(light electronic music)
- Hey, everyone, it's Amanda.
Welcome back to my channel and happy December.
Even just saying the word December
sounds absolutely insane to me.
I can't believe we're already doing
our final bullet journal setup of 2018.
I feel like I was just doing January a couple months ago
but here we are, it's December,
and I'm real excited to sit down
and get some good planning time in because
this past month has been a little hectic
and crazy and insane for me so
I just need to sit down and get this whole mess in order
and I'm also real excited about this month's theme
because you guys actually helped me pick it out.
I asked you over my Instagram for a ton of ideas
and you guys really came through.
I wish I could have done all of your ideas
because there were so many good ones,
but I hope you guys are still as excited as I am
to get right into it but before we do,
I'd like to thank today's sponsor Skillshare.
You guys know I love Skillshare so much
and I love what they stand for
and how they make learning fun and easy and simple.
I actually teach my own exclusive Skillshare class.
If you didn't know that, I'll leave a link to it
in the description box below so you can check it out.
I'll talk a little bit more about Skillshare
and all the wonderful aspects about it
a bit later in the video, but I wanna get right into
this final 2018 Plan With Me.
Oh, by the way, no, my eye color did not change.
I'm sure that must have been a little confusing
for some of you, but no, just wearing colored contacts.
Trying something new just for fun.
But anyways, I am ready to get started
so let's get right into December's bullet journal.
Now obviously December is one of my favorite months
of the year because of the holiday season
and in honor of that, I decided to do
a more Christmas heavy theme,
so we are doing Christmas ornaments.
Now, if you're looking for more of a neutral winter
December spread, check out my last year's
December spread because that one is more neutral.
It's just snowflakes.
But back to this year's theme.
Even though I am very happy
with the way everything turned out and with my theme,
it was definitely a struggle to get to this point.
Those of you who are following me on my social media
know that I was going through
a very intense art block.
It's probably the worst art block I've ever had.
For the past three days, I tried filming this video
and I would just sit down and I would have no ideas.
Even though you guys helped me come up
with so many awesome ideas,
I just didn't know how to put it onto paper.
So thank you to all of you Twitter and Instagram people
out there who are supporting me during my struggle
because y'all really helped me out.
I was actually initially going to do
a Nutcracker theme because you guys voted for that
and seemed to be really excited about it
and I actually did come up with
a couple of different page and theme ideas
surrounding the Nutcracker ballet,
but none of them really spoke to me.
They were either too complicated,
which I don't like to do because I don't want you guys
to be able to recreate it and put your own twist on it
or I just wasn't happy with the end result,
so actually, one of the iterations
of the Nutcracker cover page is that I did have
a couple of ornaments on it I really liked
and that's where I came up with the idea
to focus on the ornaments and only do
these hanging ornaments for the cover page
which I'm so happy I ended up doing
because I love the look of these hanging ornaments.
I feel like they look so magical and cohesive,
but still fun.
I had a lot of fun playing around
with the different patterns on the ornaments
which you guys can go crazy with
and put your own twist on it.
You can even change up the colors depending on what you want
but I decide to go for this deepish red
that really looks very festive to me.
I also used a gold marker on top
which I will link down below
in case you guys are curious what gold marker I used.
I also added some white accents in there
and yeah, go crazy with the patterns on the ornaments.
It's really what brings the whole cover page together.
On the other side, I am doing a quote
and since it is, indeed, the most wonderful time of year,
that's the quote that I'm using,
but I put a bit of a fun spin on it
because I'm actually making it fit inside of an ornament
so I made sure to sketch out the ornament beforehand
and that way, I could make sure all of the letters
fit perfectly inside this circular shape
and I feel like it ended up looking really cute
and goes with the cover page perfectly.
Oh, and I filled in the empty space
with a bunch of decorative dots
that ended up looking like snowflakes and confetti
which I'm not mad at.
For my monthly log, I actually went for
a bit of a different layout.
Boxes are a bit smaller than what I would normally do
but that's mostly because December is an awkward month
in that I have to have six rows
because there is one single loan Monday
which is kind of annoying because I have to make
a whole row just for one Monday.
But nonetheless, I made it work.
I still like the way it turned out
and I feel like it doesn't look too squished.
In case you guys are curious about the grid spacing though,
each individual box is about five by five spaces.
Actually, not about five by five spaces.
It is five by five spaces.
I put my YouTube Growth tracker off to the side
as usual and then there is a perfect empty space
at the top for me to hang all of my festive ornaments.
Now with these hanging ornament doodles,
I like to quickly sketch out the basic shapes
of the ornaments, first with the pencil
and that way I know that they're all evenly spaced out
and I have all the different shapes
that I wanna play around with because
as you guys can see, I switch between circle ornaments
and more cone-shaped ornaments and star-shaped ornaments
and I want them to all be spread out throughout the page.
It was the same page for my cover page
and so, I recommend sketching out really, really quickly.
It doesn't even have to be exact, just the basic shapes,
and then you can go in and add in all of the colors
and the fun stuff later on.
On the topic of doodling and creativity
and bullet journaling, I wanted to quickly talk
about Skillshare for a bit because
you guys know I love them so much
and they've been really awesome supporting
my channel this year,
so if you guys don't know what Skillshare is,
it's an online learning community
with thousands of classes in design, lettering,
doodling, illustration and more,
and one of those classes actually
includes my very own class.
