(relaxing music)
(bell dings)
- Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video.
All right.
We're back.
This feels so weird.
If you missed my break video,
then you're probably like, what do you mean you're back?
I didn't even miss you.
That's fine.
If you didn't miss out on anything, then hello again,
but I did take some time off YouTube.
I'm back now.
It was very refreshing.
I definitely needed that time.
And I did just want to say
before we get right into everything,
thank you guys for always supporting me and my decisions.
And especially on that video, it was really nice to see
all of the supportive heartwarming comments
and hearing your guys' stories
about taking care of yourselves and taking breaks.
So if anything, if that video encouraged you
to also take some time for yourself,
then that's also a plus for my break.
I'm gonna do my March plan with me
and my March bullet journal setup,
which feels weird because literally the last video
on my channel was the February setup.
I just re- uploaded the stream that I did,
which also was really fun.
I did like the entire plan with me live on Twitch
and that was like the most viewers that I've ever gotten
on a Twitch stream before.
So thank you to everyone who tuned in
or enjoyed watching the real-time spreads.
It was definitely different vibes
from like my normal plan with me videos, but very fun.
So maybe in the future, we can do more of those.
Let's just get right into it, honestly.
Like I've taken three weeks off of YouTube,
so why delay it anymore?
Let's get started.
Hi, friends.
This is voiceover Amanda.
Just wanted to quickly pop in and mention
if you haven't seen in the news, there has been an increase
in violence against the Asian community,
particularly towards the elders,
due to racist rhetoric around the COVID-19 pandemic.
So because of that for a whole week, starting February 27th,
which is tomorrow a hundred percent of the profits
from ShopAmandaRachLee Dotted Notebooks
will be going towards Asian communities in need.
So if you want to buy a notebook,
support the cause, I'm going to link it down below.
It also happens to be the notebook that I'm using right now.
Okay, that's all, love you.
Back to the regular voiceover.
If you've been watching my channel for a while now,
then you know that we have a little tradition every March,
which is to do a green plant-ish theme.
So of course, I'm not gonna break that tradition.
We're five-year strong so far,
so of course I had to do a plant theme
and surprisingly, in all of the March themes
that we've done, I've never done
like a full-on houseplant theme.
And I figured this would be the perfect month to do that.
The inspiration behind this theme was actually
my real life house plant, my little fiddle leaf fig
that's in the corner next to my coach.
You guys see it in my videos all the time, but you know,
it's kind of a wonder how I've managed to
keep that plant alive for so long.
And me and my friends like to call him big boy
because he's grown quite a lot.
I'll put a comparison picture of what my fiddle leaf fig
started and how it is now.
So yeah, I kind of got inspired by that house plant.
And also, I found a lot of pictures on Pinterest
of actual beautiful spaces with a lot of plants,
almost like a greenhouse,
so I wanted to emulate that on my cover page
and just draw a whole lot of plants in pots.
It was actually kind of fun to draw all of these.
I know it might not seem like it because I'm drawing a lot
but these doodles are super easy to do.
So I didn't really even plan out the actual leaves too much.
I mostly just, you know, planned out
where I wanted the pots to be with my pencil.
And then with my fine liner afterwards,
I went in and drew random leaves.
But if you guys want a tutorial
on how I draw each type of plant, I can definitely do that.
But pretty much what I was doing is just
looking at pictures of real life plants
and trying to doodle them really quickly and loosely.
I wasn't too focused on making it perfect.
And then my favorite part of this cover page
was that I included hanging plants from the top.
So I drew a lot of like hanging vines
and I drew this shelf at the top
where I could put smaller potted plants.
And I think it turned out so cute.
I know that there's a lot of green leafy doodles
and themes out there, but I really tried to make it my own
by just adding a ton of varieties and playing around
with the different sizes of pots and plant varieties.
So when you're doing this, if you want to recreate it,
I encourage you to experiment with your doodles,
try different plant varieties, look up actual pictures
of plants and leaves, and it's really fun to experiment.
