While not the sexiest of pages to set up, having a few basic pages at the front of your bullet journal is really helpful to organizing the whole journal.

For 2024, I have 4 simple pages at the very front of my journal and a bonus page at the back:

• Cover Page
• Calendar Page
• Table of Contents
• Color Key
• 2025 Notes

Let’s break these down and I’ll show you how I designed each page.

Cover Page

Is this really necessary? Well, I have a stack of black bullet journals and the easiest way to identify the year of the journal is this first page. This page is simple with just the year and my favorite artist washi tape:

Calendar Page

In the past I’ve written out the monthly calendars across 2 pages and… it was tedious. So instead I buy stickers on Etsy. Last year I had a great all-in-one sticker with the whole year, this year I got each month in its own sticker which, honestly, made it harder to align. But might be a good option if you want to put the calendars throughout the journal.

Table of Contents

My Table of Contents page has found a happy medium by listing the pages of sections but not all the individual pages. I align the category on the left hand side of the page and then indent the pages inside that section. I used a dual sided Brushables pen to make the horizontal lines here and honestly, I cannot remember where I bought these markers but I love them. This is the closest I found but I guarantee I didn’t pay $9 a pen!

While I don’t turn to my Table of Contents daily, I will use flags on the pages I want to update every day or week. Since I have a lot more daily tracking pages in 2024 I will play around with this to see what works best for me. Most journals come with a fabric bookmark and I like to put that in the weekly spread for the week I am on.

Color Key

While this isn’t entirely necessary, it is fun. As I mentioned, I color code the day of the week with pens because I like how it looks over a year. So in the front of my journal I color in one square for each color in case I need to review, and the pens I use to write in the journal.

Colorful pens: Here are the pens from Tebik that I use for days 1-31, they come in a pack of 80 and I just number them with a Sharpie so I don’t pick the wrong one.

Black pens: I also use a set of black pens for everything from writing to making lines and designs. I really love these Micro pens but my single complaint is that the numbers on the cap wear off quickly. My solution was color coding them with solid washi tape so I can stay consistent in writing and creating spreads.

I didn’t write down what size pen gets used where because it’s fairly fluid. For example, the grid you see on the left numbering 1 to 31 was drawn with the 02 pen which I also used for the line at the top of the page. The title of the page was written in pen 08 which I used consistently throughout the journal. The rest is pretty flexible!

Washi Tape

As you can see I also use a lot of washi tape and it corresponds to each of the sections in my journal as seen on the Table of Contents page.

There’s one caveat I want to share with using washi tape on the edges of your pages: adding that much tape makes those page edges thicker. This is fine with me but if you want a sleek journal, maybe skip the tape or use it sparingly. Here is my 2019 (bottom) and 2024 (top) journal so you can see the difference. Same journal just designed differently.

If you do decide to add washi tape to the edges, keep in mind that it will make it harder to use a solid ruler because the page will not be straight across. I use a flexible ruler which means it doesn’t matter much to me but you can also design your pages and then add the tape.

Coming Soon:

• Set up
• Budgeting
• Calendar (Weekly Spreads)
• Cooking
• Health Habits
• Household Habits
• House Projects
• Media
• Pets
• Quilting
• Weather Tracking