations of all three and more so I'm not an expert but I'm pretty comfortable with what I currently use. Hand lettering is quite the 'in thing' around the internet these days and if it's something you're looking to get into I thought I'd share some of my favourite utensils. (Utensils is so not the right word.)

Anyways my Winsor & Newton watercolour palette was the first thing I'd tried out. I felt a little uncomfortable spending so much on a little palette but it's still going strong two years later so I'm okay with the price now! I still use the brush that came with the palette it's that good. With this you're able to go as light or dark as you like, it's not going to be full on black but sometimes dark greys are much better than black as you can see more of the texture, as seen above. With the wetter substance you're able to flow easily across the page, I do recommend a watercolour paper if you're wanting to work with very diluted pigments. 

Tombow pens are the pen for hand lettering, you'll see them recommended by all the best hand letterers. They create great curves and come with a fine liner which you can use to tidy up edges. Personally it's not my favourite pen but it does the job and lasts a long time compared to others, this is just me though as I much prefer working with brushes and wet substances rather than pens. 

Everyone's had a pack of these at some point in their lives, $10 for around 15 pens is a great deal and they're every colour you can ever need. I recently discovered that these pens aren't actually that bad at lettering, while they're not the best they do give a nice texture and if you're not wanting incredibly thin and thick lines they work well. Definitely great for a starter if you already have them lying around.

Another recent discovery and I have loved this pen to death. It's gotten to the stage where it's starting to go 'fluffy', if you've experienced fluffiness in felt pens you know what I mean, which kind of does effect the lettering above. Before the fluffiness it was great though just as good if not better than the tombow, it just doesn't last as long which is a shame.

My favourite thing to use for lettering is proper ink and a size 5 rounded brush. I love the effect it makes and it flows so nicely that you get all the natural flicks. As it doesn't dry too fast you're also able to go back into it and edit aspects of your lettering if you're not happy, for example I probably would've smoothed out the bottom curve of the S and the tips of the Y above for a more solid look.

The key thing is if you're wanting to get into lettering, just do it. I may prefer working with ink and watercolours over pens but you may be different. So grab any pen/brush you have and go for it, if you're not feeling that then try another one, hopefully this post will help you with that. Practice and practice until your hand is dead. If you want some ideas of what to practice the #BrushLetterPracticeChallenge on Instagram is a great starter, @randomolive makes up a word a day for you to complete and every month has a theme. Check out the hashtag and her account for more information and good luck!

Advice from a new fourth year

So next week I will be starting #sofivshonours as I've officially got into honours. I am going into my fourth year of university my gosh I can't really believe it, it's gone so fast. Seriously this is my last year and next year I'll be released into the big wild world! So you could class me as one of those old wise people full of handy advice for all you new design students out there. (But really I'm still learning heaps and heaps and you'll figure this out soon enough if I wasn't here to tell you).

Buy Adobe Creative Cloud. Now. 
Seriously it's actually really cheap and it's never going to be as cheap as that for the rest of you life once you graduate. I didn't until now, I relied on outdated copies I'd obtained, and boy do I regret it now I've witnessed the greatness.

Trust Your Gut. 
I know your tutors most likely know best but that doesn't mean you have to change everything they tell you to. Trust your gut, if you feel like it's right and works for your design then stick with it. Design, after all, is a lot of personal preference. Of course if it's the basics then maybe you should change but it's entirely up to you.

Know The Library. 
There will come a time when you need books from the library, not everything is online I'm afraid. But once you get there you're going to have to know how to use it. In first year for one of my essay papers I couldn't find a book I needed, it was in a section up some stairs, so I just decided to leave instead of asking a librarian. I ended up with a pretty good grade but who knows, that book might have stepped me up to an A+. Know your library, and if you don't know ASK.

Write Everything Down. 
That little visual diary that you have should be where every thought and idea goes. Seriously even if you only have time to scribble down a little sketch of an idea it'll be worth it when three weeks later you really needed that idea to improve your work.

Manage Yourself Well. 
Easier said than done right? The sooner you figure out the best way you work, the better. If it's going to bed at 10 every night instead of pulling all those late nighters and dying the next day, then do it. Do whatever it takes to ensure that you're not having to work all day and all night the day before hand in, all the way up to the last minute to make sure your work is finished. There's nothing better than sitting there an hour before hand in with your work ready while everyone around you are stressing and sending you dirty looks because they aren't done.

Try New Things. 
There aren't many times in your life when you can have access to all this top of the range gear and can have the freedom to try out new things. Some things you might not like, but you may also find a new skills. They don't have to be big things either, for example the lettering in the image above is a new style for me and I think it's working? It may even make you want to change your major!

All in all have fun and actually put in the hard work, it'll pay off! Good luck!

Five Ways To Break That Creativity Block

Creativity block; we've all had it, we've all hated it. But how do we overcome the annoying process when our brains lack the creativity to finish that project?

