(upbeat guitar music)
- [Narrator] Thank you to Squarespace
for sponsoring today's video.
Guys, don't I look like melted chocolate today?
I kind of love it.
Today, I'm doing my February, 2022 bold journal setup,
which is exciting because for the past two years,
I actually haven't done a full February plan with me video
because usually this is the month
that I'm taking my YouTube break.
But as I mentioned in my Q & A video,
I'm not taking a month long YouTube break this year
because I'm solid.
I'm not burnt out.
I'm feeling good.
So hopefully you guys enjoy.
If you guys are planning with me,
grab your notebook and your stationary supplies,
if you're just chilling, hanging out.
I know a lot of people who comment saying
that they don't even bullet journal.
They just watch my videos, which I love.
I love the energy.
Thank you for being here.
So if you're just chilling,
grab a snack and let's get started.
Breaking news, everyone.
This month I used colored pencils.
I know, Amanda using colored pencils.
What has the world come to?
Previously, I have made it no secret
that I do not like using colored pencils.
If you've watched any of my previous videos.
then you know, I typically use markers or paints,
or pretty much anything besides colored pencils
or pencil crayons, coloring pencils.
I know they're called different things in different parts
of the world, but I don't know why I dislike them so much.
I think it just reminds me of being a kid and, you know,
going to the tub of pencil crayons at school.
But that childhood nostalgia
is actually exactly why I chose to use them
before for this month's setup because my theme this month
is Disney's Encanto.
If you guys have been like me and the rest of the world,
then you might also be obsessed with the movie Encanto.
I recently watched it, actually I watched it a month ago,
but then I watched it again.
And the second time really got me even more into it.
I just love the whole movie, the message, the music.
I have not been able to get the songs out of my head
and I just, the movie is so, so great.
If you haven't seen it.
I definitely recommend.
I actually, initially wasn't going to do my February bullet
journal theme based on this movie.
I didn't even have it in my mind at all.
'Cause you know,
I don't typically like to reference movies
so specifically or directly in my bullet journal themes
or in my drawings.
But on the second watch, when I re-watched the movie,
I noticed so many things about the movie
that are so beautiful, visually.
First, all like the colors
and the set design and then also the costume design.
And that is actually what this theme is based off of
because what I noticed on the main character
Mirabel's dress outfit is that she had
all these embroidered doodles all
over her dress.
And I was watching this movie
and I was like, her dress literally has little doodles
all over it.
And I was like,
this is too good of an opportunity to pass up.
I'm doing it.
I'm creating a bullet journal theme out of it.
And I know if you haven't seen the movie then maybe,
and Encanto theme doesn't seem as appealing to you.
But what I did like about these doodles
is that it is essentially just like floral butterfly,
cute doodles all over it.
And if you change up the color palette
maybe to something more pastel or monochrome,
I feel like it could still be a cute theme.
That aside though, when I was drawing this,
I literally just pulled up a reference
of Mirabel's dress.
Had it next to me while I was drawing
and I just tried my best to recreate
the embroidery in my bullet journal.
I love the way on her dress the the embroidery flows down
super organically from the top of her shoulder
down the side of her dress and all along the bottom.
I think it looks so beautiful
and it looks like she hand embroidered it,
which in my head I'd like to think
that she did.
Probably did honestly,
based on her character and just like I had thought
the colored pencils worked really well for this
because the scratchy nature of the pencils
kind of mimic to the look of embroidery.
And of course also made it look a little bit more childlike
and fun and Disney-like
with the bright colors and everything.
And honestly, I just had so much fun doing this.
I definitely satisfied my inner child while drawing this.
I didn't even sketch anything out on the paper beforehand.
Obviously I did have the reference of the dress next me,
but I didn't recreate it exactly because you know,
hers is on a dress and in 3D and mine is on paper.
So of course I had to make some changes
and I just filled in what I felt looked good
at the time I drew the butterflies
and the flowers and swirly lines and dash lines,
which kind of looked like embroidery all over the place.
Also as a side note,
I was definitely pressing a little bit on the harder side,
on the colored pencils because I really wanted to make sure
that the colors looked very bright and punchy and saturated
just like the colors on her embroidery.
And I was also mixing some colors in as well
to give it a little bit more dimension, but all in all,
I really wasn't thinking too heavily in terms of, you know,
technique and making sure things were looking perfect.
I personally think it turned out really cute.
It definitely teeters on that line where somebody might look
at it and be like, did an actual child draw this?
But I kind of love that.
Anyway for the title,
initially I went in with my black brush pen and I did this
cursive style calligraphy font
because actually on her dress Mirabel had embroidered her
name in a similar style,
but I felt like the black kind of didn't go with it.
