2021 planner set up 📖✨

good morning, everyone! here are some photos of my hobonichi, as promised- though it's still in the early stages of set up 😅 will work on it some more today and hopefully share some more pictures again tomorrow!

I bought this cover from a seller on facebook, so have kept my previously shown astro-boy cover on my 2020 book for now! the muted tones of this one feel like a nice way to start the new year, and the fabric is very soft to touch (though I will need to get a protective plastic cover to go over the top, as it picks up dust very easily and I worry about stains!). 

one of the first things I did (seen on pinterest, I think) was use some of the semi-transparent dot stickers from my stationery haul to liven up the calendar overview a bit! I'm going to buy a roll in a different colour palette to do the page next to it (2022) 😌 I haven't used much colour or decoration in any of my planners or notebooks for a long time, so I think it's going to be a careful balance of minimal but pretty to look at, probably with a lot of trial and error (though hopefully not too much) 🥴

did the same thing for the events/appointments that I have in the bigger calendar pages- I usually colour code my different entries, but I'm not sure I've ever *really* acknowledged the different colours when referring back, I just skim through them all 🥴 with the second roll of dots that I'll hopefully buy, I might go back to colour coding next month, depending! will add some stickers here later, too ✂️

just a small entry for the first day with no decoration yet, but I think this is how I'm going to use the pages- the 2020 book that I was using had a small, faint line in the gap between the two columns, but when I started yesterday I realised that this version doesn't have that 😅 it's nice to work with the small space on the left for to-do's, and the right hand side for journalling/writing, so I'll use a pencil later to draw the lines in myself 🖍〰️

those are all the practical pages that I have set up so far, but I took some photos of some extra lil bits/details for you! all of the hobonichi covers have pockets on the inside page- at the moment I'm keeping one of my small business cards/bookmarks, and a card of st. dymphna, who is the patron saint of mental illness and neurological conditions/disorders. I'm not particularly religious (I go to church with my family sometimes, but I don't really know what I believe, etc) but I hold a special place in my heart for the saints 😅 the routine, history and mystery of churches, saints, services, etc probably appeals to me more than the idea of religion or belief itself, if that makes sense!

in the first spare notes page at the back of the book, I've stuck in a little illustration of sherlock and john, which I bought from this etsy shop (linked). I affectionately refer to it as my "(emergency) emotional support sherlock" and I left a gap at the bottom to do some writing 😌

tucked in the back cover, I have a pen-board! I hadn't come across the concept before, but because the tomoe-river paper in hobonichi's is so thin, it seems to be common practice to use a pen board when the book starts to fill up, to help keep writing smoothly. I'm hoping that I won't bulk mine up too much, but bought a pen board just in case 😅 if nothing else it's very sweet, and I like the little tab at the top that says "today" so that it can be used as a page marker.

and finally, just this lil ruler that my brother got me for christmas! he got me a bunch of nice stationery, and I'll take some photos sometime soon 😌 the ruler is nice because of the clip- I can clip it onto the cover of my book, or a page, etc, and honestly that's very useful because I lost my previous lil ruler and have been tragically ruler-less for weeks 😅 (extra sad because my original ruler had been with me for four years!).

that's all for today! hopefully I'll have another lil update for you tomorrow, and I hope you found this interesting! please feel free to share your own planning system for the year below, I'd love to hear about how you all go about it and what products you prefer to use, if you're happy and/or wanting to share! 📖✨

take care, friends x