(light music)
- Hey everyone, it's Amanda, welcome back to my channel.
Today's video is my January plan with me
and bullet journal setup.
I'm sure many of you guys can relate to this,
but whenever the new year rolls around I think of it
as a fresh start and I'm always like, Amanda,
this is the year you're gonna be super organized,
really on top of things,
so it's really fun to be setting up my bullet journal now
because I'm just so pumped to do it.
Before we get into it, of course,
we gotta showcase some of your recreations
from my last plan with me, which was December.
You can see them above me right now.
Look at how beautiful they are.
You guys are so talented.
If you want me to see any of your recreations
be sure to tag me on Instagram @amandarachdoodles.
Tag me in the photo, not just the caption
so that can see them and like and comment.
Anyways, I think I'm just way too excited
and all over the place.
So let's just hop right into the voiceover.
All right, so as you can see,
my theme for this months is fireworks,
which is kind of a theme that you can
only do a couple times during the year,
so I thought I would take advantage of the new year
and implement this theme.
I actually really, really liked the way that it turned out,
and it was super easy to doodle these fireworks.
I'll do a little Instagram tutorial
on doodling fireworks in the future,
but as you can see you kind of just draw lines
sprouting out from the center.
For my accent color I decided to use a gold color.
I didn't want to use rainbow colors
even though I do know that fireworks
do come in all colors.
But I thought gold would go really well with this.
The Tombow color that I'm using will be
linked in the description box below
as well as all of the other materials
and supplies that I am using as usual.
For my monthly log I did a standard calendar layout,
and I started by drawing these rounded squares.
I did five rows and seven columns.
And in cause you were wondering about the grid spacing,
I did about five and a half spaces
by five and a half spaces for each box.
Even though it's not perfect,
I like the hand drawn look of this.
I know it's way faster to do a calendar layout
if you just use a ruler and do lines like in a grid,
but I just really like the look of these individual boxes,
especially because later on I add a golden drop shadow
to each box which I think just makes it
stand out and pop a bit more.
So I also later on added fireworks all around it.
You guys are gonna be seeing
a lot of fireworks in this video.
So get used to it.
While you guys watch me finish up my monthly log
I am going to answer a couple of frequently asked questions
that I got, especially from my last video,
which was my 2018 setup.
So the first question that I got asked a ton was
why did you switch notebooks?
So I am currently using
a Scribbles That Matter Pro A5 dotted journal.
And last year I used the Leuchtturm A5 dotted journal.
But I just switched because I wanted to change
things up a little.
There was nothing wrong with the Leuchtturm.
I actually really, really loved it.
But I thought I would try something new.
I haven't used this one long enough
to tell which one I like better yet,
but I am going to be doing a video
in depth comparing multiple different notebooks
for you guys.
But as of right now I'm just testing it out a bit more.
But so far so good.
Another question I got asked a lot
was how do I keep up with my
bullet journal throughout the year.
I know that a lot of you guys are starting bullet journaling
for the first time this year and are afraid
that you won't be consistent with it.
And to that I will say, try not to pressure yourself
to keep up with your journal
because that's just gonna make you hate it
and not want to do it even more.
But what I like to do and what I found has helped me
is a couple things.
So first, I set aside specific times
during the week to journal.
You guys know I do my Instagram live streams
every single Sunday,
and I've done it so routinely
that I kind of look forward to it now.
Again, if you are finding it even hard
to set aside one day a week to journal,
then I would say try coming up with some simpler spreads.
You don't need to do extravagant spreads all the time.
That's not the point of this at all.
So yeah, I would say those two things,
but once you get in the habit of things
and once you get in the groove and know what layouts
work best for your lifestyle and your schedule,
you'll be able to find something
that really works.
Not everything has to be so complicated.
This is supposed to make your life easier,
not more difficult.
I hope that kinda makes sense.
I feel like I just kind of rambled on,
but that's a classic Amanda voiceover for you.
Back to this spread, though,
as you can see, I'm continuing on with the monthly YouTube
growth tracker in the corner there.
It's just a little tiny one.
Whatever I could fit with the space left.
And then I'm finishing off the empty space
with some more fireworks all around
so it looks like the calendar's
floating in the sky of fireworks.
For my next spreads I did
my habit tracker and my mood tracker.
These spreads are actually probably some of my favorites.
You'll see why very soon,
but I used the regular pen side of the Tombow dual brush pen
to do some cursive,
and then of course, gotta add my drop shadow.
