I recently shared that my new planner had arrived and what I did with the first page. If you remember back when I had my Erin Condren Life Planner, I used it as a mini Project Life - documenting a week at a time by printing out pictures and journaling about the day. So far, I've used this planner the same way.
Compared to some of the beautiful minimalist weekly spreads I've seen with plenty of gorgeous white space, I tend to fill as much of the two pages a week as possible. I fill it like I would a collage and art journal hybrid, mixing images and journalling, and finishing with stickers and washi.
If I have a blank space I need to fill, I fill it with plants. I fill it with fun, quirky pretty little paper cut images. I fill it with recent things I've been wondering...
Sometimes a whole column is blank and it's nothing a couple of thick washi tapes can't handle. I love the look of the double washi tap in the left column of the below spread. I try to keep my colors as coordinated, and I like how the mint washi matches the mint striped note paper below.
I fill this planner after the fact. I have a bunch of other planners and listing pads that I use to keep myself organized in the present moment and to jot down future endeavors. My Happy Planner™, however, is a memory keeping tool.
At the beginning of this weekly spread, I jotted down a pep talk to myself in the left side column because I was starting a design assignment for the company I work for, and it needed to be done by Friday. I layered over the jotted down pep talk a trimmed to size transparency sheet and stuck three mambiSTICKS from this pack on it that summed up my pep talk: "do what you can, with what you have, where you are." I swear this job working for me & my BIG ideas came to me for a reason: because I so need all the positive reminders I get each time I use their products - at this point in my life more than ever. ;)
Another great thing about the planner is that you can remove the pages from the planner that your working on. That allows you to jot notes all the way to the edge of the seam without contorting your hand or double-jointing your finger and writing tool. You can see below that I was able to jot about my walk that evening in between the rings.
I mentioned above that I fill this planner after the fact. Every Sunday, I take time in the morning to gather my photos from the previous Sunday to Saturday and fill those days' columns. Below you can see the Sunday I've yet to fill. I'll jot in pencil quickly what photos I imagine I'll include, and I go from there.
CLICK HERE TO SEE MY PAST PLANNER PAGES
