Let me say, it's been a long a road to get to creative journaling, but knowing how I ended up here may help you find a new hobby you LOVE, and honestly, that's the whole point of this Patreon!

If you don't have time to read this whole thing, here's the main flow. 

• I love using a paper planner.

• Paper planners are expensive when you have an aesthetic you're going for.

• I stay at home, so I don't actually have plans most days.

• I love when people decorate their planners like crazy (like Happy Planner videos, seriously!), but my brain gets antsy if I try to do it. What if an appointment comes up???

• I tried digital planning and journaling for a long time, but I just really need that tactile element of the paper. Nothing beats turning a page.

• I don't even know how, but I ended up on Junk Journal TikTok one day when I was avoiding seeing any more political videos. I fell in love with the idea.

• As much as I loved the freedom of Junk Journaling and the aesthetic, I do not have the patience for a true junk journal. I also cannot stand clutter and saving lots of junk makes my skin crawl.

• In looking for what would work for me, I found people who called themselves Creative Journalers. THIS FELT LIKE HOME.

• I wanted to have the pretty spreads, but I am TERRIBLE at drawing- even circles- unless I'm on an iPad and have stabilization and all the helping tools. So I started creating printables that I could cut and tape in!

And, here's why I love it-

• I use a regular notebook, so if I skip a day, that's fine. There's no date holding me to filling a page if nothing happens that day that I want to write about.

• I don't have to build anything from scratch.

• I don't have to hoard junk. I can print off the sheets I want to use that day, and just save the few pieces I don't use for later.

• I can switch my layout or style any time I want to. If I want to start planning one month in my journal, and stop the next, I can make the spreads work for me.

• I can incorporate things from SO MANY SMALL CREATORS! Anyone who makes stickers or planner inserts- just buy some and cut them to fit your spreads!

• I can use the best of every style, and change, so it keeps me engaged and ENJOYING journaling, rather than feeling like it's another chore to check off.

• I truly enjoy creating new pieces to use in my journal, just as much as I enjoy my actual journal!

• There is something AMAZING about the way paper with things taped or glued to it feels as you flip the pages. I know journaling is good for your mental health, but I am telling you a notebook filled with pages of tuck spots, pockets, pictures, and whatever else you want to tape in- IT HEALS THE SOUL! 

Ok, so those are the main points about how I got to where I am today, and how 37 Raccoons really got started. I just wanted things I could use in my own journal, even if they had nothing to do with what I was journaling about. I wanted the pages to be different, fun, pretty, aesthetic... and honestly, a lot of times I just don't have a lot to write about. So I wanted to just tape in pieces that I was "feeling" that day.

The Longer Version with Some Back Story

THE BACK STORY

A little about me, I often refer to myself as a "functioning ADHDer." I've never actually been diagnosed with ADHD, because I've got two kids and we move every two years, and its hard enough to get an appointment to refill the migraine medication I ABSOLUTELY NEED in order to function day to day. Making another appointment and being tested to either be told I have ADHD, or that I don't so there's some other reason my brain operates the way it does... it's just not a priority for me. I've got things to organize.

So anyway, I'm the type of person who has learned that if something needs to be done, I'm doing it RIGHT NOW and I'm getting it finished because I don't want it hanging over my head. What if something comes up, or I get sick, and now I can't finish on time? Nope, doing it now. I'm also the type of person who hyper fixates on EVERYTHING. I had a friend give me a deck of oracle cards one Christmas, and 3 months later I had 27 decks of Tarot cards, 5 best selling books on tarot, and signed up for two online courses learning how to read tarot. If you take a look at who I follow on my personal instagram account, you can easily see each fixation, because I find everyone and anyone who does that thing and I follow them.

Over a period from about 2019 to now at the end of 2024, I became obsessed with aesthetic paper stuff. I have always wanted to be someone who journals, but I'm also pretty boring and I don't like reflecting on things on paper. It's not the reflecting as much as its the fact that my hand writing sucks, my brain goes way too fast for my hand, I have to slow down to write what I'm thinking, and then I lose my train of thought. Deep journaling for me feels like walking into the kitchen and forgetting what you're there for, over and over again. I will have a great thought midway through writing 3 sentences back, and by the time it's time to write that amazing quote- POOF. It's gone.

