- Journaling and Planning -Mixed Media Art
- October 2, 2023
The Art of Planning
A planner at heart
It may not be surprising to hear that I have a type A personality given my history as an engineer. I thrive on structure, predictability, routine, order, productiveness, and results. I credit my success in collage and the corporate world to my trusty, old-school paper planner and detailed notes. At work, structure was a given due to the nature of my job and deadlines that had to be met. Motherhood, however, especially staying at home with young kids, does not foster predictability and order, ha!
Transitioning from the office to staying home with the boys prompted a new kind of planning routine. I created a template consisting of a simple weekly schedule that I printed at home on plain cardstock. Every Sunday I filled it just with kid stuff – trips to the library, the neighborhood pool, basically any free or cheap activities that I could find in our area. While this rudimentary planning sheet became a lifeline, offering a sliver of structure and control amidst the unpredictability of motherhood, you’ll see that I soon began incorporating various planner decorating ideas that allowed me to express my creativity while still managing the scheduling demands of being at home with young kids.
Fusing planning and artistry
Fast forward a few years and I was moving along in my artistic journey, learning how to create mixed media girls and floral paintings, when I came across the Documented Life Project. This project, put together by a lovely group of mixed media artists, revolved around the idea of combining a planner and an art journal.
With the project as inspiration, I began to incorporate my artwork and a weekly journal prompt into my planner, along with other planner decorating ideas like adding bits and pieces of things from daily life such as photos, receipts, or junk mail. I used (and continue to use today!) their method of adding pages to my store-bought planner by creating a tip- or fold-in page using washi tape. For me, this was the perfect combination of planning and artsy-ness!!! It gave me something to “do” with the art that I was creating, making it feel more productive and purposeful.
Side note – I have since battled mightily with the notion that making art needs to have a “purpose” or that the art needs to be used in some way. In my head I know that a purpose is not required – you should create for the intrinsic value of the process – but if what I’m making does have some practical use and that motivates me to make more, then it’s a win-win in my book.
Our creativity is worth more than the products produced.
Creativity links us with our one-of-a-kindness.
— Petrea Hansen-Adamidis
I thought it would be fun to show you some of the pages I’ve saved from those times. I no longer have the actual planners, but you can see the strip of washi tape down the side of each painting which is how these pages were added in. I’ve continued to use these methods of creating a fill-in-the-blank style template for journaling and memory keeping and adding custom pages into a planner with washi tape. Check out this post on how to decorate your planner to see these techniques in action using my own abstract artwork, along with creating a custom planner cover.
Evolution of style
After a while I moved into more of a scrapbook-style of decorating my planners, adding some paint to the weekly layouts but also using the cutest little planner stamps, scrapbook/patterned paper and stickers designed for planners. I personalized it even more by choosing a decorative theme for the year and adding something from that theme to each week. One year was all chihuahua paintings (for my two fur-babies, Princess and Chica). Another year it was funny animals dressed in human clothes. Yet another year it was vintage illustrations of ladies, the style you find on sewing patterns.
Here are some examples of those pages. I love looking back on them and seeing everything we were involved in as a family – swim team, band, the trips we took – along with keepsakes from daily life and even some of the boys’ little drawings.
Embracing simplicity and personal art
Yearning for simplicity, I took a hiatus from intricate planner decorations for a while. This year, however, marks my return, but with a twist. I sought a setup that requires minimal weekly effort, a once-a-year preparation that then awaits me each month, along with getting back to infusing more of my personal art into the planner. Check out the next post on ideas for customizing your planner to see how I accomplished this!
Feel free to explore my Pinterest board below for additional planner decorating ideas and inspiration.
Click to check out
my inspiration board!
Thank you so much for joining me on this creative journey ♡ I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the ways you can bring art and creativity into your daily life and add more joy to the task of planning your days and weeks. Share your planner stories in the comments – I’d love to hear from fellow planners!
Jennifer
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