And the good thing about plants is because, you know
they're natural, it's in nature, nothing's ever too perfect.
So, you know, even if you quote, unquote, mess up
it kind of just looks more natural.
So I hope you guys have fun drawing plants this month
if you're drawing them with me.
Another fun thing about this theme, I think,
is that I actually only used one green marker
for the coloring part of this cover page.
I wanted to keep it really simple.
So I used one Tombow Dual Brush Pen
to roughly fill in the leaves.
Really.
I promise you guys, if you saw the realtime clip
of me coloring this in, it would be like 30 seconds,
because I was just scribbling.
I did not sit in there and, you know, try to fill
in every individual leaf to make sure it was
within the lines.
That'd be way too tedious.
So I just did strokes of color.
And I kind of liked that look
with just the single accent color.
It actually really reminded me of the very first year
that I bullet journaled, 2017.
A lot of my themes from then were also similar vibes
where there's just one accent color, really loosely,
you know, colored in and just, you know,
with some fun doodles all around.
In order to add a bit more dimension
to that single green color marker that I used,
a few times I would actually layer the green quite a lot
to make it look a bit darker,
but it was just that one marker.
So you'll see that sometimes I go over like the center
of the leaves with some added strokes
and it just gives you that dark green
to light green gradient
without using multiple green markers.
So I just went in, colored the rest of those leaves.
And actually I just realized, I lied to you guys earlier.
I did not technically use just the one green marker.
I realized I went in with like a light gray
for some you know, shadows,
but honestly it didn't really add much,
so you could probably go without this.
On the other side of the spread
is where I'm drawing my monthly overview,
so I have a calendar.
I've been shying away recently
from doing a full two page calendar spread,
just because, you know, I was on break last month.
I'm still kind of easing into things a bit.
So I figured this size calendar would be perfect.
And then just underneath I'm writing out any events,
meetings, to-do lists things that I need to do
for the month.
And since this theme really reminded me
of my old school bullet journal,
like my bullet journal from 2017,
I decided to bring back the drop shadows, guys.
You guys know, if you watch any of my old videos,
I was a big drop shadow guy.
So I thought I'd bring those back because you know,
we love a good drop shadow in this household.
Other than that, I kept it pretty simple.
I just wrote out this month underneath the calendar
which is where I'll list everything,
and then drew a few potted plants up top,
like the header was a shelf and another potted plan
at at the bottom, just for fun.
Oh, I also used some washi tapes in kind of a fun way.
So this is the ShopAmandaRachLee Dark Neutral set.
We actually restocked the washi tapes,
in case you guys were wondering.
So I'll link those down below if you guys want to grab a set
before they run out again.
And what I did was I actually put the washi tape
on a few of the pots, just to a couple of them.
And then I took my X-ACTO knife
and lightly scored around the pot.
You could kind of see the outline underneath,
so I made sure to follow that.
And then when you peel back all the edges around it,
you're left with the washi tape that fills in
the center of the plant pot.
And I thought it was just a unique fun way
to use washi tape.
It also adds a nice pattern and pop to any design.
Next up, of course we have my trackers,
and I'm starting out with my habit tracker.
So I'm writing a simple title with my brush pen.
By the way, of course this is the Tombow Fudenosuke
Hard Tip Brush Pen.
I use this pretty much throughout the entire spread.
Both for the doodles and for the writing.
You guys know, I love it.
This is my go-to pen.
So if you're curious as to what else I use,
I'll link it down below.
And then I added some hanging plants next to it at the top
just for some added little doodles.
For the mini calendars, I used these calendar stamps
that I had.
A lot of people ask me where I got these calendar stamps.
I got them as a gift,
but I believe you can find them on like Ali express
or Amazon.
Just search rubber calendar stamps.
So I just put those on one of my acrylic stamping blocks
and stamped out the calendars.
