Planner Stickers 101, stickers explained!

When I tell people that I have opened an Etsy shop, I get in general an interested smile, "Oh, how neat!"

When I tell them I am selling planner stickers, the smile freezes and fades as I see their brains working on a polite way to say, "What the hell is that?"

Well, relax folks, there's no need to stress the manners portion of your brain, because this post will tell you exactly what planner stickers are no matter how you phrase that question. 

I'll even show you some examples and some different ways of using them.

See how nice I can be?

Planner stickers are, just that. Stickers that you put in your planner.

Why? You may ask...

Because it's fun.

It's a creative outlet.

Remember scrapbooking?

Well, it's like that, but more practical.

And I am nothing if not practical.

As long as the practical comes in pretty, coordinated colors, and neat straight lines.

And guess what? Planner stickers do.

link to this kit in my shop

I could end this post right there - planner stickers are stickers that you put in your planner - and some people logged off just now thinking well that's exactly what I thought, but maybe someone is still there wanting more. Maybe?

It can be confusing because the planner sticker world wasn't created with a team of people designating names for specific things like the people who decided what to call a ball point pen. Everyone knows what a ball point pen is because they did a really great job. But planner stickers were created by a mass of individuals, each in their own home, describing their products on their Etsy shops as what they call them.  

Functionals, weekly, monthly, reminders, icons... and any given shop may call them the opposite of another... When creating my shop I first had to research every other shop I could find just to figure out what to call some things, only to discover that one person's monthly was another person's weekly, etc. Ugh! No wonder I get so many blank what the hell is that smiles.

So for the duration of this blog, I'd just like to state that I use terms based on "in general, this is what I've found".

 Ok? Good.

In my shop a "full weekly kit" is a set of stickers intended to cover a weekly spread. Makes sense doesn't it?

this kit in my shop

would cover this week in my planner

My weekly kits have 6 or 7 sheets including:

 

a sheet of decorative full boxes (top)

a sheet of headers and littles (bottom)

 Headers may seem more obvious, a handful of miscellaneous titles for specialty or sidebar use and 7 of each of the basic To Do, Today, and Little Things to place at the top of each daily section, but the littles themselves tend to change often from shop to shop, and quite honestly confused me at first.

In general they are all the little things you may want to remember or track that aren't really something on your to do list, like writing what dinners you have planned or noting that you watched episode 47 on your 230 episode series so you can pick up where you left off next time you have a day to binge. 

These also come in handy to look back at your week and see that you haven't posted on Instagram in a few days or taken your daily walk in over a week... but who's judging? 

It's just nice to know.

I tend to use them has things I have done or would like to do, like call my parents, rather than the tasks I have to do which go on my To Do lists.

On the left, you have a sheet of half and quarter boxes.

The confusing part is that the half boxes are 1 inch tall while the quarter boxes are a half inch tall.

What?

This is because they are based off the Erin Condren Life Planner boxes which are 1.5 wide by 2 inches tall, therefor 1 inch is half the height and .5 is one quarter.

Now it makes sense. 

The sheet on the right is called a sampler sheet. It has a weekend banner, a bunch of fun little stickers for tracking chores and free time, clocks and cars for appointments or errands, checklist flags, regular flags, and a few boxes for the sidebar. The blue box is for a weekly schedule (work, cleaning, exercise) and the two red boxes are called habit trackers for things you want to try to do daily, like take a walk, drink your water, write a blog post... if you're good at things like that.

Then there are those two rows of little square icons. I recently made mine square (they are often round) because I wanted to be able to line them up in the ombre checklist boxes (below) without running into other lines and to layer them on the littles boxes when I might need a pet reminder instead of an exercise reminder, or whatever.  

And last we have the washi sheet (top) 

and the ombre checklist boxes (bottom)

The washi sheet is one I have a love-hate relationship with. It's basically made up of long sticker strips that act like washi tape to cover up extra space at the bottom or top of your planner page, and several 1.5" box-width mini strips in varying heights to fill in or decorate here and there in your spread. I do like the long washi also known as the bottom washi... (yes, bottom washi is a hilarious term if you have an eleven year old boy around). It can really pull the whole page together and is often my favorite thing to design. But all those little box-width strips can be a real tricky balance of usually overwhelming pattern to my simple taste.

And for every time I have an odd little strip of space that I absolutely need a little piece of washi to fill in for that seamless no-white-space look... I have a half a sheet of unused pieces that really have no purpose. 

In this spread you can see the bottom washi of the adorable sleeping fox stacked with the floral strip at the bottom of the page, and I used some of the box-width washi layered behind the weekend banner to help it stand out without covering up the decorative full boxes above it.

The ombre checklist boxes, however, win my prize for favorite workhorse. In this spread, I used them as the top row, but they tend to move around the page week to week. I use them in my everyday, in the sidebar, I cut them in half when I need extra at the bottom or short lists for relaxing days... they are always a fully used sheet of stickers in my weekly planning.

And now I fully understand why most Plan With Me's are done as videos! 

If I haven't completely lost you, I will be showing more of this in a separate Plan With Me post tomorrow. 

I know you're excited.

Once again, thanks for sticking with me... get it? Sticking?

Ok, no more of that.

And if anyone out there actually read this far, please leave me a comment to let me know I'm not alone. I appreciate it.