(gentle music)
- Hey everyone, it's Amanda.
Welcome back to my channel.
You already know what today's video is.
May is coming up pretty soon which means
it's time to sit down and plan and create
our bullet journal spread for the month.
I'm very excited for this month.
I know I say that in every single plan with me,
but it's just because there's a lot
of exciting things coming up and happening this month.
So I'm definitely gonna need a nice
bullet journal setup to go along with it.
Just quickly before we get right into it
I'd like to give a quick thank you
to today's sponsor, Skillshare.
I feel like most of you already know how much
I love the whole Skillshare platform
and what they do on there.
I've been a long time supporter of there's.
They've been a long time supporter of my channel.
So, they're super awesome.
I'll talk a little bit more about Skillshare
later in the video, but without further ado,
I want to get planning, so I'm gonna hand you guys off
to the voiceover now.
Okay so for May 2019 I decided to do my take
on a butterfly theme.
And I've been planning on doing this theme for awhile.
It's actually been kind of a longtime requested one
from you guys, but I figured May
is the perfect month for it.
Also, I decided to do blue butterflies
because I haven't done a cool tone color theme in a while.
A lot of you guys pointed that out to me as well.
So, we're doing blue this month.
For the cover page I'm doing a flock of butterflies.
Is that the term, a flock?
A pack, a group of butterflies,
flying off from one corner to the other,
which I thought was perfect because then I could
play around with the different angles of the butterflies,
and butterflies from side views,
and making them look like they're really
just like flying off.
And, at the beginning of this cover page
you'll see that I'm still trying to figure out
the style of butterflies that I want to use
and doodle for the rest of the month.
So, I was kind of experimenting,
but by the end I figured out a very fast
and quick way to doodle butterflies,
which I'll show you really shortly.
I decided to do a quick little doodle
tutorial in this video to help you guys out,,
because I know that these look kind of complicated,
but trust me, I figured out a way
to make it a little bit easier.
But anyways, in terms of the supplies that I'm using,
I'm actually only using my Tombow Fudenosuke
hard tipped brush pen for everything pretty much.
I used it for the brush lettering
as well as using it as a fine liner for the butterflies.
And there's a really actually functional reason
that I'm doing this, and it's because for the butterflies
you can see that I added dark border around the wings.
So, it makes it a lot easier to have a brush pen
that I can press down harder when I need
the lines to be thicker, and when I want to
fill in those dark borders.
And then I can press lighter when I just want
a thin outline like a fine liner.
And the Tombow fine hard brush pen is great for that
since it's a bit stiff, so you can really
have a lot of control with that.
Anyways, after I had all of the out lines
of my butterflies down, I went in with the blue colors,
and I think the actually term for these
blue butterflies are the blue morpho butterflies.
I looked up a lot of different reference photos.
I'll link a couple of them down below
as well as some other butterfly themed bullet journals,
and doodles that I found that might help you guys
get some more inspiration.
And of course I'll also link all of the supplies
that I'm using as well.
But in terms of the blue, sorry back to the blue,
I'm all over the place.
This is a tangent voiceover as usual,
but the blues that I used are two Crayola Super Tips.
Yes, I only used two blues.
One lighter blue and one darker blue.
Something that I figured out is that I can
actually blend my crayola Super Tips markers
to give it an ombre look.
Because if you look up pictures of actual
blue morpho butterflies, you'll see that the wings
have these very beautiful detailed patterns on them
but it's also a couple shades of blue,
and it typically goes from light to dark.
So I tried to emulate that look
and how I did this was going in with my lighter
Crayola Super Tips at the center of the butterfly.
And then I go in with the darker blue,
kind of scribbling it on the tips of the wings.
And then going back to the light blue shade
to blend the edge where the two colors meet.
And the blend doesn't have to be perfect
because you put the pattern of the wing on top
so it kind of covers up any imperfections.
But I think it still gives off the vibe
and really adds a nice touch to the butterflies.
Oh and then I go in with my white
Sakura Gelly Roll gel pen to draw a couple of dots
on the tips of the wing, just to give it
a couple more details.
This is optional though.
Just in case you're still confused
and struggling on drawing butterflies,
I decided to include this little mini
doodle tutorial for you guys.
So to start off I use my pencil
to roughly sketch out a base outline
of the sort of trapezoid shapes.
And that'll give me a outline of how I want
the wings to look, and it'll also help
when you're trying to change up
the perspective of the wings.
