Blog —
Pre-Made Journal Pages: No Drawing, No Printer
Under videos of hand-drawn journal spreads, one comment keeps coming back. It isn’t about which pen that was, or how long the leaves took. It asks where to get the page already done.
It’s a fair question. A ruler, a fine liner and a free Sunday evening are a lot to ask before you have kept a single day. And if there is no printer in the house, a free printable is still only a file.
The drawing was never the point
Somewhere along the way, setting up the journal became the job. A month has to be drawn before it starts. A habit grid needs 31 even boxes. A mood page needs a key that matches the rest of the book. If drawing is the part you love, keep it; it’s a good way to spend an evening.
For a lot of us, though, it is the part that stops us. The month begins, the spread isn’t ready, and the notebook waits for a better week. The days we wanted to keep happen anyway.
What a pre-made journal page is
A pre-made journal page arrives with the layout already done. The year grid, the ring for the month or the lines to write on are drawn, and the key (the colors, and what each one means) is set. What’s left for you is the day itself. If you came looking for templates, that’s what these are; in DayBloq they are simply called pages.
Where the pages are, and how to add one
- On Home, open Supplies and go to Pages. Chips across the top sort them: Yearly, Monthly, Mood, Books, Finance, Work, Hobby and more.
- Tap a page to preview it. How this page works explains it in a few slides. For Rate My Day, the first one reads: “One square, one day. Months run across, days run down.”
- Tap Use this page, then Pick a journal.
Already inside a journal? Tap Add new and the same list opens. You add a page once and come back to it every day. There is no evening where you lay out tomorrow.
The kinds of page
- A year grid, the Year in Pixels: twelve columns for the months, 31 rows for the days, one square a day. Rate My Day is the classic one; Reading, Spending, Screen Time, Plant Care and Hobby work the same way, each with its own key.
- A ring for the month: one slice a day, 1 to 31, for things like Happiness, Weather or Chores.
- Block pages such as Book Blocks, where each book you finish becomes one block on the grid, colored by its genre.
- Pages to write on: the Diary page, with a question at the top for nights the words won’t come, and Weekly Highlight, with one line for each day.
Coloring a day works the same way everywhere: pick a color in the key, tap the day, rub your finger over it, lift. If a label doesn’t fit your life, turn on Edit and rename it or change its color. Stickers and text go on top, no pen needed.
What’s free, and what carries a crown
Pages, covers, stickers and fonts that belong to VIP, DayBloq’s optional subscription through Google Play, carry a small crown. Everything else is free, and that is most of what you need to begin:
- Free: the yearly pages above, Rate My Day among them; the month rings for Happiness, Weather, Savings and Chores; Book Rating and Book Blocks; the Diary page and Daily Log; Weekly Highlight; and the blank pages with 2, 3 or 5 colors that you name yourself. Three of the Mood page’s looks are free too.
- VIP: Monthly Highlight, Bingo, Saving and Study Blocks, the other Mood looks, the question packs beyond Every day, and journals with more than 12 pages.
Keeping a Year in Pixels costs nothing. What VIP includes, and what it costs, is on the FAQ.
If choosing feels like more work than drawing, start a new journal with Start with a set: ten pages that go together, dated for this month or the next. The Starter set holds only free pages, among them Rate My Day, Mood, Reading, Book Rating and Book Blocks.
What it can’t do
A page that comes laid out is also a page you can’t redraw. You can’t sketch your own spread on a blank sheet, move the squares around, or invent a layout DayBloq doesn’t have. You choose from what’s there and change the words and the colors. If the blank paper page is the part you love, a pre-made one will feel small, and that is a good reason to stay with paper.
“No printer” cuts both ways, too. The pages live on your phone, which is the point. If you want the year on paper as well, the printable Year in Pixels sheets on this site are free. Printing a page or saving it as a PDF from inside the app is part of VIP.
Start with one page
- Pick one thing you’d like to see across a year. How the day went is a good first one: that is Rate My Day.
- Add that page, and nothing else for now.
- Color today. Miss a day and you can color it when you remember, or leave it empty. An empty square is part of the record too.
- Add a second page only when the first one feels like yours.
DayBloq is a journal app for Android. There is no account to make, and the journal stays on your phone.
Next in this series: the Diary page asks you one small question at the top, every day. Next, the questions themselves, and why one of them is easier to answer than a blank page.