A look at my monthly Filofax pages and how I decorate them

When I bought my pink A5 Finsbury, I had to also buy month on two pages refills for 2013. I bought them at the start of June, so I couldn't use the first half of the year. What I decided to do with the ones from January - May was to experiment with different decoration ideas. I searched on Flickr, Instagram, the Philofaxy Facebook groups, and various Filofax blogs to get more inspiration on how to decorate my monthly pages. I'll talk you through the pages I've already done, what worked and what didn't.

This is the May month which I went back to fill out the days I went to the gym, when I worked and got paid, and any other events I needed to remember. I decided I wanted to cross out each day with a simple line as it looked neat, but the main thing was what to do with the extra days. I tried out colouring the days in which were the end of April and the start of June. I really like this idea, and I think I will do this for all of my monthly pages. It looks colourful but not harsh on the eye, and my focus goes on the white pages not the filled in ones which is what I wanted. I also used the star stickers I found on eBay to mark the days I went to the gym, and these heart stickers I found at my local Asda store for 50p for 5 sheets! I'm trying them out for the monthly colour coding - this is the only thing that seems to be working right now (I'll go more into detail with these in another blog post).

This is the June month which I am quite embarrassed to show. I tried the washi tape idea for hiding the extra days in the month before and after, but it didn't work out. I don't have any proper washi tape, so I had to use the ones I had in the pastel washi masking tape stickers set but they were too small and didn't cover the whole area. It looked messy and not pleasing to the eye, so I ended up colouring the rest in to hopefully make it look better... it honestly looks awful and I couldn't wait to get into the July month! I started putting the washi masking tape on the top of the month to make it look prettier and less boring, and then at the end of the month I wrote down what was the biggest highlight of the month (in this case it was mine and my boyfriends first holiday, and seeing Blondie live!).

This is the July page, which I decided to try out another idea and use the round stickers in the pastel washi masking tape stickers set to mark off the unused days. It works okay but doesn't work as well as the colouring pencils in my idea. I still see the empty days and therefore it makes the month look longer. I still cross off each day with a simple line, and use the coloured heart stickers from Asda to colour code certain events. I used the washi masking tape idea at the top again as I did in June to mark a big event in the month (I've already done this month as it will be seeing Smashing Pumpkins live). I used another idea of putting sticky notes with little memos on the today ruler.. I won't be doing it all the time, but this was just something I could keep on the ruler until the next year refills arrive.

 Overall, I think I will stick with the colouring pencils for filling in the extra days from the month before and after. This works best personally for me, and makes it look more colourful and interesting. I will also stick with using the washi masking tape at the top of the pages to record big events throughout the month, and also using the coloured hearts for monthly colour coding. Hopefully the next few months will look better and cleaner/more organized now I've had a play around and know what works best for me.

What works well for you? What do you do in your monthly pages? How do you colour code certain events? Leave a comment and let me know!