One of my favorite parts of my 2018 bullet journal was the monthly tabs I created. They’re really easy to make and you can do them in a few different ways. Read on to find out how I made mine!

You will need:

• Index tabs (I used Post-It tabs in white)
• Scissors (I used Sun-Star scissors)
• Permanent marker or pen (I used an Ultra Fine black Sharpie)

I cut the Post-It tabs in half, then trim the leftover sharp corner into a curve, matching the already-curved corner as closely as possible. You can see in the photo above that the left side of August’s tabs is the pre-cut one and the right side is the one I cut. But I’m using a macro lens here, and it’s not as obvious “in real life”! 

I found that a Sharpie worked best on these tabs. They have a nice opaque color and don’t smudge. I liked how the white tabs and the black text complemented the black Leuchtturm1917 I used for my 2018 bullet journal.

After a year of making tabs each month, I highly recommend making all your monthly tabs at once. This keeps the tabs the same size and your handwriting as similar as possible. If you aren’t a perfectionist like me then this may not bother you as much! But I wasted more than a few tabs because I wrote the letters a different width or height. That said, I’ve barely made a dent in the pack I have, so they are pretty generous with their tab count!

Although you can use any tabs, the beauty of the Post-It tabs specifically is twofold. First, they are sturdy. The tabs you see above have weathered up to a year of use being thrown in and out of my purse and barely have a scratch on them! Second, they are actually repositionable, but still retain their stickiness, just like Post-It pads. Having used these for a year, I recommend them 1,000%.

That said, for 2019 I’m going to start off the year by potentially trying some new tabs – and some new tricks I learned from a year of monthly tab-making!  

I’ve had these tabs/bookmarks for literal years and had a sudden burst of excitement this weekend at trying my new white Uni-Posca Do! paint pen on them for a rainbow of monthly tabs! Sure enough, they look amazing together, don’t you think!?

They’re not perfect, though. First, the paper is extraordinarily thin. The adhesive is repositionable which is great, but I’m worried that they won’t be sturdy enough to stand a year of carting around in my purse.

Finally, as you can see a little in the below photo on the February tab (and October one although it’s blurry), the color itself is sort of scratched off. This again makes me worry even the color might not be durable enough to be carted around for a year.

I used the slimmer tabs to try a numerical approach. Since they’re repositionable, I plan to try both and see what I think looks better. I like the idea of the smaller ones since then I could also fit in a symbol based one (like books or theater) to flip easily to my trackers.

The good news is though, I learned from last year and did all of the months at once! That way everything will match!

If these fail me, I may borrow some colored Sharpies from work (hooray for being an arts educator with easy access to a rainbow of Sharpies!) and use different colored markers on my beloved white Post-Its. Stay tuned for updates!

As a last note, I also have these vegan leather tab stickers from Russell + Hazel, but I’m not sure I’m going to use them although I love the look of them. I’m just not a rose gold girl, and the leather is more of a grey than a black which I feel would clash with my new white-and-black Scribbles that Matter. More importantly, though, every time I go to use them I get scared because I think the adhesive is permanent rather than repositionable. Thank goodness for 3M, am I right?

Do you use tabs in your bullet journal? Let me know below!