Tiina, better known as @tiinasdiary on Instagram, is a journal creator and YouTuber known for her stunning themed journal spreads.

As a creator who takes inspiration from nature's seasons and the world around her in her home country of Finland, Tiina has created a stunning portfolio of journal inspiration for her thousands of Instagram followers and YouTube subscribers. We interviewed Tiina to learn more about her creativity and passion for journals. 

Here's the chat we had with Tiina:

Your journal looks flawless -- it must have taken years of practice to get into the routine of constantly creating lovely spreads. When did you start journaling?

Thank you! I actually haven’t done art for that long, I started bullet journaling in August 2019 and hadn’t really done that much art before. But like you said, consistency is key and doing art weekly has made a huge difference even though I haven’t been practising for that many years.

On the topic of your routine, we'd love to learn about how you keep the habit of regularly journaling. How often do you journal, and how do you stay in the habit of working on your journal frequently?

I would love to say I journal every single day, but I sadly don’t. I feel like my motivation goes up and down and having new, interesting and beautiful layouts definitely helps me to keep the inspiration and motivation in journaling and tracking, while many times repeating layouts might make me feel uninspired.

I try to journal at least every other day and if I skip a day, I might go back and write something fun or good about that day.

How would you describe your journal style?

Definitely artsy, that’s the main focus of my whole bullet journal! My layouts itself are often more on the minimalistic style but I like to balance it out with big and detailed paintings.

You're clearly very artistic. Have you always been passionate about art and watercolors, and how did you discover this talent? 

I don’t think I’ve always been very artistic. I have always loved art classes in school and I did pretty well but honestly it might’ve been because it was just easier for me to concentrate in than other classes. I found the love for art at the same time I found my love for bullet journaling.

I had been fascinated by AmandaRachLee’s bullet journal videos and they pushed me to try out bullet journaling. I remember I started with easy and simple drawings but after couple of months I decided to buy watercolors and try them out, and that’s when it all started for me. 

Can you share some of your sources of artistic inspiration with us? Do you prefer to look online for inspriation, or take inspiration from the world around you?

I mostly get inspired by seasons and their beautiful colors. I’m lucky to live in such a beautiful country (Finland) that keeps me constantly inspired. I also love seeing pictures from my talented friends from our art and bullet journal community and that often gives me good ideas to try out in my own bullet journal.

You occasionally share trackers from your journal on Instagram. For someone who is starting out and looking to create a few basic tracker spreads in their new journal, are there any basic trackers you'd recommend trying out? 

I’d encourage everyone to find what kind of trackers fit their own lifestyle and what interests them. Do you have plants, do you have pets, do you need extra spreads for school or are you partaking on a fun challenge, that you’d like to track? There’s millions of choices!

I would always recommend going with some fun trackers too and not only with those that make you do more. Sometimes tracking certain things can also stress you out and make you feel like you’re not doing enough when you’re not crossing them off every day.

I like tracking my mood, sleep and daily habits and I also love to make spreads for movies and tv shows and music, but for a beginner a good starting point is just creating a habit tracker where to track daily habits, such as taking vitamins, going on a walk etc.

Finally, we love to ask every creator about their favorite stationery items. If you could only recommend one product that you use in your journal, what would it be? 

Oh, this is a hard one! I think fineliners are such a stable when bullet journaling, but I couldn’t do much without my paints, specifically gouache. Gouache paints are really versatile medium and you can do so much with just a primary color set!