So that's how I got on my planner kick. I started with Happy Planner and in the Big Size, because I have big writing so that made sense, right? It didn't, that was way too big. I bounced to Classic and Skinny and Mini. Oddly, at that time, I felt mini was too small. It's now my go-to, but I had never used anything that small and it just felt cramped back then.

With planners comes following planning accounts on social media, and in 2020, I had a LOT of time to spend on social media while my kid was "attending school" on his iPad. I really wanted to have all those pretty spreads people had in their Happy Planner, but like, where do you write your dentist appointment? And honestly, when I layered stickers, it never looked like that. It was a mess. I wanted it, but my brain just saw clutter when I tried it and it drove me crazy. I kept following all of the accounts, and one day this woman I follow from Scentsy (Jacqui Duran, she seems really nice and I love the energy she puts into everything she does) was using a digital planner. WHAT IS THAT? I was obsessed.

So, naturally, I bought an iPad and an Apple Pencil at like 3 am as I was going down the digital planning rabbit hole. I tried planners from The Daily Planners (her stuff is amazing and so aesthetically pleasing. She really puts a ton of work into everything). I liked it, but it wasn't "me." She uses a lot of pink tones, and blue is my favorite color. So then I found Isa at PrintStick, and her planners a whole different vibe, and equally amazing. Again, things I wanted to tweak to work for me because it just wasn't PERFECT. Well, Isa had a YouTube video on how to make a planner in Keynote on your iPad. So I did that.

After about 27 planners made in Keynote, I wanted to know how Tess at The Daily Planners was making her realistic looking planners, so I started a new quest. I did all the research. I went to Custom Scene and bought the photoshop elements for everything realistic I could want. I paid for the licensing. I bought the full subscription to Adobe, which I had never used before. I spent a week learning the how, and then for 3 years I perfected designing and making digital planners and realistic stickers, and selling them on Etsy.

Somewhere in mid 2022 to early 2023, I really stopped using my own digital planner. If I was going to pull out a phone or iPad, I was just going to add a note in either the notes app or my Apple calendar. I still loved creating, but the truth is that I get bored REALLY EASILY. I love the excitement of a NEW digital planner, a new layout, new colors. Creating hyperlinked digital planners just didn't make it easy to change and still use that convenience of the hyperlinks.

Anyway, I got REALLY frustrated, and during a time when everyone was adding all these extra Google Calendar links and Apple Calendar shortcuts to digital planners and then selling them for next to nothing, I decided I was DONE. It was ridiculous that I was spending literal months creating hyperlinks just for MRR/PLR shops on Etsy to sell full shop access for $2. I wouldn't mind if I was creating something I at least enjoyed, but I was still spending money elsewhere to get the paper planner that I actually did my planning in. So, I quit with digital planners. (I do still make some fun hyperlinked files from time to time, but just for fun!)

So for the next step, I fell back in love with paper planning. I tried creating printables, but my heart wasn't in the planner printable scene. Honestly for my planner, I wanted that really buttery amazing paper. I really love the feel of paper. It's like taking your shoes off and standing in grass and just feeling grounded to something. I tried a bunch of different places. I loved how Plum Paper let you add all of your personal events and birthdays to the calendar so you didn't have to write them every year. I still think Erin Condren has the BEST texture and thickness of paper, but I'm a disc bound girl, because as I said above I like to change things up ALL THE TIME. Discs let me do that.

I settled into Cloth and Paper, because I love the minimal aesthetic. Not so much to stay minimal, but because it's easy to add just about anything and it doesn't clash with super colorful tabs or dashboards or whatever. Over time, while I still love Cloth and Paper, I've found a lot of their stuff to be just a little TOO executive minimal aesthetic (and it's an expensive setup, especially if you change constantly). So I now have a mix of C&P for dashboards and amazing clear tabbed dividers, plus some amazing super colorful discs and amazing monthly and weekly inserts from Jane's Agenda.  I also love Poi & Hun for sticky notes and some other inserts, as they have a decent selection for Mini HP size at great prices!

With all of the back and forth I've done with planners, one thing I realized is that I need a layout to plan with, because when something comes up, I want to just put it on the day when it's going to happen. If I make a dentist appointment for 4 months from now, I need to write it down. I can't count out pages and draw boxes and all the things. As much as I envy people who bullet journal and use that style for a planner, that's just not something I can make work for my brain.