I kinda messed up in there a little slanted
because I just refuse to plan anything out apparently,
but that's okay.
You know, you just gotta go with it.
Things happen in your bullet journal
and it's for you anyway.
So accept your mistakes, as Bob Ross would say,
there are no mistakes, just happy little accidents.
And I think that's kind of the mindset
that I'm going into a lot of things nowadays.
So yeah, I had initially had six calendars
and then I decided to add a couple more at the bottom.
I just have these drop shadowed, rectangular headers
up top where I write out what habits that I'm tracking.
So I'm talking about, you know, watering plants
taking my vitamins, doing my vocal exercises,
because recently something that I've done over my break
is start vocal lessons.
It's been a fun little hobby for me to pick up.
So it's just stuff like that.
And then next to it, I have my mood tracker
and for this, because my fiddle leaf fig
in real life was the inspiration behind this theme,
I decided to draw my little plant baby again
and this was the habit tracker.
So each leaf represents day and I'll be coloring it in.
According to my mood.
I mentioned this I can't remember when I mentioned this,
but I'm starting to get into the habit of drawing
the darker colors as my happy mood.
I used to do it the opposite way,
where the dark color represented, you know,
a dark, sad mood.
But then someone in my comments section pointed out
that it stands out a lot more
when you flip through the darker colors.
So in order for things to stand out more in a positive way,
when I flip through my bullet journal
I want the darker colors to be the happy days.
I feel like I didn't really explain that well,
but hopefully you understand what I'm talking about.
While we're here talking about moods and how you're feeling
just wanted to check in with y'all and see how you're doing
during all of this chaos, the pandemic.
I hope you're setting boundaries
and making sure you're taking care of yourself
and doing things for you.
I feel like while I was on my break,
I really got to figure out how I'm feeling recently
without it being tied into work.
So that was definitely a huge plus
of me taking my break and interesting to separate that out
because a lot of times I feel like my feelings and,
you know, I've mentioned this before.
A lot of times I equate my value to work
and how productive I am
and I'm really trying to stop doing that.
It'll definitely be a long-term thing where I need
to figure out how to untrain myself from that thinking.
But that's kind of been what I've been thinking
about recently and checking in with myself.
So I hope you guys are doing the same and doing well.
All right.
So moving on to the next page, which is my playlist spread.
I discovered a lot of great music during my break,
because I kind of had nothing better to do,
besides watch a lot of dramas and movies
and listen to music on Spotify.
So I did create a big playlist
of all the songs that I've been loving recently.
So if you want to check that out,
I'll link my Spotify playlist down below.
Honestly, it might be one of my favorite playlists.
I've been shuffling it on repeat a lot recently.
So I'll link that down below
'cause I didn't include all the songs
from the Spotify playlist on this spread.
There was just way too many.
I just kind of included some of my top faves on this spread.
And I thought it was really cute.
I printed out the album covers in little squares
and then I made it look like they're sitting on shelves.
And I also made the album covers kind of 3D.
And in between them, I added, of course, more potted plants.
Funnily enough, in my real life bedroom,
I am going to be putting up floating shelves like this
so that I can display more decorative things
like plants and actual music albums.
So I've already ordered the shelves from IKEA,
and I'm going to be putting them up soon.
So hopefully it turns out as cute as this spread.
Anyway, I'll just list out a few honorable mentions
since I didn't actually write out the name
of the artist or the album title on the spread.
So first we have Raveena's new single.
I love Raveena.
She's one of my favorite artists of all time.
Her music is just very chill and magical and dreamy.
And it's great.
I also discovered this fully animated bunny who releases
like pop songs and it's kind of incredible.
APOKI.
I also, oh!
Recently my friend Stephanie Poetri,
came out with a song, "IRL"
and I'm actually included in the music video.
So that was kind of a cool thing that happened.
Go check her out.
She's very talented and yeah, there's just so much great
awesome music that I've been discovering recently.
