Bullet Journal Supplies: Essentials for Effective Journaling

Bullet journaling is a great way to keep yourself organized and productive at a wide variety of tasks. These all inclusive designs are specific to your own needs, and allow you to create ‘collection’ or designated pages for efficient life management. Everything from planning your days, weeks, and months, to keeping lists, charts, and goals can all be included. You also can easily incorporate your own personal touches and make your journal a place for reflection and creative outlet.

So what bullet journal supplies do you need to make this a successful undertaking? To get started you have to have a few simple bullet journal supplies, but the more you add to your journal and make it your own, you might want to keep more than what you think to get started on hand. This article explores what materials you might want to invest in and where to buy it.

Supplies for Getting Started

Getting started with a bullet planner style journal is an involved process to get what you want to include set up and organized. This may seem like a lot for beginners, so don’t rush the process. It also takes a bit of advance planning to figure out what you want to include and how you want to organize it, but you don’t have to have anything but the most basic necessities to do so.

Journal

There are many types of journals or books that can serve as a BUJO for any price point. You can create yours from anything you want including a specific bullet journal label, plain sketchbook, cheap notebook, or stationary you can make your own from. Those products made specifically for this type of journaling are often thickly bound and use a dotted grid for easy organizational planning. A favorite for this includes the Leuchtturm1917 style book.

Pen, Pencil, and/or Markers

Truly all you need is some sort of writing utensil to provide a basic organizational index and start using your book. You only need one, but your book will be much more interesting if you have a choice of plain pens in various colors, brush pens, markers, and colored pencils. The best pens for journaling often include changes in tip thickness for detailed writing.

You may also want to have a good number 2 pencil on hand to help you sketch out your charts, graphs, and any font designs you want to incorporate before making them more permanent.

Pencil Sharpener

If you are using pencils you need a good sharpener that sharpens quickly and doesn’t waste the lead or color. Choose either a good manual option or dependable electric– or both.

Basic Organizational Supplies

Once you start making a list of collections you want to include, and begin to delegate pages to organization in your index, you most likely will realize what other supplies you may want on hand. These are common tools experienced BUJO users consider as their must haves and are great for new starters.

Highlighters

Highlighters of different colors are a great choice to help signify important tasks, cross off completed goals, or simply designate certain things as more important than others.

Sticky Notes

Sticky notes are especially helpful, especially if you are already a list maker. These types of notes are semi-permanent and are easy to move and dispose of when their use is over. You can use them for daily planning, week list making, and task reminders.

Indexing Tabs

Indexing tabs are the perfect way to easily locate your various collections. These can be stuck where you need them, removed when you are done with a particular section, reorganized when needed, and relabeled easily.

Ruler

Even if you are using a journal that already incorporates dotted grid lines for you to use, a ruler can be very helpful in making straight lines and helping keep your graphic organizers well dimensioned.

Paper Clips or Binder Clips

Paper clips and binder clips can serve as bookmarks, collection keepers, or simply serve to close off areas you are not using or have completed.

White Out

White Out really should be kept on hand because, well, mistakes. Whether you prefer the liquid type or the tape, you most likely will find a use for it from time to time.

Templates

You’ll probably find that recreating calendars and other graphics or charts over and over is a tedious process. There are many templates available you can find to download and print to use or even in stencil form.

Adhesive

If you use a template you need adhesive to put into any book that may already be bound. Double sided tapes, glue sticks, or specialized scrapbooking glue will help organize your materials without creating uneven surfaces or thickened, hard to turn pages.

Eraser

Just like you should keep a number 2 pencil on hand to ‘sketch’ out your ideas, you may want to erase your mistakes or guidelines. A good pink eraser is a good choice to keep around.

Creative Supplies

If you have a creative gene and like to design and explore color, organization, and add personal touches to your pages then the following materials are great to stock up on. Of course, artists have their favorite brands and styles of markers, pens, and pencils.

Washi Tape

Washi tape is a bit like regular tape in that it can bind things together, but it is colorful, patterned, sparkly, and pretty much anything else you can think of. It makes good borders, helps separate sections on a page, and can even be folded along the edge of a page to break up sections of collections.

Angle and Circle Maker

These templates serve as a stencil to allow you to make perfect circles and consistent angles and lines. They can serve as an all in one type tool and work as a ruler, graph maker, guide, etc… to help you with your organization.

Stencil Ruler

A stencil ruler is another all in one tool that can provide multiple guides for your needs. These are helpful to have and are often very thin and work as a bookmark as well.

Compass

A good compass isn’t old fashioned, it is actually incredibly handy to provide accurate circles and lines. It is a popular tool that many experienced BUJO journal keepers like to have on hand.

Stickers

There are many stickers that provide organizational aid, prefabricated calendars, and other useful charts or graph templates. But more often than not stickers are used to decorate and provide a fun, whimsical touch to your pages.

Stamps

Stamps can be a way to decorate your pages, but they also come in a wide array of helpful templates that you can use over and over. Just be sure to get ink for your stamp collection!

Artist Pencils

Artist pencil sets have an array of soft and hard graphite from which you can sketch and draw and design through your book.

Storage Solutions

All the above mentioned good stuff needs a place to hang out when you aren’t using it. These quality items need safe storage and protection, and easy access for when you need them. You can organize them along with other supplies you may have, or have stand alone storage solutions for easy portability, or both!

Pencil Bag

A pencil bag is a great way to organize all your writing tools and keep them handy for portability. Choose one that provides layers and allow you to keep them separated for efficient use.

Rotating Organizer

Tabletop organizers are a great way to keep your materials organized and on hand for quick use. Choose an organizer that allows you to separate by product, color, etc…

Craft Caddy

A craft caddy is a great way to provide both in home organization and a carrying case for when you are on the go. These come in a wide variety of sizes to fit your needs.

Stacking Bins

You can choose in home stacking systems or smaller, portable options. Both save on space and allow you to be efficient in your organization of the many necessities you may collect.

Storage Bins

Like other options, storage bins can come in a wide variety of sizes. They are often a great choice for desktop organization and provide a selection of places to place all your many materials.

Conclusion

Whether you look for a variety of both cheap and quality tools to help you create your bullet journal is up to you, but you definitely want to have a few things on hand to help you get started and begin creating your own personal book. You also want to keep your materials on hand and organized so you can stay on top of working on your journaling.

Hopefully this article has helped highlight those basic needs for this process without becoming overwhelming in the amount of choices you do have. If you have any favorites of your own we have left off or you would like to share, please comment below. Also, repost to help others begin on their journaling adventures.

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