So I actually used a TL gel pen and wrote out February
in the Encanto font that's on the posters
and I glued that over to patch it up.
And I think this looks a lot better,
fits in with the color palette, way more with the turquoise.
And I actually ended up using this turquoise gel pen
throughout the entire setup
as a replacement for a black fine liner.
So you won't be seeing me use a black pen
or fine liner at all in this video, which is new.
This might be the first time ever that I'm not using a black
pen or fine liner for the lines or for the lettering,
but it definitely works in this case
with this theme and all the colors.
And also because personally I think that Mirabel
is the type of girl to use color gel pens
instead of boring black.
But anyway, on the left side of the spread,
I did do a quote from the movie,
which I'm not gonna explain too much
in case anyone hasn't seen it,
but I did really like the message behind this quote.
Before we continue at the February spreads,
I wanted to give a quick shout out
to today's lovely sponsor, Squarespace.
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My personal website, amandarachl.com
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So link will be down below,
thank you again to Squarespace.
And let's get on with the video.
For my calendar page,
I went with the format where I have a smaller calendar
on the left side of the page
and I put the events underneath it.
And then on the right side,
I wanted to split it up and have different sections,
almost like a monthly dashboard,
but for the actual calendar, as I mentioned,
I am not using a black fine liner.
I'm using this turquoise gel pen,
which I think is a Sacra Jelly Moonlight 10, I think.
I will link it down below the color that I'm using,
if I can find it.
I dunno why I don't use color gel pens more as fineliners
because I think it looks really fun.
And also, you know,
I have so many gel pens and I might as well put them to use.
I think I'm always just afraid
of things not looking cohesive obviously.
Black does pull things together.
So I definitely wanna try to experiment
with more themes that allow me to use different colors
of pens and things that I normally wouldn't use
in my stationary collection.
For this particular spread, as you'll see,
I used my yellow colored pencil
and I created these sorely border lines around it.
And this was actually inspired by the designs on the door
of each family member, but it looked a little bit empty.
So I just went back in with all of the colored pencil
doodles and added them around it.
So yeah,
don't know if it still references the door very much.
That was my initial idea for the borders,
but I figured this was better.
So with all of the doodles this month,
I was really free flowing with it
and just kind of filled it in, especially on the right side.
So as you see, I have different sections.
I have a section for goals,
book of the month, shows I'm watching.
And then at the bottom I have a section for things
that I wanna remember for the next month.
And I used each different color pencil
with the cursive, added squiggle lines.
And then I just added the doodles in different corners
of the section and connected it also to the left side
of the page.
So it was very organic looking,
which is something that I don't normally do.
Usually I have like boxed out sections on my bullet journal.
The next spread is also something
very different than what I normally do.
So I wanted to create a spread that has journaling prompts
inspired by the movie for a couple different reasons.
So first of all, of course, February, you know,
typically we think of Valentine's Day,
but a lot of people are asking me to do like self-care
self-love related themes or quotes for February.
And I think this movie definitely encompasses
a lot of those messages already.
The whole movie is about acceptance
and self-love and of course family.
And one of the things that struck me
while I was watching it,
especially the second go around was the lesson that I think
each family member and side character can give you,
each family member
is going through their own struggles.
And I actually watched this video analysis.
It was done by a family therapist.
It's a really, really well done video.
I'll link it down below,
but this therapist essentially went through
each of the characters and broke down
what the role of that character is in the family.
And also what that looks like in therapy.
So what, you know,
kind of internal struggles they're going through.
So for example, Luisa,
who is a character in the movie who always has to be strong
both mentally and physically for the family.
And in that video,
I mentioned the family therapist explained that she sees
these types of, I guess, characters in therapy a lot,
and someone like Luisa might have struggles
allowing themselves to feel or to feel vulnerable.
So I just found it really interesting
and I thought it was a good opportunity to create
some journaling prompts based on the message
and lesson from each character.
I will definitely be using some of these in my personal
diary or journal.
I am curious to know though which character you guys relate
to the most, if you've seen the movie.
So comment that down below,
because I think a lot of the characters struggles
are very relatable, especially as adults.
I think that's something that's so beautiful
and special about Disney movies
is that people can enjoy them as a child
and as an adult and you take different things.
Of course,
when you're watching it through the lens of an adult,
there's been so many times where I watch movies
that I grew up with as a child
and as an adult watching them,
I'm like, whoa, I don't remember it being this deep.
Anyway, back to the spread.
As you can see,
I'm creating my trackers.