I really recommend doing this before you
go in and draw the actual wing shape.
It really makes sure that everything is symmetrical.
Then I draw the body of the butterfly
which is just three little sort of bean shapes
with a circle on top.
Then I go in and draw the wing shape.
And you can kind of play around with different wing shapes.
Obviously every single butterfly has different wings,
and no two butterflies are the same.
So you don't have to do it exactly like me,
but typically what I'll do is make the top
of the butterfly wings a lot bigger,
and they're also a lot pointier if that makes sense.
And then the bottom two wings are a lot smaller and rounder.
Next I'm going in and drawing the detail lines
of the butterfly wings.
And, this is what I was struggling with at first
when I was trying to figure out how I wanted to doodle them,
because I wanted it to be efficient.
I didn't want to be extremely detailed
with every single butterfly since I knew
I would have to draw a lot of them.
So what I figured out is that you can actually
just draw a couple of lines.
You can see here it just looks almost like
stripes or chevron.
I have a main stripe down the center of the top one
and then a couple of lines spreading out from it.
It doesn't look that great at first,
but what really brings it all together
is when you add the dark border on the tips of the wings.
I'm really focusing this on the tips.
Especially at the top two corners
and the bottom two corners.
And yeah, I think it just brings everything together.
You can totally leave it just like this if you want.
A really quick butterfly doodle.
But, what sometimes I do if I want to be
really fancy with it is I round out the edges
of the little shapes on the center.
You can see that I'm doing that right here actually.
But again that's only when I want to be very fancy.
For most of the butterflies that I do in this video
for my bullet journal setup, I don't do this.
Just 'cause, for efficiency's sake.
In order to color in the butterfly,
as I mentioned before I like to give the wings
an ombre look, so I go in with the lighter
of the two shades, which is a light blue in my case.
And I just kind of scribble that out
from the center of the butterfly,
leaving some space on the tips of the wings.
Then I go in with my darker shade
and I kind of do the opposite, and I color inwards
from the tips of the wings.
And then I go back with my lighter shade
and blend the border of those two colors.
And I really, really love the look of this.
You can also do the same thing with other colors.
I know that monarch butterflies pretty much
have the same design to this.
So if you wanted to do orange-y yellow butterflies
I think that would be really pretty as well.
For final touches I go in with a white gel pen
and add a couple of dots and speckles
on top of that black border that we did
on the tips of the wings.
Mostly at the top corners and the bottom corners.
This is optional, I feel like it looks fine without it.
But I really like the look and the final touches
that it adds to the butterflies.
Oh and then as another option you can also add
these two little, I don't know what to call them,
like sprouts at the bottom, tips of the wings.
I've seen a couple butterflies have this shape,
so I throw this in a couple times
during this bullet journal setup,
just to make things interesting.
But, you guys can play around with different wing shapes.
Every single butterfly has different wings.
Even the designs and patterns on the wings as well.
Have fun with it, play around with colors.
I feel like this theme has so many possibilities
because there's so many different types of butterflies
so I can't wait to see what butterflies you guys create.
I also wanted to show you guys that the steps
are pretty much the same for drawing butterflies
from a side view.
You just have to change up that initial trapezoid sketch.
You'll see that I only draw one of them
and I also draw this little mini triangle behind it
to show the other side of the wing peeking out.
But everything else is the same.
So that was my little mini butterfly doodle tutorial.
Sorry for the little detour,
but I hope this helps you guys out.
Back to the bullet journal setup though.
On the other side of the spread next to the cover page
I decided to do a quote, and this quote says
if nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.
Underneath the quote I did a doodle
that showcases the evolution and transformation
of a butterfly.
So there's a caterpillar handing from the leaf
and then it goes to the chrysalis,
and then finally of course it sprouts its wings
and becomes a butterfly.
Which I just thought really suited this theme
and the whole idea of allowing yourself to change and grow.
Because change is good, you know?
I feel like I need to remind myself that sometimes.
I felt like there was something missing from the spread,
so I decided to use a couple different
blue Washi tapes that I had just as
a added decorative touch.
The next page is of course my monthly calendar layout,
and for this month I decided to do something
a little bit different than what I've been doing
for the past couple of months.
I actually drew each individual box separated out,
almost like floating boxes, so there's a space in between.
I've definitely done this style of monthly calendar before.