Even though it's new year I'm not
getting rid of the drop shadows.
That's something that I don't think I will ever get rid of.
I actually decided to do a vertical habit tracker.
I wrote the numbers from one to 31 all the way down.
And then I wrote out the habits
that I wanna track at the top for each day.
I'll fill in whatever habits that I did.
For the fireworks all around this page,
instead of drawing the actual fireworks in the sky,
I actually decided to do the firecrackers
before they have exploded or lit up.
These firecrackers are actually also really easy to draw.
So I think it was a nice addition to the theme
'cause I didn't wanna keep drawing the same doodles
over and over and over again.
But, for this one I still added
the actual fireworks around it,
but the main focus was the firecrackers,
I think, around the habit tracker.
So for my mood tracker, this is probably my favorite spread
because I thought of something cool to do for it.
As you will see very shortly
I did a mood tracker that is circular
and I wrote out the numbers one through 31
all around the circle.
And I started out by doing this with pencil
because I wanted to make sure I had enough space
for every single number and then after I did that
I went back in with the fine liner
just to finalize it all.
Then from each of these numbers it should end up
looking kind of like a clock.
I did a dotted line starburst out
from every single one of 'em.
It was a little time consuming,
but it was really worth it.
I made sure that they were about the same length,
each individual starburst branch.
And then, essentially what you're
going to do to track your mood is fill in
the line and the shorter the line is
the worse your mood is.
And then the longer the line is, closer to the outside,
that's the happier your mood is.
I used a thicker black fine liner
to fill in the dotted lines because
I wanted the lines to stand out in the end.
At the tip of the line I drew a starburst type thing,
and it ends up looking like little sparklers,
which I thought was so cute,
and once it's all filled in the whole circle
is gonna look so awesome.
In the empty space at the bottom there
I added some more firecrackers
to tie it in with the page from before,
just to keep things looking consistent.
But anyways, I am so excited for this spread.
I know I'm gonna love filling this in every day
and seeing the end result is gonna be so satisfying.
Anyways, turning over the page to my next spread,
of course, we have to do my expense tracker.
This one is just my standard expense tracker layout.
Using the same one just because it's simple, easy to do,
and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
So it's just a chart with the date,
description, and then the income and the expenses.
Again, just a pretty simple spread.
I've never had an issue or found myself
wanting more from this.
Maybe in the future I'll do
some more intense budgeting spreads,
but for now this will have to do.
So for the page next to it
I decided to do a video planner.
Video planning spread.
I did do a whole like master list of videos
that I wanted to make at the beginning of my bullet journal.
You guys probably saw it in my 2018 setup.
So I didn't really need a video ideas spread.
I just wanted to do a video planner spread
so this one I can detail different information
that I want to include in videos.
It'll be more of a place
for me to take notes on the videos that I'm making currently
rather than a checklist of videos that I want to make,
because I found that in previous months I was just
kind of repeating the checklist over and over again,
especially if I never got around to making specific videos.
So this one is probably gonna work out a lot better for me.
So then finally we have my first weekly spread for January.
I decided to do my horizontal layout
with the seven different columns.
This one has been one of my favorite weekly spread layouts.
It is so fast to set up,
especially if you do the type of layout that I've done here
where you don't even draw the vertical lines,
and it is so efficient and gives you
a ton of space for planning.
As you can see, I split it up for events
and then tasks at the bottom,
and the tasks you have the whole space
for a running to-do list, which I love.
So, around it you guys know the deal.
I gotta add those fireworks.
I think I'm really gonna be tired of drawing these fireworks
by the end of the month,
but that's usually the case.
After I drew all the fireworks
it can look a little plain so I used the golden Tombow again
to add little accents of color into the firework
as well as highlighting the actual days of the month,
or week, sorry, week.
And I actually really like how
simple and clean it turned out.
Love this theme so so much.
Anyways, that's it.
Here is the final look at the flip through
of my January 2018 bullet journal setup.
I hope you guys enjoyed.
I cannot wait to hear what you guys think.
All right everyone, so that was my January 2018
bullet journal setup.
I hope you enjoyed and found some sort of inspiration
or maybe it was just relaxing for you to watch.
Either way, thank you so much for joining me.
Can't wait for the new year.
I wish you guys the best for 2018.
If you're craving some more inspiration
I'm gonna link my playlist up there
so that you can check out more of my videos.
I hope you guys have an awesome day.
Keep doodling and I will talk to you in my next video.
Bye everyone.
(light music)