Erin Condren Monthly + NEW Work-Life Balance Planner!

Hey guys, welcome to Amanda's Favorites. This is the Erin Condren monthly launch. Let's see what's in here. I did not bring the box up here. I just picked this up out of the box because the box was super dirty. You know how those get sometimes in shipping. But I have not looked at any of this. Let's do an initial look-see together and then I will figure out everything about the products and come back and we will do a full review. So many people use the Erin Condren monthly planner. So they have put one of their new snap-on vegan leather covers on here. We will talk all about those because I have tested some of those out. So they sent me the canvas option. This is what we're looking like. We'll talk about it in detail in the video. I've seen many people use a monthly kind of like a bullet journal when they only need a monthly spread. And then they like to be able to plan out their weeks in different ways. So we will jump into that. But these monthly planners are launching on June the 4th along with some of these other new products. Sticky note booklet. Let's open this baby. Interesting. Oh. Okay, this is really interesting. Wow, it really opens like a book and all different kinds of sticky notes. I've never seen anything like this. I love the packaging on it. Sticky note booklet, washi tape. Sticker pack is in here. Okay, so this folds over to hold it. Kind of like a matchbook to me. Oh, interesting. So it makes it very portable to stick in the pocket of like a folio or something like that. And then we have dual tip dot and chisel tip markers. Says glitter. I wonder, I don't think they write with glitter though. Well, maybe they just mean the outside of them with that. Well, we'll see. And we have a work-life balance planner. Focus on what matters. Okay, this is brand new to me. Life, work, priorities, lists, and gratitude. And it looks at that goes throughout. Okay, this is gonna be fun to figure out and review. Brand new planner there. And then this big, my projects. I love these big pads of theirs. This paper is the same like thick 80 pound paper that is in your planner. And it's on these huge pads. So project and different weeks and status of the project. All right, guys, I'm gonna prep this review and then we're gonna get into all these products. If you're thinking of picking up any products from Erin Condren and you're not already supporting another creator, consider using my affiliate link when you purchase. It only takes a couple of seconds and it supports me more than you'd think. I also have a $10 off link for your very first Erin Condren purchase. It's down there in the description. All right, now that I've had a chance to go through these, this is a really cool new product, you guys. I can't wait to share it with you. So stick around for this, but we're gonna go through the monthly planner first since this is the monthly planner launch. And while we're going through this planner, we'll touch on all the accessories because I tried them all out in this planner. So to start off with, let's talk about the interchangeable vegan leather cover because I know a lot of people haven't tried these. It's bendable, but very thick. It is this nice feeling vegan leather and it pops on and off really easily. The only complaint I've heard about these because I haven't used one for any extended period of time is I had a friend that used one and she said like over time, the grease and stuff from your fingers or if you put oil on your face or who knows if you're eating French fries even, get to where it shows those smudges on her vegan leather cover. I think she had a darker color though, like the Wisteria color. So I don't know if they've improved on that with any type of better coating because that was like a year ago, I remember that I was talking to her about that. But that is something to note. I have also heard that if you bulk up your planner with a lot of stickers, the vegan leather cover does pop off more easily than the laminated covers. And so possibly that might become a problem if you're someone who bulks up your planner. So those are just things to think about with the vegan leather cover. But other than that, I really love the way they feel in hand. So if you need a more plain professional looking cover or if just aesthetically you prefer that type of cover, then you might wanna check out using one of these. The inside of this one has the canvas theme. I don't know what the inside of the different colors have on there. And this one, of course, matches the canvas planner that they sent me. They added a gold coil, which is always a $10 upgrade if you want gold, rose gold, or their new sunrise coil this year. I don't even know if the sunrise is available on the monthly planner. I'm guessing it would be. I have the seven by nine monthly planner, which the base price is $47.50. Of course, the coil adds another $10. If you add a cover with anything metallic on it, then that adds $5. Those are just things to think about as you are building your planner. You guys know me, I almost always pick the colorful. So I would pick the evolve, but we didn't get to choose which planner was in our box this time. So I have the canvas. You start out with your nameplate page and you have that canvas design in there. And I actually just did a video where I have my entire Erin Condren launch order. I have every layout in that video and every design theme so that you can see them all next to each other. I just released that video last week. We'll put that link down in the description for you. That as well as my