I just can't remember the last time I did it.
But for this month I actually used
a blue marker for the lines.
I'm using the Tombow twin tone markers,
and it's nice because there is actually a thicker end,
so you'll see that later I use that thicker end
to draw the numbers.
But, I figured this layout kind of matched the theme
because the boxes are floating, just like the butterflies.
And I liked the use of the blue lines as well.
For the headers I did my classic black box
with white text on top.
You guys know how much I love that.
And on the side I of course have my YouTube growth tracker
as well as my monthly focus.
Of course, gotta throw in the butterfly doodles.
I just did a couple at the top and bottom corner.
Since the boxes are floating, it was nice because
the whole calendar layout wasn't perfectly rectangle.
So it left these two perfect little notches
in the top left and bottom right to throw in
the doodles as well as the May title.
Anyway, I actually really like how this
monthly calendar turned out.
I feel like it just looks clean and I like that
the blue lines match the blue butterflies.
By the way, if you are wondering
about the box dimensions, each box of mine
was five by five, and there was a space
of one dot space in between.
Next up we have our trackers.
You guys know the deal already for the habit tracker,
because I've been doing this same layout
for the past while actually.
I don't even remember the last time I didn't do
this type of layout.
I just really like the functionality
of tracking individual habits.
I feel like it's easier to visualize.
Anyways you'll see that I'm using
the exact same blue fine liner marker
just to match the style of the monthly calendar layout.
So I'm doing the mini calendars with the fine liner tip.
And I'm not actually numbering them.
I used to number them but first of all I'm too lazy,
and second of all I feel like it's
still pretty easy to tell what day it is.
Especially since May is like this irregular shape
so you can kind of tell what day is what.
And then for the titles, again,
black boxes with the white text on top.
Surprisingly, no drop shadows.
I just realized that now.
I didn't add any drop shadows for these boxes,
which is weird for me.
Usually I add drop shadows to absolutely everything
but I guess this month I wasn't feeling it.
Anyway, I threw in some butterflies for good measure,
and the habit tracker is ready to go.
Now for my mood tracker, I decided to go back
to an older style of mood tracker
that I did a while back, and it's like the mood wheel.
I don't remember the last time I did this.
I feel like I was just revisiting a lot
of my old favorites for this month,
which you know, not mad at that.
Anyways, I sketched out a circle
and made sure that there was perfectly 31 segments.
But I still ended up messing it up
and doing 32 for some reason,
because apparently I can't count.
Again I'm using that blue fine liner marker
to do the outlines of the tracker,
just to make everything cohesive.
And essentially I will color in each segment
of the mood tracker depending on my mood.
I have a little legend at the bottom
that signifies what color means what mood.
Darker blue for me means that I'm sadder that day,
and lighter blue means that I am happier.
In the center, I have a butterfly
just because there was an empty space
and me this whole month, if there's an empty space,
add a butterfly.
And I also drew a bunch of butterflies
from the edges of the tracker,
just to make it look like the butterflies
are flocking towards the center.
I really like the way that these two trackers
look together as a whole.
I feel like it's very cohesive, and I don't know,
just very satisfying to look at for some reason.
This next page is my brain dump page,
and this time around I'm actually only doing a half spread.
Last month I found that I wasn't really using
the whole two pages, so I decided to cut it down
and only do half.
And, at the bottom I drew this big butterfly
so that you could only see the tops of the wings.
I thought I would throw this in
just to add something a bit different,
because I know I've been drawing a lot of mini butterflies.
So next to it I have my monthly playlist,
except this time around I did something
a little different and actually chose songs
based on the theme.
Because I realized that there's actually
quite a lot of songs with the name butterfly in it.
So I'm calling this my butterfly playlist.
I actually really do like all these songs.
I'm not just putting them on
because they are called butterfly.
But, I mean that kind of helps, and it goes with the theme.
So the first song that I have is Butterflies
by Kacey Musgraves.
I recently discovered her music
and listened for the first time,
and I truly understand the hype.
I get why she won all of those Grammies.
Her music is just so pretty and relaxing,
and actually I really do like the whole album.
Next we have Butterfly by Kehlani.
Great song, love Kehlani as well.
Underneath it we have Butterfly by Grimes,
Butterfly by Luna which I've talked about before.
But as soon as I realized I was doing a butterfly theme,
Loona is the first thing I thought of.