So FINALLY, in late 2024, I came to the realization that I am a whole adult and I can have a planner for plans, and a JOURNAL for all the things I love about bullet journals and sticker planner people.

THE START OF CREATIVE JOURNALING

One night in late summer of 2024 when my insomnia was going full force, I went down a TikTok rabbit hole while avoiding political videos because that seemed to be all there was. I started on DigitalCourt (her style of planning on iPad is awesome, check her out!) and somehow ended up on junk journals. I had never heard of junk journals, but I always knew that scrapbooking wasn't for me. I did not have patience for keeping all the things and making this stuff that all went together perfectly, and honestly we move way too much as a military family to keep hauling all those supplies around. But I really liked the people who were junk journaling- not so much the full aesthetic just empty paper stuff, but the people who were actually journaling to some degree.

I looked more into this junk journaling thing, and I really liked the tags and ephemera aspects of the fancy junk journal people, but I do NOT have the patience for all that sewing or making signatures or whatever. The regular "put your junk in a journal" people... I hate saving crap. My husband jokes that I've got issues, but I will cross the house to put something 3 inches over in the spot that it goes because I can just feel that it's out of place. I like clean counters so they're easy to wipe down every morning and night. I don't like knickknacks because that's a lot to move when I dust. I'm not a "save things just in case we can use it one day" type of person.

Hovering around the junk journal community is this "creative journaling" community, or art journaling. This community is a lot more accepting of just about anything that makes you happy. Junk journalers have this back and forth on if you have to make your own journal, can you buy things, can you include this... not creative journalers. Seriously, just check out both hashtags and see the difference in the vibes!

I felt a lot more accepted, even though I wasn't actually even journaling yet, in this creative community. Now, full disclosure, I am not a "crafty" or "creative" person. Stick figures are it for me, and even those are bad. I don't even like coloring with crayons because of the white areas that I don't have patience to fill in. Anyway, I spent HOURS watching creative journalers. And the crazy thing was I was seeing SO MANY PEOPLE who used Happy Planners and stickers to create their journals. It was like I had come full circle to where it all started- but these people weren't planning. They were doing something I had already pretty much decided I wanted to get into.

THE START OF 37 RACCOONS

Ok, so this is how we got here. As I mentioned, I LOVED the vibe I got from this community I fell into by accident. I wanted to be part of this, and so I grabbed an old disc bound planner I had and just started taping shit in it. Just playing and seeing what it was like. What would my style be? Do I actually have patience for this stuff?

I wanted to make some fun spreads, but again- no real artistic ability outside of the iPad. So, I dug back into my digital sticker making stash and printed some things, cut them, and taped them in. PERFECT! I grabbed some of my old patterns I had made to create digital stickers- another amazing spread!

I printed a few of the planner sticker sheets I had made from way back in Happy Planner Classic land. I loved how these stickers let me add in notes in fun little boxes, like what I want to try to cook on the Blackstone. It made it pretty, it made my pages feel extra awesome when I turned them... I was SOLD!

Also, here comes another fixation... I started creating the things that I was falling in love with watching all of these videos that other people were making. Junk they were collecting from magazines and restaurants and all these other places, saving it all and cutting it into shapes and creating all these layers. I didn't have that junk, and I didn't want to go get that junk. It would cost a lot of money to buy all that junk... so I just made it.

I bought some templates to see what a typical "junk journal kit" would include. I took ideas from that and built some templates in Photoshop, which I still have from way back when because you never know when the subscription is going to come in handy. I used Midjourney to create some amazing, cohesive themes really quickly. I opened up my old Photoshop files and started making some patterns in new color combinations. Then, I started combining the different templates I made with the patterns and things I was making.

I ACTUALLY LOOKED FORWARD TO OPENING MY JOURNAL EVERY NIGHT! 

I would just create stuff, and then put it on a page and fall in love with the colors, or the textures, or something about it. But I really found something I love doing. I can create micro-fixations in my journal. It can be colors, textures, animals, whatever... and it can go on for pages until I'm sick of it, and I can switch. I can just write. I can not write at all and just tape things in.

