Nine days late, but here is my March 2024 bullet journal cover page layout! Obviously since March is “spring” or “pre-summer” in Texas, I included flowers, revolutionary and groundbreaking, I know. However, I’m super excited to match my journal layout with my spring PC desktop decor, which will be featured in another post in a few days!
As with my previous layouts, I tried to use a subject for which I had a lot of merch (specifically washi tape and stickers), and this time it is Touken Ranbu, a Japanese gacha game featuring personified human forms of famous samurai swords that has also been made into a couple of different anime series. I had the most merch of the tantou (short swords) from cosplaying with fellow fans over a decade ago when the game was at the height of popularity, they’re just soooo cute, but of course the bigger swords and spears are super handsome. I cosplayed Toushirou Maeda specifically (the one with the cape), so my artwork included him and his “twin” Hirano in their casual at-home outfits because I didn’t want to draw their formal suits.
[ink, marker, colored pencil, 2024]I don’t claim any of my traditional art to be flawless or even good, since I messed up on Maeda’s shoes, as they are white in his casual outfit not blue, shows how often I draw feet lol, but I made an attempt to not draw a boring shoulders-up portrait this time so I’m pretty proud of myself. I decorated with Daiso cherry blossom washi tape and pink flower stickers, also stickers from ameruu and shirokumani and uhh some artist I forgot who actually drew fanart of the swords plus their forging stuff, plus the official Touken Ranbu chibi washi tape. I also included a foil sticker from Megchandoodles of a fox spirit amongst cherry blossoms (the game has a fox mascot helping you forge swords) and a Daiso foil sticker with wisteria blossoms because those are associated with the Awataguchi swordsmith clan swords although I think only Maeda and Hirano have wisteria on their own crest. In case the reason for including cherry blossoms wasn’t apparent, the game uses cherry blossom petal assets all the time, one of the anime series features springtime hanami, and March is the month I had gone to Japan for cherry blossoms and overall feeling like an anime character. And that’s it! Very pleased with this March layout, not just because it’s my birth month, although I won’t use this sketchpad paper anymore since the light copics turned the paper speckly and blue for some reason I can’t figure out.