And finally we have BTS, Butterfly, a classic.
You guys know I have to throw in BTS at all times.
Funnily enough I realized that The Boys,
who is another boy group who I love
are actually releasing a song called butterfly as well.
By the time I'm uploading this I don't think
the song is out yet, but if it was out
you better believe that it would be on this playlist.
But yeah, I love The Boys, they're great,
and I'm sure the song is going to be great as well.
But yeah, that is my butterfly playlist.
Let me know if there is any other songs
that have to do with butterflies that you guys know of.
Comment that down below because I'm sure there's a lot.
Apparently people like to write about butterflies.
I realized all of the album covers
that I printed out have some sort of blue in it,
so it's very satisfying that this spread
is so color coordinated.
That wasn't even planned, but yeah it matches
all of the butterflies that I'm doodling around it.
And finally we've made it to the weekly spread.
The first weekly spread of May.
I actually had so many ideas of different weekly
spread layouts that I could do for this month.
So I'm very excited to create some more
as the month goes along.
As usual, I will be live streaming my weekly spreads
pretty much every single Saturday.
You guys can join me on Instagram and hang out,
and we can plan together on Saturday mornings.
I'm doing this four column layout.
So in the two center columns I have the actual daily tasks,
and then on the left column I just have some doodles,
just to fill in the blank space.
And on the right I have my weekly events sidebar,
and that's where I put any appointments
and events that I have.
You guys have definitely seen me do some version
of this layout before, but this particular layout
is pretty much the same thing,
except all of the modules are just scrambled
and in a different order than maybe something
that I would normally do.
Anyways, I had fun with this one.
I played around with using different colors
for the headers as well as the black
with the white text on top, because that seems to be
a running theme this month.
Actually it seems to be a running theme this whole year.
I really like doing the white text on top
of the black, like boxes and circles and stuff.
Anyways, just finishing it off with a bunch of butterflies.
And as you can see, since I'm doodling so many,
this is where that little hack that I told you guys about
at the beginning comes in handy,
where you don't really need to clean up
the edges of the design.
Just make sure the black border is present,
and I feel like it makes it look a lot better
and a lot cleaner than it actually is.
All right guys, before I show you the final flip through
of this month's bullet journal setup,
I wanted to take this time to quickly talk about Skillshare.
If you don't know what Skillshare is
it's an online learning community
with thousands of classes in design,
business, technology, lettering.
There's even a class by yours truly.
I do have a class all about creative journaling.
So if you want to see more of this face,
you can definitely check out my class on Skillshare.
It is exclusive to the platform
so I will leave that link down below.
Even if you don't take my class,
don't worry, I won't be salty.
I'm sure you'll be able to find something else
on there that you're interested in.
Premium membership gives you unlimited access
to all of the high quality classes,
so you can improve your skills,
learn something new that you've
always wanted to pick up, or just keep doing what you love.
Oh, and, Skillshare is also one of the more affordable
learning platforms out there.
An annual membership is less than $10 a month.
So if you guys want to try out Skillshare for yourself
you can click the link in the description box below.
The first 500 people to use that link
will get their first two months for free.
All right guys, here is the final flip through
of my May 2019 bullet journal setup,
with the butterfly theme.
I can't believe it took me this long to do
this butterfly theme.
I love it, it might be one of my top themes.
But I hope you guys like this setup as much as I did.
All right everyone, as usual,
while I'm doing the outro, here are some
of your beautiful recreations from last month,
which was April.
I always love to look through your recreations
and my tagged photos to see what you guys do with the theme,
and what you do with your spread.
So if you do recreate this month's bullet journal setup,
or even past ones, be sure to tag me
on Instagram, @amandarachlee.
You can also use our hashtag, #lildoodles.
For those of you who don't know, that is our squad name.
Oh and when you post your photos,
be sure to tag me in the photo and the caption,
and that way I can see them all and like them,
and maybe you can be featured in next month's video.
Anyways that was my May 2019 bullet journal setup.
I hope you enjoyed planning with me.
Or if you weren't actually sitting down
and planning alongside me, maybe you just enjoyed
hanging out and chilling.
Nonetheless, if you enjoyed it,
be sure to click that bell button down below
so you never miss a new video from me.
And, as usual, follow me on Instagram,
Twitter, all of those places.
Have a great day everyone.
Keep doodling and I will talk to you in the next video.
Bye guys.
(gentle music)