With school and work moving online, gatherings cancelled and pretty much every appointment put on hold, many people have jokingly expressed their disappointment at having bought a 2020 planner. While for many it might seem like a cruel irony, some are getting creative with their planners. Whether it’s repurposing it into an art journal or spending time decorating calendar pages, creativity is not cancelled. If anything, we think it has been enhanced during these months of trying to find a new normal.
We reached out to three talented #PeopleOfPaperblanks who are using their dayplanner in an inspiring and creative way. Here is a snapshot of their quarantine-era planners.
Shanti Rughoobur
Shanti is a French illustrator and scenographer. Born in Toulouse, Shanti attended the National School of Fine Arts in Paris and graduated in 1992. She now lives and works in Montreuil, France.
With the tip of her pencil, Shanti grasps pieces of life and captures them in her collection of Paperblanks journals, whether she’s travelling through Brittany or India, riding the subway, or visiting museums and the stage of a Parisian theater. During the confinement period in Montreuil, Shanti decided to turn her Schubert, Erlkönig Flexi Dayplanner into an art journal, filling it with sketches made using watercolour and Indian ink. “This planner punctuated this strange daily life where everyone had gotten into a different rhythm,” says Shanti. “It allowed me to keep an artistic connection by transforming the passage of time into colorful notes and milestones.” It became a daily rendezvous for her, and then during the deconfinement stage, she resumed sketching in her regular unlined journals.
Check out Shanti’s full Paperblanks Sakura India travel journal here.
Kate Becher
Kate is a German journalism student and a skilled handlettering enthusiast who loves planners.
Even before the pandemic Kate has always decorated the interior of her planner using gel pens, stickers, washi tape and ephemera – special items she has either collected over the years or been gifted by her recently launched worldwide pen pal exchange network. But as attending university pivoted, Kate applied herself to getting even more creative with her planner. “A lot of things have changed,” she says. “All our appointments for university are online now and we have to structure our timetable ourselves. That’s the reason why I use and decorate my planner even more than before. I couldn’t keep all the stuff I have to do in my head, and decorating it made everything more fun.”
See more of Kate’s work here.
Christelle Bouvier
Ever since she was a young girl Christelle has explored the creative world, falling in love with all things stationery, particularly notebooks and journals, which she fills with various types of media and materials to create all the imaginings of her mind. As she is also an avid writer, she uses her Paperblanks Day-at-a-Time planner as a journal to write down daily musings and drawings. “I write everything, all the time and everywhere!” says Christelle. “I have been keeping a journal for four years now in which I write all my daily life, my feelings, my ideas, and in addition I include drawings, paintings, collages. This year my heart landed on an Aurelia dayplanner and it makes my ritual particularly soothing, luxurious and pleasant.”
See more of Christelle’s work here.
How are you using your planner these days? We’d love to hear your creative ideas!
