Bullet journaling with planner stickers in the Happy Notes Book

The Happy Notes are cute, affordable notebooks with dot grid pages. The one I chose had yellow dot grid pages, which gave me the idea of doing a citrus theme spread with a pink, orange, green and yellow color scheme.

Before the Pen

The reason I wanted to try the Happy Notes is because the page size is bigger than the generic dot grid notebooks that come in about A5 page size. I used the medium ‘classic’ size (7″ wide x 9″ high), although they notebooks come in MAMBI’s mini and big page sizes too.

See my full review (and video) of the Happy Notes in this post.

The Happy Notes I chose had yellow dot grid pages (not all of them have yellow dot grid) – a color I normally tend to avoid. However, it did give me the idea for the citrus theme which turned out pretty!

After the Pen

Is this spread really bullet journaling? Not in the traditional sense… there isn’t really a set ‘definition’ of bullet journaling. My interpretation is freehand spreads i.e. not using a structured planner (or planner printable) with sections / days / a layout already printed on the pages.

I used the Paper Mate Inkjoy Gel 0.7 pens as I needed a yellow pen. Apart from the Uni Pi dual tip pens, the papermates are the only one’s I’ve found where you can actually see what you’ve written when you use yellow.

The blank circle stickers beside the icon stickers are for me to put a cross in when I’ve done that task.

I did end up needing a 3rd page for extra to do’s.

Related: Minimalist planning: simple decorating & divider ideas for your planner using pens 

I spaced it out and left a blank row between each which kept it super neat 🙂

Supplies Used:

• PaperMate Inkjoy Gel 0.7 pens
• Meal plan sidebar sticker
• To do box sticker
• Habit tracker stickers
• Blog header sticker
• To do header sticker
• Cleaning header sticker
• Work header sticker
• Personal header sticker
• Weekend planner sticker
• Blank circle stickers
• Square checkbox stickers
• Meal plan icon stickers (the takeout sticker)
• Movie icon sticker
• Face mask / mud mask icon sticker
• Cleaning icon stickers

Pros of this spread

• The Happy Notes come in a variety of cover / color options and inside page layouts
• Plenty of space and I was able to do a sidebar and planning without things getting too squished

Cons of this spread

• The Happy notes is thin, you’ll probably run out of room quickly and either need to purchase refills or print your own dot grid paper

Would I use this layout again?

The layout worked well and so did the Happy Notes book. I’d use both again but change up the layout depending on what’s happening that week.

More weekly spread ideas in this post.

If you like the idea of the Happy Notes but want to DIY your own, here’s what you need:

• Dot grid insert refill paper (Happy Planner already sold these pre-punched dot grid pages before the happy notes came out)
• Lined refill paper
• DIY graph paper (tutorial here)
• Tutorial (and free printables) for making a DIY cover (if you don’t have a laminator, office supply stores offer this)
• DIY your own dividers using digital paper printed onto cardstock, printable tabs, sticky notes or the Happy Planner tabs
• Discs

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