I don’t use traditional box format monthly calendars and haven’t done so for years. So I decided to make use of some Happy Planner monthly calendar inserts that came in the dashboard weekly extension pack I already had, and convert it into a weekly planner. If you’ve been thinking about buying a family planner or categories planner weekly spread, convert a monthly calendar first as the layouts are similar.

Before the Pen

The monthly calendar started on a Sunday and since I prefer a Monday week start I used some washi tape and stickers to cover it up. My go to is glitter washi tape as it’s not see through like most washi tapes. Stickers that are stuck to glitter washi tape don’t tend to stick as well as they do directly on paper so if you’re not referring to your planner keep it closed so the stickers don’t peel off.

After the Pen

I wanted to use my latest obsession (dot makers) but tie in with the colors that were already on the refill pages – purple and a green / mint / turquoise color. Thankfully the Tombow dot markers were a close match!

The only con of dot markers is that they tend to bleed through the page. I had a piece of printer paper underneath but the ink still went through the page I wrote on (but not through to the next page underneath as was the case when I tried them in the Plum Paper).

MAMBI pages have half the monthly calendar printed onto cardstock (as the other side is the monthly divider) and the right page printed onto paper. The dot markers didn’t show through on the cardstock page, only paper.

Not that you can tell all that easily, but I used 5 different pens for this spread. A reminder that a lot of pens have similar ink colors so if you can’t buy all the pens, don’t have too much FOMO!

This photo also shows why I like using dot markers – much more rounded than creating a circle yourself with a marker pen (like I did in the bottom row).