There is something so beautiful and calming about the night sky. The twinkling stars, the blanket of darkness bringing peace and where I live the dropping temperature makes evenings on the sofa wrapped up in blankets extra cosy. Maybe it’s because I’m a night owl, but late evening is my favourite time of day. So, it’s no surprise that the night sky features regularly in my bullet journal. I find it is extremely versatile theme, able to be made simple or more detailed depending on your skill level/time constraints of setting up. If you want to see some fun ways to bring the night sky into your bullet journal, keep reading!

Recommended Supplies:

• Archer and Olive Journal – To do something like this you definitely need thick pages if you want no bleeding or ghosting. As always I recommend the A&O journals as the pages can withstand this much paint!
• Gouache Paint – I cannot explain how well gouache works in this journal! It completely changed up my bujo game.
• Dr Ph Martin’s Bleedproof White - The best white ink that works perfectly for stars/snow!
• Pencil – To carefully plan out your ideas so you can make sure your spread has everything you need.
• Fineliners – My favourites are the Unipin fineliners as they’re waterproof, affordable and have a strong nib.

Simple Skylines

I did this simple night sky landscape theme in November, and I cannot stress how simple and quick it was to set up! You can see my Instagram for more, but all I did was pick two or more complimentary colours and blend them from dark to light. I then painted a simple skyline in black at the bottom of the painting. For some weeks I added stars, but I mostly kept this theme really simple as I needed to set up the month in one morning/afternoon.

Here is another example of a spread from this theme, showing you a night sky in a different colour than just blue. This one took a little more time as there were more colours to blend, but it still came together in less than 15 minutes!

The paint I used was gouache, and it was lovely to blend on the Archer and Olive paper. There was also no ghosting or bleeding, even though this paint is thicker. It’s actually my new favourite medium to use in the original Archer and Olive dot grid notebooks!

Black and White Starry Night

This is another simple, yet effective design to create. For this page, I coloured the page in black, and then splattered white paint all over the page. To create the mountain and stars effect, I cut a piece of paper into the mountains and then placed this on top of the page as a shield. It was really quick and easy to make, and I loved the dramatic black at white painting at the front of my 2019 journal!

Snowy Landscape

As we’re still in the winter period and here in the UK I’m hoping for snow, I had to include this snowy night sky. This one took a bit more time because of the cottage, but really all this spread consists of is a purple sky and snow! I’ve never seen a complete purple sky, but I can imagine it would look gorgeous in the snowy scene.

Galaxy Corners

If you don’t like to include big illustrations in your journal, this design may be perfect for you. To create this, I simply painted night sky colours around the corners of the page. I then added stars to really make it look like a galaxy night sky. I find this technique extremely effective and it really makes it look like your spread is in the centre of a galaxy!

Mountain Views

Finally, for this night sky I went all out and painted a mountain, galaxy night sky. This one took a little more time to perfect the texture of the galaxy, and as I used watercolours, I had to do several layers to build up the deep colour at the edges. In the future I would love to try something like this with gouache!

Bigger paintings like this are definitely created more for fun. I usually do them for cover pages, or because my monthly log doesn’t take up much room, I utilise the space around it like in this spread.

Hopefully I’ve given you some help and inspiration to bring the night sky into your journal! And if I have, I would love to see your spreads, so tag me on Instagram (@hayleyremdeart) and use #hayleyremdeinspired to get the chance to get your creations featured in my stories!