I teach a class about creative journaling
so if you guys wanna see more,
you can definitely check that class out.
So not only do I teach a class on Skillshare,
but I've also actually used Skillshare myself.
I taught myself calligraphy through Skillshare.
They are so user-friendly and awesome for beginners,
so if you guys wanna check it out,
premium membership gives you unlimited access
to high quality classes that you can take
for less than $10 a month,
which is more affordable
than most learning platforms out there
and the first 500 people to click the link
in my description box get a free two-month trial
so there's nothing to lose.
Check it out and start learning.
Anyways, back to the spreads.
You guys know what time it is.
It's time to do my trackers for the month.
For this month, I decided to do something a little crazy.
I'm doing a double-paged spread
for both my mood tracker and my habit tracker.
I figured since this is the last month of 2018,
we might as well go big or go home
so basically how I'm tracking my mood for this month,
I did a quick example for day one,
but the length of the string represents my mood,
shorter or longer, and eventually,
it'll just be filled with all of these hanging ornaments
which will be so cute to look at once the month is over.
For my habit tracker, someone actually gave me
these little stamping pads that have
the number days on them which is such a time saver.
Now, they're not exactly perfect
because I don't have the stamping box,
so I had to use this little mint tin to hold the stamp
and I also don't have an ink pad
so I just colored my pen straight on it.
But yeah, that's why they're a little crooked
and not very accurate
but it didn't really matter for this spread
because I'm not doing them in a uniform pattern.
I'm putting the calendars inside the ornaments.
Each ornament is going to represent
a different habit that I'm tracking
and I realize after I stopped filming
that I forgot to label ornaments with the habit,
so I went in later and actually differentiated
what habits I'm tracking, like working out,
eating healthy, that type of thing.
And in case you're curious, I did write it
right underneath each ornament.
Yeah, discovery of this video
is definitely that stamping block
because it saved so much time.
Although it does bug me that the numbers
don't fit perfectly inside of the grids.
I think the spacing is just a tiny bit off
but nonetheless, it's fine.
I think we can give that up.
So my next spreads are brain dump pages.
I'm bringing back the brain dump pages.
I haven't done some of these in a while,
just because in the past I haven't found a use for them
but I know for sure that I will need it this month.
On the left side as you guys can see,
it's a Christmas Spread Ideas page
because I'm planning on doing a separate video
that has more festive Christmas-y spreads
just like last year, so stay tuned for that,
and then on the other side, I just did a regular brain dump
because I know the holiday season
is gonna be crazy for me, so I'm gonna want
an empty page for me to spew out all my thoughts.
And finally, we made it to the weekly spread
so I did this layout that has two rows and four columns.
If you're wondering about the grid spacing
of the rectangles, I believe it was about
15 or 16 boxes high and 11 wide
and there was a bit of space in between each box.
So yeah, do with that, what's the saying?
Do with that information what you will.
I don't even know what I'm trying to say.
Anyways, as you can see,
I put the number of the day on each hanging ornament
which I thought was pretty cute,
and then I finished up the boxes around the letters.
Right now in the video,
I'm splitting up my box so I can do events at the top
and tasks att the bottom.
Surprisingly, I still get questions about this
even though I do this in every single spread
and then, of course, you guys know
Drop Shadow Queen at it again,
so I had to add drop shadows on just about everything.
In the bottom-right corner,
there is an empty space perfect for a quote
so I wrote "Let your heart be light."
I didn't wanna get into the extreme Christmas-y quotes yet
because it's the beginning of December,
so I though that was a good compromise.
Although I mean everything else was pretty Christmas-y
and festive so I probably should have just gone all in.
Anyways, here is the final flip through
of my December 2018 Bullet Journal Setup.
It's very festive and Christmas-y
and I'm really happy about the way it turned out
despite all of the art block and struggles
that happened on the way here.
Can you guys believe that this is
the final Plan With Me of the year?
It blows my mind.
I feel like we were just doing January.
But thank you guys for being invested
in my bullet journal journey this year
and for following along with your own bullet journal.
I think it's so cool that I can be
a part of your daily life,
even just for a little bit.
All right, everyone.
Thanks so much for planning with me.
While I do the outro, here are some of your
beautiful recreations from last month which was November.
You guys wanna send me a recreation
of your bullet journal spreads this month
or any other month, please do so, I'd love to see them.
You can tag me in the photo and the caption on Instagram
@AmandaRachLee.
Reminder that my only Instagram right now
is @AmandaRachLee, so that's all you have to use.
Pretty easy and I love to scroll through them
so I can't wait to see what you guys come up with.
But anyways, I hope you enjoyed
my December 2018 bullet journal setup.
The final one of 2018.
It's been a good year, guys.
We've done some cool themes and spreads and all of that.
I will end up doing a flip through
and obviously a new setup for 2019 very soon
so stay tuned for that.
Anyways, I think I should probably wrap it up now.
I can't wait to get right into December
and all of the holiday content.
You guys don't wanna miss anything.
Be sure to hit that subscribe button down below.
But hope you guys have an awesome day.
Keep doodling and I will talk to you in the next one.
Bye, everyone.
(light electronic music)