As some of you may know, I'm a planner girl. I rely on my Erin Condren planner to keep my life organized and not forget appointments, assignments, events, etc. Last week I saw that Erin Condren was having a 20% off sale so I decided to take the plunge and buy my 2017 planner. It ended up costing me about $80 Canadian, but I did have to pay $20 in duty (I hate duty), which is ok because it was still cheaper than my 2016 planner without that discount.
Here are a few pictures of my new planner. I went for the free cover option and went with the regular silver coils as it was the cheapest option available (I really only care about the planner itself). I also went for the colourful planner (there's now a neutral option!) because I tend to do more colour coordinated spreads instead of themed.
I chose this simple pink cover and was pleasantly surprised that the inside cover has lines to write with a dry erase / wet erase marker.
The non monthly or weekly pages are pretty similar with a few design changes. I won't show all of the pages because there are probably hundreds of other blog posts on this planner, but I will show a few.
Now the important part. The colours for the months have changed—some slightly and some drastically. I don't know if I like it yet or not, but it is going to force me to make quite a few changes to my stickers up on my etsy shop. While change is nice, it's a hassle and I do feel like a lot of people who make or use stickers will be upset at this, especially if they have a lot of colour coordinated stickers left over.
Besides the colour change, there are minor changes on the monthly layouts. The header is a bit taller, which once again will force several people to change their stickers (not me since I have yet to make this particular type of sticker) and the side bar looks a bit different, but nothing crazy.
Now onto the weekly spreads. The biggest change besides the colours being different is that there is no secondary colour. I actually really like this as it will make the sticker process easier and more customizable for me. The header now has a watercolour effect, which I love because mine always looked so bland when nothing was there. This header effect is also really cool because when months change, the colours transition instead of changing harshly.
Here is the colour fade at the header of the weekly layouts.
The stickers at the back of the planner are similar, but the colours are different again. The biggest change is that now several stickers are cut out in a flag style instead of the regular rectangular shape (but those are included as well).
There is still a perpetual calendar included, but I won't be using it unless I lose my 2016 one considering all of the important dates won't change. This one does look a lot cuter as well as the little pouches.
The pouch is now removable! This is a huge feature for me because it always made my 2016 planner SO heavy! On a day to day when I'm using it at school, the pouch does not matter to me as I'm not putting down stickers. I only really do this at home, where the pouch is needed. Thankfully, inside of the pouch there is a 3m coil clip so I can still stick the pouch in my planner securely, but I can just as easily take it out. I also love that there's a little zipper slider thing (no idea what it's called) instead of requiring us to pry the pouch open manually (which caused mine to rip at one of the sides).
Now for the little extras. Just like last year, I received a few stickers, but this time instead of little event dots I got those plus a few really cool stickers (that make me sad that I didn't order a full sticker book... but as Kathleen Lights would say "das expensive." Other freebies include a big sticker, a few compliment cards and two 20% off coupon codes that I can share. I won't be sharing those in this post, but fear not! I have an affiliate link that will save you 10% off your first order with Erin Condren and it's right here: https://www.erincondren.com/referral/invite/amysousa1012
Overall I'm really excited! I knew I wanted to completely redesign my colour-coordinated monthly spreads so I welcome the new colours (but hopefully I can find the colour codes somewhere really soon). I definitely recommend this planner if you're like me and need to write absolutely everything down to remember it! It's also a really fun hobby, though it can get very pricy.
Please feel free to ask any questions and I will try my very best to answer them :)
See you soon!
Amy
