25 Instagram Calligraphers Under 5k

Since Instagram is the main platform where I share and talk about my calligraphy, I knew that I wanted to do a roundup post about a bunch of awesome calligraphers on there. A long, long time ago (as in one of the very first posts I ever made on this blog), I wrote a post about some calligraphers and hand-letterers on Instagram. Unfortunately, that post was a complete and utter fail since I only included 6 different accounts. Thus, I wanted to redo that same post topic in order to give it proper justice.

However, I'm adding a bit of a twist to this post: I'm only featuring 25 calligraphers that all have less than 5,000 followers (at the time of writing this). Since you probably already know the "big" accounts like @thePostman'sKnock or @Chrystalizabeth, I wanted to give some smaller - but still amazing - accounts the credit they deserve. So, I hope with this roundup (that is in no particular order, BTW), you'll be able to find a new favorite calligrapher on Instagram!

2016: the Year in Review + Reader Survey!

Nine months, two notebooks, and waaay too many pens later, I've got 35 blog posts, over 1,300 Instagram followers, and over 120,000 pageviews.

All I can say is thank you. I've had blogs before, but this is by far the most successful one. I've learned so much in this past year in terms of writing blog posts, photography, social media promotion, etc. And of course, I've picked up two awesome hobbies with absolutely amazing online communities: calligraphy and bullet journaling! Seriously though - all of you guys are great people, and I'm so thankful to have discovered these two groups.

Anyway, in this post, I'm going to be doing a breakdown of this year's milestones.

January 2017 Bullet Journal Setup

Wow guys, long time no see! I'm finally going to be able to make my setup post for January 2017. I haven't been able to do many blog related things (including posting on Instagram or even working on posts) mainly for two reasons:

1. I was on vacation in Florida from New Year's Eve till the 8th, and
2. I temporarily lost my bullet journal due to some unfortunate circumstances - read the Instagram caption below!

⚠⚠⚠ PLEASE READ THE CAPTION ⚠⚠⚠ 🌸 Hey guys, Mae-Mae here. Remember the Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting on Friday? Well, I was there in the airport. Fortunately, my family and I are physically well and are safe back home. Unfortunately, when we fled from the airport, I left almost all of my personal belongings in the terminal. This includes my phone and my *bullet journal*. This wouldn't be a big deal if after the shooting the FBI/the airport confiscated EVERYTHING that was left by the gates. Thus, I don't have my own phone nor my bujo. They're still sorting through the 20,000+ personal belongings, so I don't know when I'll be able to get my stuff back. I hope that it'll be soon, since I had school stuff in my backpack (school resumes tomorrow), many of my most used pens for calligraphy (including my Tombow Fudenosuke), and of course, my phone and bullet journal are both incredibly important for my life. Anyway, I'm probably going to be taking a bit of a blogging break. Since my blog is mostly centered around bullet journals, there isn't much I can for OJIJ if I don't even have my bujo, which also had a lot of planning for future posts. Please send your prayers that everyone will be able to get their stuff back (including car/house keys, ID's, and laptops) soon. I feel selfish for complaining about this when there were people that DIED or were injured, but eh. The thing I'm saltiest about is that the "shooting" that I was "in" was a false alarm; this inconvenience is happening for naught. ~Mae-Mae 🌸

A photo posted by Mae-Mae Han (@ourjourneyinjournals) on Jan 8, 2017 at 7:04pm PST

Basically, the TL;DR is that during a second Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting that turned out to be a false alarm, I left my phone and my backpack (which had my bullet journal in it) in the airport when my family and I fled. The FBI then confiscated everything that was left by the gates, so they had to sort through 24,000 items. However, thankfully, I got my phone and my backpack back yesterday!! That means that I get to have my "real" bullet journal again (I've been using a random notebook as a temporary bujo - I might make a post about it sometime), meaning I can actually show you guys my January setup.

Anyway, I'm glad I've you got you guys updated on what's been going on in my life lately. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's get to the actual setup part of this - welcome to the fist bullet journal setup post of 2017!

Tips for Bullet Journal Trackers

With the New Year quickly approaching, this is a time of year where many people think about making a big change in their lives; the beginning of 2017 would be a great place for creating the beginning of a new chapter in your life. One helpful tool for change that you can incorporate into your bullet journal is a tracker - or more specifically, a habit tracker. If you’ve never made a tracker spread in your bujo before (or if you’re just looking for some advice to improve yours), then this post is for you; today, I’m going to be talking about tips for bullet journal trackers, so read on!

DIY Christmas Calligraphy Gifts

Wow, can you believe that it's almost Christmas??? I feel like I've been waiting for forever. Anyway, hopefully you've got all of your present shopping done. If you haven't done so, don't fret! There are so many different sorts of gifts that you can make to give that are inexpensive and quick to create but are still nice presents that anyone would be happy to receive.

In this post, I'll be talking about different ways to incorporate your calligraphy skills into your Christmas gift giving this year. Personally for me, learning calligraphy/hand-lettering has made my presents to people all that much better, especially since my part-time, minimum wage job doesn't exactly give me the biggest budget to work with. If you're still trying to think of gifts for everyone on your list this year (or maybe you're just trying to brainstorm for gifts in general, not just specifically for Christmas), then you'll be able to find some good DIY ideas in here that are calligraphy-based!

December Bullet Journal Setup

Hi, guys! Sorry for not posting last Thursday or yesterday (which is my general posting schedule); I've been really busy this past week, and it doesn't help that since finals are coming up in a couple of weeks, teachers have been piling on work. I actually didn't even get my December bujo setup done until Tuesday the 6th. Anyway, if you're still interested, welcome to the lazy edition of December's setup post!