Trying something new….

I am a planner girl.  I love to plan out my week each Sunday, mapping out all my appointments and tasks. The advantage for me is that writing everything out clears my brain and helps me manage my stress levels.  I have a tendency to get overwhelmed pretty easily, maybe its part of the anxiety and depression thing, but by writing things out it helps me a lot. Add to this the fact that I can be very forgetful, sorry kids you get that from me, and you have a disaster if I don’t take measures to combat it all. 

I think I started keeping a simple calendar in middle school when I needed to start tracking babysitting jobs.  I forgot one job and felt so terrible about it that my mom suggested that I keep a pocket calendar so I wouldn’t forget another job. The pocket calendar evolved from just tracking my babysitting jobs to a place I could also track my homework in high school  We didn’t have the fancy school calendar they have now. I was just using a notebook and of course colored markers…I mean come on this is me, I had to use colored markers. Over the years I have used all kinds of planners.  As my needs have changed so have the designs I have picked.  

Last year when I was doing my annual shopping for a planner, my poor husband had to hear my complaints about not finding the “perfect” layout.  I like aspects of one or another but none of them were…well…me.  He is incredibility patient…practically a saint, he has to live with me.  He suggested I just make my own.  Enter the Bullet Journal option. (the Bullet Journal was developed by Ryder Carroll)

I started doing research and watched more videos than I can count. The concept of the Bullet Journal is to prompt function and productivity. In its root form it was not necessarily meant to be a creative outlet, but because of the customizable nature it lends itself well to creatives who like to make their planners reflect them more personally. 

There are some pros and cons I have discovered with this adventure.  I hope to eliminate the cons or turn them into pros, we shall see.

Pros
You can make the layouts fit you and your life
You can be as creative or not creative as you like
All you need is a notebook and a pen
There are endless sources of help and inspiration online

Cons
It could take more time to plan as you have to literally create your own planner layouts as you go
You will make mistakes and this may bug a perfectionist…like me
Chance to loose focus if you forget the root purpose of the journal and go overboard with just making pretty layouts.

I think a few of the cons can be advantages depending on your goal.   One of my goals is to develop my creativity and to over come my perfectionist tendencies.  If I make a mistake in my book I need to either live with it or try and make something new from it. (Think Boss Ross – pretty little mistakes) I am also worried about the time it takes to create the pages and layouts. We will see if that will trip me up or not.  I think as long as I don’t go crazy with it, I will be fine. Since I don’t plan on doing all my own drawings, I think that will help save time.  To help me save time, I did a search in my Search Find Create app and pulled all the stamp sets that I thought would be useful when making a layout and put them in one location.  Search Find Create allows me to note a location so I can easily find my stamp sets and accessories by looking them up, checking the location note, and quickly finding the item in my cabinets.

On to the sharing of all the good and all the bad….my first few layouts.

I bought a a berry dot journal from Michael’s with a coupon I had so it was super cheap.

I also splurged on a pen set from Prismacolor. The rest of the supplies where things I already had on hand.

Here is the July monthly task list I created.  The Mango Melody flags are tasks that are a one time task and the Merry Merlot colored flags are ones that I do weekly.  I will probably switch this later.  I think I will create a weekly page with all the stuff I do weekly broken out by category and then have a monthly one with all the one time tasks.  

This next layout is my July monthly layout.  I do like the weekly titles, they are from a retired Project Life stamp set called Moments Like These. I think the Project Life sets I have were used the most.  I was also testing the Stampin’ Write markers to see how they worked with the paper. Ghosting was not as bad as I was thinking it would be. On the right you can see a little vine.  That was me turning a mistake into something decorative.  I had a line there that I drew by mistake.  I just keep telling myself to enjoy the process and try new things. 

This next page is embarrassing, yet I wanted to be real with ya’ll.  I had taken all these notes and wrote down tips, yet did I review them before I created the layout? Nope.  If I had I would have seen my note reminding me to thumbnail sketch a layout before putting it in my journal.  I was able to somewhat rescue the right side, but the left was just a loss, thus begins my exercise in letting go of perfection.

I was on a roll when I was making the pages and as I went I did feel like I was learning.  I did create some more layouts which I plan to show in the future.  I hope to redeem myself…lol.  I hope you try something new and step out of your comfort zone.  Thanks for stopping by today, I appreciate your time.

Hugs!

Retired stamp sets used in these spreads.