By Orla Thistlethwaite
I have started and abandoned approximately seven journals in the last four years. Not because I don't believe in journalling — I do, genuinely, in the abstract way that people believe in things they never quite manage to do consistently. I believe in journalling the way I believe in going to bed before midnight and eating more vegetables. The intention is always there. The follow-through is another matter.
The problem, I eventually worked out, was not discipline. It was that my journals looked terrible. Blank pages, slightly wonky handwriting, the occasional doodle that looked like something a bored teenager drew in a maths lesson. There was nothing about opening the book that made me want to be there. It felt like admin. And I have enough admin.
The Rabbit Hole
I fell into the journalling sticker world entirely by accident. I was looking for something to decorate a card for a friend's birthday — something a bit more considered than a generic shop-bought one — and I ended up on a page of Korean stationery that I had not been expecting to find at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday evening.
The Suatelier Fragrance sheet stopped me immediately. It's a collection of small, exquisitely illustrated stickers — perfume bottles, botanical sprigs, soft florals, the kind of imagery that feels like it belongs in a very beautiful notebook rather than on a peel-and-stick sheet. The colour palette is muted and elegant: dusty pinks, sage greens, warm creams. Nothing garish. Nothing that would look out of place next to careful handwriting on a good page.
I ordered it telling myself it was for the card. I think we both know that wasn't entirely true.
You can find it here: Suatelier Fragrance Decorative Floral Sticker Sheet for Journaling
What Happened to the Journal
The sheet arrived in a small protective sleeve, which I appreciated — the illustrations are fine enough that you'd want them kept flat. I used three stickers on the birthday card. The rest went into a small tin I keep on my desk.
That weekend, I pulled out the journal I'd abandoned in January. I opened it to the next blank page. I peeled off a small perfume bottle sticker and placed it in the top corner. Then a botanical sprig in the margin. Then I wrote a paragraph about what I'd been thinking about that week.
And then I wrote another one.
I don't know exactly why it worked when everything else hadn't. Something about having a page that looked intentional — that had been arranged, even slightly — made me want to fill it properly. The stickers gave the page a reason to exist before I'd written a single word. They set a tone. And once the tone was set, the words came more easily than they had in years.
I've now been journalling consistently for eleven weeks. That is, without question, the longest streak I have ever managed. The Fragrance sheet is almost finished — I've been rationing the perfume bottle ones because they're my favourites — and I've already ordered two more Suatelier sheets to keep the momentum going.
What Makes These Different
I've tried other sticker sheets since. Some are fine. Some are too busy, too bright, too obviously designed for a younger audience than me. What Suatelier does consistently well is restraint. The Fragrance sheet in particular has a coherence to it — every element feels like it belongs to the same world. You can mix and match stickers on a page without it looking chaotic, because the palette and the illustration style hold everything together.
They're also the right size. Not so small that they disappear on the page, not so large that they dominate it. They sit alongside handwriting rather than competing with it. That sounds like a small thing. It isn't.
Who These Are For
If you journal and want your pages to look more considered without spending hours on elaborate layouts, these are for you. If you've tried journalling and given up because the blank page felt too blank, these might be the thing that changes that. If you just want something beautiful to look at on your desk, honestly, that's also a valid reason.
Browse the full range in our Stationery collection, Paper Products collection, Office Supplies collection, and General Office Supplies collection — there are more Suatelier sheets and other LuLuFun Studio designs worth exploring once you've seen what a good sticker sheet can do to a page.
The Suatelier Fragrance Decorative Floral Sticker Sheet is available now. Buy it for the journal you keep meaning to start. This might be the thing that actually makes you start it.
Orla Thistlethwaite is a copywriter, intermittent runner, and now, apparently, a person who journals. She lives in York, owns too many notebooks, and is currently rationing her last three perfume bottle stickers with the seriousness of someone managing a finite resource.
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