BEYOURPET

I actually meant to post this entry a month ago, but I guess I forgot I hadn’t, because of Christmas and New Years and all…
Well at least it’s still only January, so if anyone is still planning to buy a planner for 2012, maybe this entry will help.

I always like to buy really cute planners, and I never had much luck in finding them until I turned to the interweb. Now I always get my planners from Asian goods sellers from Ebay, and usually don’t spend any more than I would if I was buying it in a store in my town. I’m so weird about planners, you have to get just the right one so that it’ll be exciting to use it all year long, through the good events and bad, the ones you look forward to and the ones you dread…
So I always look for a) a cute design that cheers me up, b) good organizational abilities (like having lots of sections and places to write), and c) a body shape that isn’t too big or too small, not too thick or too thin (because it needs to fit in my purse, but not be so small I can’t write in it easily). I usually spend a good few hours searching online until I’ve found the one I like best.

Here are some of the sellers I’ve favorited in the past because they either had or have good planners or other cute Asian good for reasonable prices. Most of these sellers are based in China and Korea, but they seem to sell goods from all over.
Sorry if some shops don’t have any items or aren’t listing anything useful currently. They tend to change and move out goods fairly quickly, bookmark it and check again later if this is the case.
READ: I am not vouching for these seller’s ability or honesty. I’ve only bought from a few of them, and have had good experiences. But use your own judgement when it comes to buying from sellers online, and refer to their user ratings and reviews to see if you think you can trust them, it’s up to you…

bestdealinthebox
replacewholesale
startednow2008
sellzzang
qmm2002
cd_better
idy11111
bigkeylee
happystore_2011
legendeux
2sweetshop
oriental-direct
ipinkorea
amen_htm
babosarang
mid-century73
namee017
littlecloud012407

This entry shows the one I had for 2011 (scroll to near the end of the entry), it was a really cute Bonny Berry brand diary, really bright and happy feeling with a little girl and her cat throughout. Just about everything was in color and illustrated, no boring pages or sections. It must have taken the artist ages to prepare this layout!

Here’s what I have for 2012, a binder, a planner (Korean), a pink micro pen the seller sent with the planner for free, and lots of stickers!

My 2012 planner is less colorful, but I wanted something that felt a little cleaner but still had the cute illustrations throughout. This one has a little kitty called chococat (not sanrio), who travels with a bear to a chocolate land. It also came with some stickers, and some really cute divider stickers!

The stickers of the girl were a separate purchase from the planner. They’re called “Bonnie Series”, by another Korean brand. It was a really good deal, I think I spent $4 or something and it came with 6 sheets of stickers. And as you can see, it includes a lot of little stickers. I love being able to decorate my planner with stickers all year, they make it so much more fun. ^ o ^

So far I’ve been keeping up with my planner daily. I always end up falling off on some months, forgetting to write, forgetting to keep up with it. But this year I want to really try to do better. I’ll have to get a real job at some point, so I intend to keep this planner with me throughout the day (in my purse) so that I can keep up with my schedule and have better organization between home life, art life, and work life.
I also wanted to organize more of my things and little scraps of paper. I take a lot of mental notes on paper and tend to just leave them lying about, so I wanted to organize them all and keep up with them. So I prepared a little binder for my planner, and then a bigger binder for large papers. The little binder (with the kitty eyes) is actually a binder that a planner I had in 2008 came in. It’s just a plain black leatherette binder, it has some organizational compartments inside. It was actually really useful and the perfect size, so I decided to keep my slightly smaller 2012 planner inside of it, to help protect the cover and to keep some pens and stickers inside safely.
I wanted it to look cute so I made and glued on some kitty eyes, so now it looks like my kitty Twitch.

The first illustration comic (shown on the first few pages which was the monthly calendar) shows him trying to get a job at a chocolate factory, falling asleep in the interview, and getting kicked out of the interview. It’s really cute! ^ u ^

At the same time I bought the stickers and planner, I also got this purse organizer (from a different seller, but also Asian goods — they’re always cheaper and much cuter!). This thing is crazy useful. It’s pretty small so it fits perfectly in my purse without being too small or too big. It has a TON of card holder slots, one on the outside and one on the inside where you can keep your more important cards safer. And it has little compartments all throughout to put your various things (cell phone, wallet, etc). And the great thing is, you can just pull it out and put in in another purse if you’re switching out and wanna do it quickly!

Here’s the binder I’m now keeping all of my random scraps of note paper, stuff I write down and don’t want to lose. Off the top of my head I know I have sections for: Everyday to-dos, Master to-do list, daily/weekly/monthly/seasonal to-do and cleaning lists, birthday tracker, blog ideas list, art ideas, items to make for etsy ideas, webdesign ideas… The list could actually go on. I write down ideas almost everyday it seems like, and of course it would be a total shame to just forget about them all and let them fall apart in some random place in my room, so I like keeping them all safe so I can refer back to them easily when I need an idea for something to do.

I even bought some organizing tabbed dividers to keep them all organized by category.

And these pretty glitter notebook binders were on sale for like a dollar!

Here’s a gif from the seller’s listing of cutie chococat, it’s an actual flipbook animation from the planner!