Take to the Internet /
Tumblr, Pinterest and the likes are fabulous never ending galleries of inspiration. If I'm ever lacking inspiration or my creative juices aren't flowing the first place I head to is Pinterest. I used to use it solely for staring at amazing decor but then I began using for Uni projects and I haven't looked back. My decor board is sadly sitting there unused while I have stacks and stacks of private boards teeming with images for every project/class/idea. I'm currently stuck for an idea for my major project this year so I've started a huge mood board type board to try and spark an idea. Try it out yourself!

Magazines, Newspapers, Books /
The internet might not be the best place for you right now, it may just lead to scrolling Facebook or Twitter for the next few hours. If this is the case the next port of call I recommend is physical images and inspiration. Magazines and newspapers have ever changing content so if one issue isn't calling your name, another might. All it takes is that one image, line, or quote to spark creativity.

Take time out /
If finding inspiration isn't helping maybe just shutting it all out will. Listen to music, watch the new episode of a show you love, distract your mind from the important stuff for a while and you may come back feeling much better. Of course there's always that fear you may turn on one episode and hours later realise you've watched a series and no more of that essay got done but there are ways around that. Give yourself a time limit, tell yourself you'll get back to it after this episode... and actually do it!

Go Outside /
Instead of staying inside to distract yourself, maybe go outside. Whether it be a walk, a run, some other form of exercise, or even some window shopping. Similar to watching your favourite show, it will distract your mind and give it some time to relax, allowing you to go back and return to the zone. There might even be a show or event going on that could spark something, I went to the Dreamworks exhibition at Te Papa the other day and my boyfriend and I came home wanting to do all the creative things!

Be Social /
If none of the above worked then distract your buddies, see what they're up to and how far they're through. It may stress you out if they're so far ahead but it could also open your eyes to a path you'd forgotten about, a path that will take you all the way to the finish line. But they also could be struggling as much as you and talking together through the problems may help both of you!

These are just five ways I try to help myself sometimes, I will admit this is shared with a lot of scrolling through Facebook and Twitter and texting my Mum but I've gotten there in the end each time. Find out what works for you and feel free to share your tips in the comments too!

5 things to remember with group projects.

I've been involved in a lot of group projects at the moment at university and sometimes there's a moment or two that just makes me want to scream, cry, or just eat lots of chocolate. Don't get me wrong, working as a team can produce amazing projects it's just those few moments throughout that were either low in sleep, sugar, or just general food, when things get a bit iffy. These past two weeks I've been on holiday but our university calls it a break from university, not a break from work, I've been in uni almost 3/4 of the time working with groups. From this I've learned these five points that may help you in any upcoming group tasks:

Get to know each other's habits. 

If you make a team meeting at 9am when most of your team are late sleepers, then you're going to get less work done than if you make your meeting start at like 1pm, as they're still half asleep. From the very beginning one of my teammates mentioned that she works really late night shifts so sleeps in until midday when she can, this allowed us to; half agree that we'd love to sleep until midday too, and all agree to meet in the afternoons to achieve the most work.

Contact is key.

You may not want to constantly be meeting up with a group of people outside uni hours but believe me you'll get so much more work done from just getting together and getting on the same page for an hour or two or six. Contact doesn't just mean meeting up several times a week either, it also means keeping in contact while you're alone too. Come up with a way that you can share ideas and sketches from home, either a Facebook group or a Google Drive. Also for heaven's sake tell people if you get sick and can't work!

Provide snacks.

Now the one point during this entire group assignment that impressed me the most was when one of my teammates turned up to one meeting with a heap of lollies and other snacks. Each of the meetings after that she brought more along (I brought some too to help us along) but she mentioned one meeting that she was vegan and actually couldn't eat most of the snacks she brought and they were solely for the other teammates to enjoy. They did go down well though, everyone loves food! So I recommend snacks, just maybe ones you enjoy too!

Let others express themselves, help them, and commend them for it. 

Sometimes a member of your group may not be the greatest at something but they really want to give it a go, let them. You might know that you could do a much better job but it's university it's time to try new things, maybe there's something you want to do that you're not too good at either. If it's a major part of the project then help them out, guide them along, tell them your tips and tricks. Don't wait to see them fall flat on their face so you can stand up and 'save the day', that's not how group work works!

Above all, Compromise. 

You're never going to get anywhere if the five or so of you have different thoughts and won't budge an inch, you have to compromise. Sometimes the best ideas come from merging several, write down everyone's ideas and see if you can incorporate any.  Decide on a voting system from the beginning and a way that everyone can voice their opinions on other peoples ideas without seeming rude or demeaning. This way if someone's idea isn't used they'll be able to see that it wasn't that their idea was bad it's just that another one was more suitable or was easier to achieve.

These are what I feel at the moment are a great way to work in order to have a happy team and therefore a good result! They're mainly aimed at school/university projects but most are important in work life too, just maybe not the meeting at the 11am point when you have proper work hours...

What do you think, am I missing any tips?

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