(gentle hip hop music)
- Hey everyone, it's Amanda.
Welcome back to my channel.
Today's video is a little bit bittersweet.
Of course, I'm doing my December 2019 bullet journal setup,
which is obviously great,
I know you guys look forward to those every single month.
But it's bittersweet because it is the last one in 2019.
Like what?
Guys, where has the time gone?
I actually do not know.
This year has been so insane
and, actually, what I was thinking about the other day
is of course I love bullet journaling
as a productivity tool,
I actually use it in my personal life
and I love making these videos,
but besides that, I also love using my bullet journal
and sitting down and making these videos
as kind of like a time capsule
'cause they kind of mark certain eras
and time periods in my life.
Like, I find it so fascinating
to go back to my old bullet journals
and read through my tasks
and see what I was working on
and seeing what my mental state was back then.
This video, December 2019,
marks three full years of me bullet journaling.
Just the other day I was looking through
my old bullet journal setups from earlier this year
and it was so funny
'cause I could see the tasks that I was working on
to get my planner collection done,
which just come out now.
So it's like this funny full circle moment
and I can see the progression
of how things finally came together
for certain projects and all of that.
By the way, yes, my planner collection is out,
if you didn't know.
There's a whole video on it.
I'm not gonna talk much about it in this video
but launch day was insane,
so thank you to anyone who was a part of that
and for all the support.
But anyway, what I was saying is bullet journaling
and making these monthly videos
has been a source of constancy and routine for me
which is really nice,
especially when a lot of other things around me are chaotic,
like my personal life, my work life.
So it's just really nice
that I get to share that with you guys.
So thank you for joining me for yet another year.
I'm sure you guys wanna get right into the video.
I'm excited to sit down, chill,
get some planning time in,
but before I do, I'd like to give a quick thank you
to today's sponsor, Squarespace.
They made it possible for me
to continue putting videos out like this
while all the craziness was happening this year,
so huge thank you to them.
My personal website is built by Squarespace
and I highly recommend them
if you are looking for a website building platform.
But I'll talk a little bit more about them
later in the video.
Without further ado,
for the last time in 2019,
grab your bullet journals if you're planning with me,
grab your snacks if you're not,
and let's get started.
All right, so for this month's theme
I asked you guys what you wanted to see
on my YouTube Community tab page and on Instagram
and so many of you guys said you wanted to see
northern lights, winter forest, winter nights,
a winter wonderland type of theme
so I kinda merged it all into one,
at least I hope I did.
And it worked out perfectly
because for the last Plan With Me of 2019
I wanted to do something a little bit different
so I actually whipped out the watercolor paints
which I've actually never done in a Plan With Me.
Now, I know some of you guys
are probably already thinking,
watercolor paints, that's too hard, too intense for me,
but trust me, I promise this is actually
a lot easier than it looks.
The technique that I'm using to do this
is called wet-on-wet
which means we just cover
the entire piece of paper with water
and then we brush the wet watercolors on top of that.
So I'm using the blues and the purples
and the greens to create that
and because it's wet-on-wet it blends together
and creates that nice northern lights effect.
The trick with this to make your colors really dark
is to work in layers.
A lot of people think that with watercolor
you're gonna get the dark, rich colors right off the bat,
but no, you have to wait for things to dry.
So this took about three different layers.
But I was a little bit smart about it
because as you can see in the center,
I have my main shape
but I also decided to fill the borders
because I knew I was gonna use it later on.
So the center, you're gonna see me use for the cover page
and then all of the edge stuff
I just use for the rest of the setup.
So that way you only need to paint once
and then you're good to go for the rest of the month.
Alternatively, you can of course
just print out a picture and cut it out
but I thought the watercolor paints
would be a fun, little artistic project for this month
and it was actually very relaxing to do.
I forgot how calming watercolor painting could be.
So I glue taped that right into my bullet journal
and we're gonna be adding stuff on top of that.
I actually really like the way the painting turned out.
I kinda surprised myself
because I'm not the best watercolor painter
but I feel like it looks
pretty accurate for northern lights.
So I'm adding winter trees below it, as you can see,
and these are super easy to make.
I just scribbled a bunch of lines in a triangular shape
and my black brush pen that I was using to draw these
happened to be a little bit dry
and that's actually what I wanted
because as you can see,
as I'm scribbling these
you can see some of the white paper underneath
which makes it look a little bit more 3D.