For this month,
I created my habit tracker
and mood tracker across the page horizontally.
So I didn't do, you know,
left side for one tracker
and right side for the other tracker.
I did habit trackers title along the top with my TL gel pen
in that same Encanto font.
And then I did my mini calendars all across the side.
So I have six different ones
and I also added a drop shadow
to each of these calendars, yes.
The drop shadows are back ladies and gentlemen.
After I created those mini calendars,
I just used different colors of colored pencils
to do the cursive titles along the top.
This felt so weird for me,
for some reason using colored pencils for a title,
I don't know why that felt off,
probably because it's just a medium
that I'm not used to.
But honestly,
as I was creating this whole setup,
I may have come to enjoy using colored pencils more.
I think I appreciate the medium more than I did before.
So that's progress.
Maybe you guys will be seeing more themes
for me using colored pencil in the future.
No promises though.
Underneath my habit tracker,
I am doing my mood tracker.
So for this one, I thought it would be really fun,
especially with all of the doodles and you know,
kind of scattered organic drawings for this month's setup
to create a mood tracker that mimicked that.
So using my teal jaw pen, I just drew a bunch of
the flower butterfly doodles all along the bottom.
Made sure that they were empty.
And I also drew 28 of them because there are 28 days
in February and those are what I'm going
to be filling in with the colors, my colored pencils.
So at the top you can see,
I drew a little scale with the colors, so darker blue, sad.
And then it goes all throughout the color palette
of this month, up until yellow,
which is happy and I will be coloring
in the doodles accordingly.
It did look a little bit empty as I was doing it.
So I filled in some of the empty spaces with the dash lines
and swirlies so that once the mood tracker is filled in,
it still looks like a finished illustration.
While we are finishing up this mood tracker,
of course I have to bring up the iconic song,
"We Don't Talk Bruno",
because it has been stuck in my head all month.
It's so catchy, so good.
There was no purpose of me bringing up the song
besides the fact that I couldn't do an Encanto
themed bullet journal setup
without mentioning the song because it is so iconic,
but maybe one day during this month's live stream,
I will do a little cover of "We Don't Talk About Bruno"
or "Surface pressure."
I do like that song as well.
So we'll see.
You gotta tune in on the Twitch live streams though,
to check it out.
Alright, so finally we have the first week of February.
Oh my God, I almost said January.
February, the first weekly spread of February.
So for this, I sectioned off the days,
as you can see with these wavy curly lines.
And I had the days of the week, some of them at the top,
some are at the bottom.
And I really thought it gave this really organic look,
almost like embroidery thread or yarn,
which of course fits well with this theme.
So at the bottom of the spread in the empty space,
I added another quote from the movie,
which says, "Even in our darkest moments,
there's light where you least expect it."
Again, not gonna go too much into the quote
in case anyone hasn't seen the movie yet.
But other than that,
I just filled in the empty spaces with more
of the embroidery doodles.
I had placed the boxes kind of skewed,
so zigzag positions so that there was more empty spaces
in between and around it to give it more
of that organic look.
And I really like how this spread turned out.
I think it's really fun.
And I think especially in the past,
you know, normally I would have such a structured look
to my weekly spreads.
In this month,
I feel like is gonna encourage me
to break free from that.
So I'm excited.
Anyway with that,
that brings us to the final flip through
of my February, 2022 Ecanto themed bullet journal setup.
This theme was so much fun for me to make,
honestly, I know it's not gonna be everyone's cup of tea,
but I felt like a child doodling in the margins
of my notebook and I was living for it.
So hopefully you enjoyed watching or found some inspiration.
And remember, "We Don't Talk About Bruno."
Alrighty, so recreations.
They are here, look at them.
They're so beautiful.
This is from last month,
My January theme,
which as an inside joke on our twist streams,
I have dubbed the Walmart logo theme.
So if you guys do recreate any of my spreads
from this month or previous months,
you can tag me on all social media platforms.
I'm just at @AmandaRachlee,
you can use the hashtag doodles as well.
And if you do want to see how the rest
of my spreads this month turnout,
I highly recommend you check out my Twitch stream.
A lot of people always ask me about my creative process.
And I think the Twitch streams are definitely a really great
place to be if you are interested in that,
because you're literally watching me create a spread
from the beginning, from scratch in real time.
And besides that, it's just a very fun community.
The chat is always popping off and we have fun there.
So all you have to do is go to twitch.tv/amandarachlee.
We stream every Saturday at 2:00 P.M. EST.
So hopefully I see some of you guys on the streams.
Alright, guys, keep doodling.
Bye.
(soothing guitar music)