My 2022 Bullet Journal Setup – Preparing for The New Year
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Another year has come and gone, and that means it’s time to create a 2022 new year bullet journal setup! Join me as we reflect on the year we leave behind and plan for the year ahead.
New To Bullet Journaling?
If you’re new to bullet journaling, I highly recommend you check out my Ultimate Bullet Journal Guide. This huge guide will help you learn everything you need to know to start your bullet journal and make sure you are using it to its full potential.
Another Year Gone
Once again, we find ourselves standing at the threshold of another year. That means it’s a time to reflect on the past year and plan ahead for the one about to start. This process can take different forms for different people, but I always like to take time to work through these steps in my bullet journal.
You could easily buy a yearly planner and just call it a day, but personally, I like to use the new year as an opportunity to flex my creative muscles!
So every year, I grab my notebook and create some of my favorite spreads to help me prepare for what’s to come. Here is what I created to celebrate the end of 2021.
Goodbye 2021
The very first page I create in every new year bullet journal setup is a goodbye cover page. I like to treat this transition like the end of a chapter, so I create a page just for this purpose.
Usually, I let this page remain quite simple. After all, I’m saying goodbye! I don’t want to spend all my energy and time on this simple farewell because I want to put that energy toward my future goals. To keep it nice and easy, I painted a half wreath with pink and blue leaves and added small dots of gold to embellish it. Finally, I carefully lettered “goodbye 2022” in the center of the wreath.
Memories
While I want to focus the majority of my energy on the future, I do want to spend some time reflecting on the past year and celebrating the milestones and accomplishments from 2021. That’s why I absolutely love doing a memories page — it helps me sum up all the most important moments from the year and condense them into one beautifully designed page of doodles.
This year, I have a few notable memories to record. A big one for me was getting vaccinated and how much that opened up my social options and gave me relief from overwhelming anxiety. We also had major changes in our business, including getting a studio space, hiring our first employee, and launching Foxsy!
Besides that, I also became low-key obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons this year. I participated in a campaign run by a dear friend, ran my very first adventure, and now I’m developing my own homebrewed campaign that we’re starting sometime in early 2022. It’s been such a fantastic part of my life this year, so of course, I had to add it!
If you don’t already create a memories page to sum up your year, then I highly recommend you start now. It’s a fun exercise that allows you to feel gratitude and warmth for the joys of the past year, and it gives you a time capsule to look back on in the future. For me, finishing up a memories page gives me the headspace I need to look ahead with clear eyes.
Hello 2022
Just as the close of the past year is the end of a chapter, the approaching new year is the beginning of the next chapter. I love to create these symbolic pages of closing and opening to say farewell and welcome the next steps. Are they necessary? Absolutely not. But I love making them anyway.
For this page, I continued the theme of the Goodbye page by making a wreath of pink and blue foliage. However, for this page, I filled out the whole wreath to show my dedication and energy for the next year.
Word of the Year
For the last several new year bullet journal setups, I have taken a few pages to explore a word or phrase to focus on in the coming year. Not only is this an opportunity to create a pretty spread of lettering and watercoloring, but it helps me focus on my overarching goals and manifest them into a reality.
This year, I chose Create. I picked this word for a few reasons.
The biggest reason for this choice is our brand new art education website Foxsy. I want to spend this year growing this business and building it into something amazing. To do that, I need to focus heavily on creation — both as an instructor and as a businesswoman. I need to create opportunities, find new artists, and push myself out of my comfort zone.
The other reason for this word of the year is that I want to explore my personal creativity. I hope to push my hobbies further with new mediums, new friends or groups, and new experiences (like my homebrew D&D campaign).
Level 10 Life
For the final spread in my 2022 new year bullet journal, I created one of my favorite trackers — the Level 10 Life.
You can read more about how to set up your own Level 10 Life here, but in a nutshell, this graph is an excellent way for me to reflect and check in on different parts of my life. I can rate my satisfaction in ten areas of my life and set goals to try to make my life even better. I do this spread every year, and every year it is a fantastic addition to my new year setup.
This time around, I hit a major milestone. For the first time since I started doing Level 10 Life charts over six years ago, I finally reached my first level ten. In fact, I hit level ten in TWO categories this time! That’s not to say these categories are totally perfect, but I can confidently say that I have done everything I can to improve those areas of my life and I didn’t fall short of my goals. It’s such an amazing feeling to see my growth over the years and know that I’m becoming a better person year by year.
2022 Bullet Journal Setup Video
Watch my full video below! If you want to learn more about what I did this year, be sure to scroll through this article to see pictures and more information about each page.
Create Your Own Watercolor Bullet Journal
Do you want to create your own beautiful watercolor bullet journal setups like this one? You might think that a journal like this isn’t a possibility for you, but I’m here to tell you that you can make it happen!
I condensed all my years of experience and wisdom on watercolor journaling into a detailed class called Paint the Page. With over two and a half hours of tutorials and step-by-step projects, you can learn everything I have to share about creating pages like the ones in my 2022 new year bullet journal.
