farm journal – mamasbrush

What is the difference between an art journal and a bullet journal? Which one is right for me?

These are great questions! And to be honest, a year ago, I don’t think I could have answered you. As it turns out, they can be as different or as similar as you want them to be. Anything with the word “journal” in it can be tweaked to fit you. There are no hard fast rules. Truly, if there were, who would be coming to make sure you are following them? Your journals, you make the rules!

But, still, what’s the difference?

Art Journal vs. Bullet Journal: What is the difference?

For me, the difference is found in the purpose.

Bullet Journals
The purpose of my bullet journal is organization, record keeping, and memories. I write what I’m reading in the Bible, what I am thankful for and the things and people I am praying for. I make a list of the seeds I’m planting and how many eggs the kids bring in each day from the chicken yard. Using a bullet journal helps me not to have loose papers all over the house.

Art Journals
The purpose of my art journal is to practice my painting and to make a memory. I follow prompts that help push me out of my comfort zone some days and other days I paint something special from that day. For me, there are no rules in my art journal and it doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s just for me.

When they cross over
Sometimes bullet journals and art journals cross over, and that’s okay too. Remember, your journals are whatever you want them to be. Some people only put words in their Bullet Journals, others make them fancy with stickers and washi tape, while others cover them with original drawings or even tape paintings inside. I love seeing form and function married into a beautiful Bullet Journal, but that isn’t for everyone.

In the end, I do a little bit of both. When life is crazy, I do less decorating in my bullet journal and leave my art journal behind altogether. When I’m feeling creative but don’t have an outlet for it, I bring one or the other out and go crazy. 🙂

Bullet journal for kids: Homeschool Assignments Pages

One more idea
We homeschool and I’ve started organizing my older children’s schoolwork bullet journal style. Until recently, I just made columns and filled them in, but in the last week or so, I’ve been trying to make them a little more fun. This week I asked my daughter what she wanted her theme to be and she picked cupcakes. She thinks it’s fun and I got to merge my form and function. 🙂 (Note: I used kid’s markers for these pages and for some of my others. I just tape together two pages so the bleed through doesn’t show.)

Do you have a bullet and or art journal? How do you use them?

Gathering here.

***Updated June 2022: I have new garden harvest/journal pages available! Check out my post about them here, or hop over to my shop to find them!

I considered waiting until I have a complete finished collection of bullet journal pages to share all at once, but I realize that it may never happen. So… here are a few more. This is the cover page in my farm journal. I’m new to illustrating with markers, so I was afraid of tackling the radishes with them. Especially accomplishing the gradient, but I’m super happy with how it turned out. It’s crisp, clean, plenty of negative space, and yet some of that deliberate messy. It just makes me happy!

And yes, those are my kids markers. It doesn’t have to be fancy to be fun!

Brooder Log for Baby Chicks — My 10 year old assured me that water is NOT blue. When I stepped back to look at it, I decided she’s right. Oh well.

This page sits beside my Egg Tracker. It’s basically a brooder log. We purchased some chicks from Tractor Supply a week and a half ago to replenish our laying flock (some of our chickens are almost 4 years… that’s ancient for laying hens as far as productivity goes) and as soon as we can diy an incubator, we’ll be incubating some meat chickens. Hopefully we’ll do several batches this spring/summer. With all those babies and all the different start dates and ages and details, I wanted a way to organize it all. That said, we’ve never really done this before, so I don’t know what organizational method will be best, so I decided to start with a log. This one may just be for March, or it may spill over and I’ll just make new pages when I need them.

And this is the back half of my garden plan. It shows about 50 feet across by 25ish feet back. Hopefully I’ll have the front half and our property layout done for you soon so you can visualize everything a bit better. I left the plants in pencil, even though I really want to draw in each individual plant for a nice pretty garden illustration, but so many things could change and I have things so tightly packed together in permiculture/companion planting style, that I decided not to. One of my future pages will include a plant list with dates to know and remember, so you’ll see my plans more then.

I also included Hebrews 6:7, “For Land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated receives a blessing.” I know it is referencing our hearts, but I love the relation to gardening and the reminder of how God uses the every day of His creation to talk to our hearts.

You’ll also notice that my sketches from one side to the other are different. I did these up on graph paper weeks ago and apparently one of them is off. I decided not to redo them though. Who has time for that. Release the perfectionism and move on. I would not be doing a bullet journal at all if I was going to try to have a perfect one. I wouldn’t get anything done actually. Perfectionism is the enemy of accomplishment. That’s what I say anyway.

Gathering here.

Tag: farm journal

Art Journal vs. Bullet Journal

More Bullet Journal Pages for the Farm