And that's just a result of my brush pen
being a bit dry and not fully inky,
so you can see the individual leaves almost.
On top of the painting I used a paint pen,
these are Posca paint pens,
to create little galaxy stars on the northern lights
and this really pulls it all together.
I also added some more stars slash falling snow
around the aurora borealis painting on the white part.
And then for the title,
initially I wanted to do white cursive
on top with the paint pen
but I decided it didn't pop out enough
so I ended up cutting out some black paper
and just writing it out in some lowercase lettering,
which, I actually really like the look
of the simple lowercase.
I feel like it adds to the calming vibe.
This entire setup was pretty minimal and calming.
Not minimal but, I don't know, simple.
On the other side,
I cut out another section of my watercolor painting
in another rounded square shape
and above it and below it I wrote,
all is calm, all is bright.
You know, it's a holiday themed quote
but I didn't wanna make it too Christmassy slash holiday-y
because I know that not everyone celebrates Christmas
so I wanted to make sure
it was just a bit more universal.
If you are looking for more
holiday/Christmas-specific spreads,
I highly recommend checking out
my holiday bullet journal videos.
I have a couple of them where it's just only holiday videos.
And even last year's December spread was very Christmassy.
So if that's more your vibe, check those out.
I'll link them down below.
But anyway, for my monthly overview calendar layout
I decided to stick with the rounded rectangle motif
that I had going on.
So the calendar, as you can see,
has the rounded corners
and then in the top left side of each box,
that's when I filled in with the black box
to match the black box in the cover page
and I wrote the numbers out with white.
The white pen that I'm using
throughout this whole video
is a paint Posca pen.
Since I was cutting things out
and writing on top of thick watercolor paper
I thought it would be the best.
And, oh yeah, this is when
that extra scrap watercolor came in handy.
So I cut it out for the headers of the calendar
and also for the sidebars for my YouTube tracker
and my monthly goals.
And it just makes it really easy
'cause this month actually wasn't very doodle-heavy
since I did just have to cut out
a bunch of shapes from the watercolor paper.
The only things that I'm doodling are the trees
which are so fast.
These literally take me like five seconds to draw.
So this entire setup was pretty quick once I got going
and I really love the way that each page looks.
I think it just looks very calming.
Oh yeah, can't forget to add in
all of the little galaxy stars on top of that,
and this spread is good to go.
Moving on to my trackers for the month.
So you guys will be very happy to know
that I finally got an acrylic stamping block.
If you've watched any videos
where I use these little plastic stamps,
you'll know that I've been putting them
on random things for the longest time
and I finally decided to just spend the couple of dollars
to get these acrylic stamping blocks
and it made it so much easier to stamp the calendar days
'cause I can actually see through it
and place it more accurately.
So this has been great, great investment.
I'm gonna link it down below if I can find it.
I just got it off of Amazon.
A lot of people ask me where I got the stamps from, Amazon.
Best place to find stuff like that.
So for the titles of each tracker,
I cut out the watercolor paper
as well as some of the black paper and alternated it.
And what I would recommend, actually,
for setups like these
where it's very just background paper-heavy,
just keep it in the back pocket of your bullet journal
so you can whip it out
whenever you wanna make a new spread.
That's what I'm doing.
But yeah, threw in more of those trees at the top
to make a nice little header moment,
and moving on to the mood tracker.
Now, this one, you guys are gonna be very shocked
because I'm whippin' out an old type of mood tracker.
I haven't used this type of mood tracker
in a year and a half maybe.
It's the horizontal one and it's kinda like a line graph.
The reason why I decided to do this
is because I figure once I fill it in
it's gonna have the zigzag lines
and it's gonna end up looking like the forest line of trees
which I thought, you know, might be cool.
And underneath the graph
maybe I'll start to draw some trees as well.
Now moving on to my favorite spread to make
which is my monthly playlist spread.
As usual, I'm gonna link a Spotify playlist
with all of the songs down below.
And I'll also add a couple more songs
to the Spotify playlist,
it's just this page only has space for nine songs.
So yeah, check that out
if you wanna see what I'm listening to this month.