And it makes me very happy.
I feel like, especially while I'm journaling
I love playing this playlist.
It's like the perfect vibes and you guys know
I love music so much and it just ties so nicely
into journaling and drawing and self care.
So, I just love it.
Anyway, moving on.
Oh, of course I added more of those washi tapes
with a couple of the potted plants.
But then next to it, I have a very simple spread.
If you watched my 2021 Bullet Journal Set Up video,
then you'll know I created a package tracker
for me to track, you know, when I purchase something,
whether the item has come in or not,
I've actually filled that up already, which is I don't know,
that's kind of embarrassing to say,
but I filled that one up that was
at the beginning of my bullet journal.
So I decided that maybe moving forward
I'm gonna do it monthly and maybe, you know
a shorter little table.
I don't know, I'm experimenting with this.
So that's what I have there.
I have a little tracker with the columns that have the name
of the item that I ordered, whether it's been sent or not.
And then I check off when I have received it.
And then underneath that,
I have my monthly shopping list as well.
And the individual headers say things like, groceries
household items, and other.
Finally we have made it to the first weekly spread of March,
which, by the way is extremely satisfying,
because the first week of March begins on a Monday
and you guys know I make my weekly spreads
start on a Monday.
I know some people do Sunday out there.
I respect your preference, but it ain't me.
I love a good Monday start to the week.
And March begins perfectly on a Monday.
Anyway, so I'm doing this vertical layout.
You'll see I'm drawing out this horizontal line
up top that looks like a shelf,
adding more of those potted plants, but then underneath it
is where I'm doing the actual weekly spread.
And for this, I divided the columns out into three.
I just referenced my grid spacing guide
at the beginning of my bullet journal.
And I think it's eight dot spaces, each column,
like the width.
I know a lot of you guys asked me,
about Docker spacing a little bit,
but honestly I just referenced my grid spacing guide a lot.
So yeah, I have this green header at the top
and I just divided it out into three, really simple
just draw those vertical lines.
And then for the weekend I split the page
up in half that way.
You'll see I'm dividing out the columns also
with a line at the top.
And that's where I place my weekly events
like any meetings or things that I need to do for that day.
And then underneath it is where the actual task list goes.
To finish off this weekly spread, I drew some black circles
and then used my white gel pen to write the numbers
on top of the black circle.
Wrote out the days of the week,
just in simple capital letters.
And I filled in some of those plant pots
with the washi tapes again for an accent.
And I also use the washi tapes as a divider
for the weekly events and the tasks.
And that was pretty much it
for the first weekly spread of March.
I like this spread because it gives me a lot
of planning space for the week.
Before I flip through the entire March bullet journal setup,
I wanted to talk a little bit
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Thank you again to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video.
They're a great friend to the channel.
So little doodles, go check them out if you need a website.
All right.
So here's the final flip through
of my March, 2021 bullet journal setup.
I really like how this one turned out.
I just feel inspired to fill it out and be productive.
And the plant doodles were just really relaxing
and fun to draw throughout the month.
So that was it.
Amanda's great return back to YouTube
after her three week break.
It really wasn't that big of a deal.
I'm sure some of you guys didn't even notice that I was gone
but I hope you guys of course enjoyed today's video.
Seeing my March 2021 bullet journal setup.
As usual I wanted to showcase some of your recreations
from last month.
Even though I didn't post a normal
February plan with me video,
I did stream it.
So a lot of you guys still recreated it,
which was really nice to see.
And of course, if you want to see how the rest
of my setup plays out, all of the weekly spreads
come tune in on Twitch every Saturday
at 11:00 AM Eastern time, I create my weekly spreads there.
Live, realtime and it's very chill.
There's low-fi music and coffee and good vibes all around.
I feel like I'm talking really fast.
It might be because I haven't been on camera
in a while, but anyway, hope you have an awesome day.
Keep doodling.
See you in the next one.
Bye guys.
(chill music)