As you may know, I like to make planners and bullet journals for my family and friends. I now also make hand-drawn bullet journals for anyone! Anyways, for my Mom’s birthday this year I decided to make her a mini hand-drawn planner. However, I know my mom needed something much simpler than the generic bullet journal or planner. This post may contain affiliate links.
Essentials Gridline Notebook Specs
She requested the planner be smaller—like the size of a passport—that way it would fit in her purses easily. She also requested having grocery lists and to-do lists. With this information, I flew into gear. Below are the specs of the notebook I chose.
- Durable hardcover
- A6 size (4 inches x 5-1/2 inches)
- 192 grid-lined pages
- Elastic band
- Ribbon bookmark
- Inside back cover pocket
Planner Inspiration
The layout of this bullet journal was inspired by the color pink, pink is my Mom’s favorite color. Having gotten my Arteza watercolor brush pens recently, I wanted to utilize them. The cover page features and watercolored background and “Kristi’s 2018 Planning” in a mixture of calligraphy and clear print. I kept the pink theme throughout utilizing it as an accent color.
Planner Introduction
This mini hand-drawn planner opens with an index so that it could be easier to find the month or page she is looking for. Next, I included a year-at-a-glance page. This 2018-at-a-glance page utilizes pink as an accent. These two pages utilized fine line pens in varying sizes.
Hand-Drawn Planning Pages
Since my normal weekly grid was not necessary for this planner, I opted to stick to monthly layouts only. For each month, I created a generic calendar, two pages for a to-do list, four pages for groceries, and then two pages for notes. I left these pages relatively untouched so that my Mom could utilize them as she needed.
Financial Planner
After giving my Mom her planner, she requested that I add bill tracking to the back. I happily added these pages. I neglected to take photos of this page; however, it looks similar to my own bill tracking layout which you can see here. The only difference is that I used pink watercolor and did multiple pages of bill tracking and did not give her a subscription tracking page.
Enjoy Bullet Journaling? Check out my 2018 Layout!
Tools Used to Create This Hand-Drawn Planner