In doing all of this, I realized it's literally the paper that I love. I wanted to have plans to have one of "those" planners that is so fun to flip through. But I don't have many plans.  So now I can just make things up. Write a story. Bitch about that neighbor that has a whole car engine in their side yard. Whatever. And I can make it look pretty, or cute, or fun... and tomorrow I can do whatever I want and it can be entirely different. And I. LOVE. THAT.

So, if you've ever had any thoughts like this, I don't want you to waste the money that I have wasted over the years buying the planners and chasing the dream of some book that brought me joy. I decided that everything I create, I want you to have. I am not independently wealthy, and I do still have other fixations that I spend money on, so I do have to charge a little bit to cover my time and all the things I subscribed to along the way to get all the bits and pieces that make all off this "junk" actual high quality amazing images that you can use. But, I want it to be affordable, and if you decide it's not for you, I want you to still walk away feeling good.

THAT is why my Patreon is the model that it is. One price and you get everything. Pick out what you like, download it, print it, use it. Come back next month and do the same. I will be here creating because I like change- I want something new for next week. And when I create it, I'm going to add it to the shop. And if you're subscribed, you can come download it without dropping your hard earned money into endless supplies to try something out. Take the money you save and buy a better printer for all the amazing pictures you want to print to add to your journal, or the amazing Olive and Archer journal that you really want to write in, or some fun stamps or sticker books. If you're looking for fun stuff to layer and add to the empty spaces, and some little tutorials along the way, that's what I'm here for!  

Just for fun, here's some other things I've fixated on-

Digital Planning- I saw someone use a digital planner in Goodnotes, and decided I wanted to do that too. I bought 4 different planners, and soon decided that they didn't work for me. So I paid for a year of Adobe All Apps, made a ton of planners, started an Etsy, made realistic stickers, and sold a decent amount. I got to a point that I hated even looking at a digital planner because it just didn't work for me, and I was creating things I couldn't even use.

Bread Making- This is a current one... but not the same as it started. I became obsessed with sourdough. To be honest- I don't even like the sour taste. But I wanted to see if I could do it. Turns out, I could. I made and kept a starter alive. Bought all the things. Proved that I could do it. Now I make regular yeast bread, and I use the super expensive bread machine to do all of my kneading and mixing. But seriously, if you like bread and want it to be easy, the Zojirushi is worth it!  

Notion- This one was short lived because the interface on iPad drove me insane. But these templates were in my digital planner store for awhile.

Paper Planning- Don't get me wrong, I still love paper planning. But I became obsessed with the perfect planner, to the point that I achieved the highest reward level at Cloth and Paper in about 2 weeks. I have full set ups, including leather covers, for 3 sizes of planners. I only use Mini HP size now. And I still switch out inserts about every 3 months because something else looks shiny... errr... better. Keep in mind, I RARELY HAVE PLANS.

Tieks Ballet Flats- Don't even get me started on how many pairs of Italian Leather ballet flats I own because they fold in half! Note- I usually wear flip flops or Uggs if it gets too cold. And again, I barely leave the house most of the time unless I'm taking my kids somewhere- and usually ballet flats aren't the shoes for that activity. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE them and they're super comfy, but I have no business owning over 20 colors to match the ONE real outfit I put on if I need to be somewhere.

Walking- Ok, this one was actually good and I was in amazing shape. But obsessive is an understatement. My best friend got a FitBit while I was living in Italy and my husband was deployed. My oldest son was around 3. We did one of those step challenges, and then it was on. I legit woke up at 6 am (my son always slept until 9 am) because I wanted to do a marathon. I walked IN MY DINING ROOM for over 8 hours. Just doing circles. Just to say I did it. I had to get a minimum of 10,000 steps every single day. It was crazy.

Running- I'm not good at running, so this one didn't get as bad as walking. But I did have about a year and a half straight where I didn't miss a single day of running at least a 5k.

Pair Eyeglasses- This one is current. I wear contacts daily. But do I have over 20 toppers to switch out on my glasses to match outfits I theoretically could wear one day? Yep.

Smell Good Stuff- Scentsy, Yankee Candles, jelly wax melts, all of it. I've hoarded and never used half of it. So many warmers and diffusers everywhere. Right now I'm IN LOVE with Columbia Fragrance Company. Her diffuser oils are top notch and Walt's World (or something like that, it's definitely Walt something) is THE BEST SCENT EVER. Trust me, I've got through so many scents. Fun fact- my favorite Scentsy scent is Bonfire Beach.