I do have a Christmas-specific playlist on Spotify
but this playlist is more so just wintry songs
that make you feel like
you wanna cozy up with a cup of hot cocoa.
So I have "Winter Things" by Ariana Grande,
NIKI's new "Acoustic Sessions" album
which I really love,
Billie Eilish's new song,
Eric Nam's new album is great, "Love Die Young."
What else do we have on here?
Some old classics like John Mayer.
"Slow Dancing in a Burning Room"
always makes me feel very cozy.
And then a bunch of other great new songs
like IU's new album.
And yeah, so highly recommend you check these out.
In terms of the actual spread,
I really like this spread because it's pretty simple
but what jazzes it up is the title.
I used my watercolor brush at the top
to write out playlist
and I made sure to switch out the colors
so it mimics the look
of the northern lights watercolor-y thing
that we had going on for the cover
and I did the same for the play bar at the bottom.
So next to this page
I have my Amanda Claus video ideas page,
and yes, guys, Amanda Claus is coming back very soon.
I hope you are excited as I am.
We're gonna be doing a lot of fun videos,
a lot of fun giveaways.
Perhaps giving away my new Doodle Planner.
I don't know, we'll have to see.
Stay tuned to find out.
But there's a lot of planning involved with Amanda Claus
so I wanted to have a nice blank page
for me to scribble down any video ideas or giveaway ideas.
Which, by the way,
if you do wanna see any specific videos,
let me know in the comments below,
for Amanda Claus,
'cause I'm gonna start filming those very soon.
Okay, and finally, we have our last spread
which is the first weekly spread of December.
For this layout, I did a vertical layout
with the events at the top,
the tasks at the bottom,
and a nice little bar at the top
that has the days of the week.
And then I used the same watercolor paper
that I've been using for this entire setup
and cut out little rounded squares
and these are gonna be the background for the numbers.
And what I like is that since I cut out
different sections of the watercolor paper,
it all looks like different colors
but they still merge together
like they match really nicely.
And I used my Posco white paint pen on top
to write out the numbers
and underneath I filled it in with the little trees
that I've been doing for this entire setup.
My final touches included throwing in some more stars
on the background of those rounded rectangles
and also a title on the right side of the box
that says events and tasks
and I did use the watercolor brush
straight on the paper for that.
But overall, this entire setup
was super quick and easy to do
since I had the painting done from the beginning
so it was mostly just cutting out shapes
and placing them however I wanted.
And at the bottom,
I threw in some more trees for good measure
and that's pretty much it for this weekly spread.
All right, guys, before I show you the final flipthrough
of this month's bullet journal setup
just wanted to talk a little bit more
about today's awesome sponsor, Squarespace.
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Here's the final flipthrough
of my December 2019 bullet journal setup.
This honestly might be one of my favorite setups
from this entire year.
I was a bit hesitant because watercolor,
I'm not the best at it
but I'm glad I stuck it out
because I love the way that it turned out.
It just looks so relaxing and calming and wintry
without being too wintry,
you know what I'm saying?
So I hope you guys love it as well.
All right, everyone.
Sadly, we have made it to the end of this video.
Let's do this one last time in 2019.
Here are your beautiful recreations from last month,
November 2019's bullet journal setup.
As expected of the Lil Doodles,
last month's recreations were so amazing.
I always love seeing what you guys do with my themes.
I always like to think that my videos are kinda like a base
and then you guys just run wild with it
and do whatever works for you
which is so fun to see.
So if you do recreate this month's bullet journal setup
or any other month,
I love to see them and creep on your posts on Instagram
so make sure to tag me on Instagram, @amandarachlee.
You can tag me in the photo and the caption
as well as using our hashtag, #lildoodles,
so that I can see them all.
I'm already looking forward
to seeing this month's recreations.
But anyway, that was it for this video.
Thank you again so, so much for watching
and for coming along
yet another year of bullet journaling with me.
I'm saying this like it's the end of the year already
but we still have a bunch more videos to go.
Don't worry, there's a lot of stuff
coming this month as well.
I can't wait to see what 2020 brings us.
I hope it's a good year for all of us,
all of you Lil Doodles,
and we're gonna make some great memories together, I'm sure.
So I hope you guys have an awesome day,
keep doodling, and I will talk to you in the next one.
Bye, everyone.
(gentle hip hop music).