Today I’m sharing my October 2020 Reading Journal setup! In my Archer & Olive Neapolitan journal I am done with the kraft pages and just started with the blackout pages, which is perfect timing. I was really excited to set up this one!
I made a couple of layout changes to my journal. I decided to move my Bookstagram and blog planning over to Notion as a lot of the posts I make get switched around constantly. In their place I’m adding in two readathons I’ll be participating in during October.
I feel like the opportunities for October spreads are endless. But for this October I decided on a more gothic theme. I’ve done journal spreads with different themes in the past, and I wanted to try my hand at hand-lettering gothic fonts for this month. Also, with the black pages, I have fewer supplies that will work. I’m pretty happy with these spreads overall!
Title Page and TBR
I used the Angel rhapsody font to try and letter with on these pages. It took a while (and it was a bit hard to get the intense detail with the paint pens), but I think it turned out pretty alright!
A little happy accident I had with the marker pens is that they splattered everywhere when pressing the pen hard. But I actually really liked the way this looked for the theme. It’s not super noticeable though unless you look closely.
And another happy accident are the gel pens. I thought they dried before turning the pages. As it turns out, they didn’t! I wasn’t happy at first because it took away from the paint splatter. But then I realized it looks more like ink on old pages, so I was fine with it in the end.
I’ve never really been a fan of gel pens because I feel like the ink is never even, but I had to make the switch for the black pages this time. I also may need to start using them more because my other journal pages are much thinner, and they don’t bleed through as easily. I guess it’s time to get used to them!
Lastly, I used dark scrapbooking pages throughout. This made for a quick and easy way to fill in any excess blank space.
Read and Pages Read
It’s my same spreads again, I just didn’t finish writing ‘Pages Read’ because I got tired of lettering already. 🙈 I’m not sure how I’ll fill in my chart since I can’t use my Mildliners on black paper. I definitely don’t want to color in huge lines with a gel pen! I’ll probably just make simple lines with either a gel pen or paint pen.
Readathon Spreads
As I mentioned earlier, I decided to transfer my blog and Bookstagram planning to Notion. So in its place this month, I decided to make two spreads for the readathons I’m participating in.
The first readathon is Fortnight Frights, which was created by Seji @ The Artisan Geek. This readathon features a bingo board, so I copied this into my journal. I also included the prompts. The only thing I’m missing at this point is space to actually write what books I read for this readathon! I’ll either have to allocate space from the next page or make a little ‘door’ between the pages.
The other readathon is the #FBC Readathon held by the Feminist Book Club Box. This readathon is way more relaxed – it’s a weekend dedicated to catching up on reads and interacting with other participants. Since there are no prompts, I’ll likely only be recording what I read that weekend.
Also, I just realized that I didn’t put the readathons in chronological order. Oops.
Anyway, that’s all for my reading journal this month! Let me know whether you use a journal and how you like to track your reading below.
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I love your journal set-up! ❤️ I think I’ll checkout my TBR to see if I can join thd Fortnight Frights readathon, because I don’t really read much of horror.
Thank you! 😊 The readathon incorporates similar genres as well so it doesn’t have to be all horror unless you want it to be 🙂
This looks amazing! I always wanted to get into journalling but I always forget to update them – I find it so much easier to just use my computer for planning. Yours is so beautiful!
Thank you 😊 Yeah, I have a weird split between physical and digital right now! Sometimes it just makes more sense to go one way or the other but sometimes it’s preference too. If you’re interested in the decorating aspect I’ve seen some people doing digital journals and they look so cool!
These pages look INCREDIBLE – you’re so talented!
I thought about doing the Fortnight Frights read-a-thon in October, but I haven’t quite made up my mind yet. There seems to be quite a few going on next month.
Thank you so much! 😊 Yes, there’s so so many! I want to try doing readathons more often but it’s definitely so hard to choose with so many out there!
Your journal looks so amazing! I tried starting a journal once, but my creative skills do not quite extend to art so I stopped after a while. It was fun for a bit though. I saw that readathon going around. There’s a few others next month too. I’m trying to figure out if I want to do one, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do a lot of reading in October and there are already so many new releases I want to read. – Amber
Thank you! I miss doing art but I’ve never been the best at it so I hope to practice with this journal. It’s so hard to pick what readathons to do, especially during October! I haven’t done a readathon in forever but I knew I’d be reading quite a bit so I picked these two. I hope you are able to read more this month after all!
Well keep it up, I think you’re journal looks so great and such a great avenue to practice through! And I spoke a bit too soon about not reading this month haha. I’ve snuck in a few books already, but we’ll see how the rest of the month goes. – Amber
Thank you! I’m glad you got some books in already. 😊