Paint the Page offers a deep dive into:
- materials
- common mistakes & fears
- my process from start to finish
- watercolor bullet journaling
- & 8 beginner-friendly watercolor techniques you can use with no painting experience
Then I’ll take you through three paint-along journaling projects where you can create several beautiful spreads. In fact, one of those projects is a full step-by-step tutorial on creating a monthly bullet journal calendar page with watercolors!
If you’re ready to create your gorgeous 2022 bullet journal with confidence, check out Paint the Page on my art education website, Foxsy today!
Looking For More New Year Bullet Journal Ideas?
Each year I change what I include in my new year setup, but here are a few of my favorite bullet journal pages from previous setups.
- Future Log: A bullet journal future log is a place for you to add all of your future monthly and yearly commitments in one convenient place.
- A Year In Pixels: While the scale of this mood tracker is large, the concept is deceptively simple. To set it up, you need twelve columns for each month of the year along with 31 rows for the days. That means that there are exactly 365 squares, or pixels, for you to track your mental health with a quick glance!
- Habit Tracker: This handy chart allows me to keep track of habits (if that wasn’t obvious) to see how I’ve been progressing toward my goals. I can keep an eye on both positive habits and negative, which is super helpful for being honest with myself.
- Bullet Journal Key: A key is perfect if you’re starting a new bujo at the beginning of the year. A key is simply a convenient place for you to keep track of what all of the various symbols you use in your bullet journal mean. The key is typically one of the very first pages in your bullet journal, so you can easily reference it at any time if you forget what a specific symbol means.
- Self-Care Spreads: It’s easy to get wrapped up in the chaos of life and forget to take a step back to take care of yourself. That’s why I love to take some time to create bullet self-care spreads to help me restore my natural resources and be my best self!
- Weight Loss Tracker: In the reflection that comes with the end of a year, weight-loss is a common subject. If you find yourself wanting to work on yourself a bit this year, then this tracker is for you!
- Book and TV Shows Tracker: I love to try new things in entertainment, but it’s so easy to forget options! A show and book tracker is the perfect solution!
My Bullet Journal Supplies
Additionally, I want to cover what supplies I used to create these bujo spreads. People are always curious, and I’m always happy to oblige!
Journal
Watercolor Supplies
- Daniel Smith Fine Watercolors
- Colirocolor Gold Watercolors
- Schminke Metal Palette
- Grumbacher Paintbrushes
- Princeton Velvetouch Paintbrushes
- 2 Jars of Water
Pens & Pencils
- Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen
- Sakura Micron Drawing Pens
- Prismacolor Colored Pencils
- Prismacolor Col-Erase Colored Pencils
Jump Into 2022
Normally I’m a bit sad and nostalgic about the year I’m leaving behind, but for some reason, I’m not experiencing that this year. 2021 wasn’t necessarily a bad year for me personally, but I think it’s too close to the dread year 2020 and I mentally group them together. I’m ready to move on and shake off all that nastiness to try and create something fresh and incredible in 2022.
I wish you a wonderful holiday season and a stellar new year!
Looking For More Inspiration?
Be sure to check me out on Instagram, Pinterest, or check out my previous new year bullet journal spreads.
Hello, Shelby! I’m Ayla.
First of all.. oh my gosh, I love your art work! It’s really beautiful! And I love the way you do everything in time and finish it. As I lovee art, i started following your tutorials and it came beautifully. Your bullet journaling for 2022, that was amazing too! Also, your hand lettering, I learned so much in that and water colouring too. I just wanna say, you have a great talent. Don’t give up. And thanks for sharing all these first of all.
– Ayla.
Thank you so much, Ayla! You’re so very kind!
Hello Shelby! Firstly I want to say how beautiful your work is. Every time I see anything of yours, I love it, and your use of watercolour is fab. You’ve inspired me to start using it too, albeit an extremely cheap version!
I just wanted to ask you for advice. I’m currently struggling with my mental health due to a personal tragedy in the past few months. I see you use a year in pixels, which is great for a quick overview, but do you have any other mental health spreads or general wellness spreads I could try? I’ve been feeling so depressed lately. Thank you x
Hello Sophie! I’m terribly sorry that you’ve been going through a difficult time lately. I hope things begin to look up for you soon ❤️
As for spreads, you might be interested in this article about health trackers. It shows a physical ailment as an example, but you can easily tweak it to be used for mental health.
You might also enjoy this post about self-care ideas.
And finally, it’s not a spread, but I think you might benefit from the Morning Pages exercise. I found this journaling practice to be extremely helpful when I was struggling with my mental health, so I imagine you might find it helpful as well.
I hope these help you heal and push through the troubles you’re facing. Journaling and writing during tough times can be extremely helpful, but if you’re still struggling and it gets to be too much, remember that seeking help from a professional is always a good call. I’ve been seeing a therapist for years and it has helped me more than I can possibly say!
Good luck Sophie, and be kind to yourself ❤️
Hi! I’ve been struggling with a problem lately. Most of my paintings are made by following tutorials, so sometimes I feel like I’m not creative.
There’s nothing wrong with following tutorials! That’s how you learn. That’s like saying you’re not an artist because you went to art school and had everything taught to you. If following tutorials is fun and helps you learn, then pursue it! What makes you creative is the willingness to try new things and grow your skills. Don’t worry too much about labels, they don’t mean anything at all. Just do what feels right, not what you think other people will approve of.