Doodling in a Happy Planner

If you’ve read any of my other blog posts, you my have noticed my obsession with MAMBI’s Happy Planners.

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They are a planner system that use the disc system. That makes it easy to add sections, move pages, or rearrange your planner at any time. Learn all about Happy Planners here.

These planners have lots of cute and fun to use sticker packs available. Some of my favorites include: Seasonal Sticker Book, Fri Yay Student Stickers, Budgeting Stickers, stickers for Everyday Memories, Workout Sticker Books, and Get It Done stickers.

I have to admit, I went a little sticker crazy in my Happy Planner over the last year.

So for 2019 (at least for a few months), I decided to doodle in my planner instead of stickering every page.

Why am I not using stickers for a while?

I really wanted to push my creativity for the year and so I limited myself to these items as the only thing that goes into my Happy Planner.

Uniball Powertank Pen in Black
Crayola Extreme Colors - Neon Colored Pencils
Zebra Mildliners

Since I love to have my planner pages decorated, this has forced me to doodle my pages rather than just placing a sticker.

It’s also allowed me to relax and spend more time in my planner.

I’ve been looking back at the doodled-only pages and really enjoy them.

By limiting the colors (only 8 colored pencils in the pack!) and materials I’m using in my planner, it’s providing a nice overall theme.

However, one thing I feel like I really need to do is get more doodle ideas.

Apparently, I’m not the only person who decided to limit their Happy Planner supplies for a while.

I found a bunch of cute and inspiring videos featuring Happy Planner doodles and decorations for calendar pages. I hope you like them as much as I do!

Hello Petite Paper makes a memory keeper in her Happy Planner. She does use some washi tape to pull her page theme together, but as you can see in the video, she limits the colors. She uses a black pen for drawing and then only two Tombow Dual Brush Pens in colors 723 and 243 to decorate.

By limiting the materials she uses for her spreads, she creates a bright, cheerful, and cohesive them.

The Modest Cat went with just one pen for her planner spread. Not only did she keep it neutral in black and white, she also limited the number of fonts she used on her pages.

Across the top of her pages she puts the weather forecast.

She also takes the time to explain how she uses consistent banners or doodles to help her easily identify upcoming events or tasks. My favorite thing that The Modest Cat does on her pages is creates lots of cute teddy bears on her pages.

PersonalizeMyPlanner packs so many cute doodles into her Happy Planner pages! She prefers to remove each page from her planner to decorate them and finds it’s much easier to draw on when they are on a flat surface.

If you are new to doodling, she recommends drawing out your doodles in pencil before going over them in pen.

She provides lots of tips and tricks for doodling success all while showing you how to create really cute planner doodles.

Here pages are also pulled together by limited the number of color she uses. An EK Tools Journaling Pen is used to create the black doodles and Zebra Mildliners provide pops of color.

Use your Happy Planner to catalog your vacation memories! As I learned from watching this video, vacations provide so many cute doodle ideas!

Hello Petite Paper creates beautiful spreads with washi tape and a few pens including colorful Maped Graph’peps Fine Felt Tipped Pens, Kuretake Zig Brush Tip Pen, Akashiya Sai Watercolor Brush Pin in light pink, and Kuretake Zig Letter Pen Cocoiro.

Here’s another video from Bella of The Modest Cat. In addition to using her Happy Planner for her schedule, she also uses it for memory keeping. Guess what…that means lots of cute doodle ideas!

These pages are created using a Muji Pen, Sakura Micron Pens, and Crayola Super Tips Markers.

Sincerely Adorable Plans uses the Mini Happy Planner. Even though the pages are smaller than the traditional sized Happy Planner, they are packed with lots of adorable doodles you can draw.

She uses planner stencils to create many of her banners and boxes. If you hate to draw straight lines, you should check them out!

I noticed she also likes to draw her doodles in pencil before going over them with a black Papermate Flair Tip Pen then uses colorful Flair Tip Pens to add accents and lots of color to the pages.