launch box video that I was sent has detailed walkthroughs of the planners and a lot of their accessories from launch too. All right, let's jump into this one. The monthly planner is something that not every company does and therefore it's very popular with Erin Condren. All their tabbed pages are the same as in their weekly planners. They are thick cardstock paper. You have your 2024 and 2025 view because this is a academic year. You can also choose a calendar year. So this one starts in July and ends in June of 2025. You have your 12 boxes for the year, the same as in your weekly planner. You can of course label these by months or you can use them for other purposes like what books did you read? You know, what shows were you watching? Or you can use them for different goals and then action steps below your goal or just a list of gratitudes per month. Or it can be your typical, you know, birthdays, anniversaries, vacations and travel and stuff. I always used to use these boxes for things like our doctor appointments. So like mammograms, dentist, eye doctor, when do we go to them throughout the year? So I can keep track of that. And also bills that would charge at like only once a year or every six months or every quarter. So those bills that were not like your normal every month bills. Those are just a few ideas of ways to use your 12 boxes. Then we go into the layout. We have a lined page on the back and opposite that is your monthly page. Canvas is your neutral design. So there is no color in this planner. There is a monthly quote and a monthly abbreviation on the front with all your little asterisks and a light gray and all your tabs are light gray. Then you go into your monthly layout. It is your typical Sunday start. You have your nice header here on Erin Condren that you could use stickers with. And I know lots of people like to use sticker kits in neutral planners. And I wasn't even planning on sharing this in this video but Hand Come Plan is an amazing sticker company who I'm friends with the owner of. And I absolutely love her stickers. She just launched these new decor kits and I'm gonna be doing an extensive like decorate plan with me on my new Erin Condren planner set up when July comes with these. But I just thought I'd pop them in here because they just came and I was so excited about them. I used them in my Erin Condren last year. Her sticker quality is absolutely amazing. And you guys know me, I love decorative stickers that flow with the seasons, that also celebrate the holidays. They flow with the Erin Condren monthly colors if you use the colorful evolve. If you don't, she has a whole bold blooms decor kit here that we can look at too. And of course she offers weekly sticker kits. So if you are a sticker person and you have not checked out Hand Come Plan, I have an ongoing discount code with her. It will be down in the description. And if I have any other special code just on these kits, which I know she has offered me before when I've put them in videos, then I will put that in the description down there too. So if you are purchasing from Hand Come Plan, make sure you check the description for a code. But this is her bold blooms kit. It's all blooms, okay? And it goes with that design for this year. These not only would do great in Erin Condren, honestly, they would do great in any planner or any journal. I can even see them in Hobonichi's. I can see them in Passion Planners. So I don't think you have to be an Erin Condren user to use one of these, but this is her decorative bold blooms kit. This is her decorative Evolve kit, which just really celebrates the seasons and the holidays, which you guys know is totally my jam. I cannot wait to use these. I mean, look at these, you guys. The colors used match Erin Condren perfectly. I mean, October's my favorite. I did not expect at all to pull these out and gush in this video, but they just arrived and I'm looking at this neutral planner and I'm thinking these would be absolutely stunning in a neutral planner. Not only will they go with Evolve, but if you just want to add a pop of color to your canvas planner, these sticker kits would be amazing. And this is her functional kit also, which matches Erin Condren Evolve, but she has ones that match bold blooms too with all your functional boxes for appointments and you have sick days and birthdays and paydays. And you also have the cute month written. And like I said, I'll have an upcoming video showing these more in detail when I decorate with them. All right, but let's get back to the planner. As you can see, we had a little issue with these dot markers bleeding through. We will talk about that, but let's just look. It's your Erin Condren calendar with holidays at the bottom in a light gray. Light gray leading in and out of the month. Your note section on the right. And this note section makes me remember that we just launched my first set of habit trackers, a yearly habit tracker, monthly habit trackers, and weekly habit trackers to be able to stick in your planner. And the monthly habit tracker would go great here. Even though in the monthly planner, you do have habit trackers, but if perhaps you want to track more than four habits per month, or I just personally love the setup of my habit tracker to focus on one thing for those 31 days, it's little drops in a bucket. You can click on my store down below if you want to check those out. After your monthly layout, then you come to the bulk of the monthly planner. Okay, guys, this was something that I heard a lot about last year. I did not review the monthly planner last year, but I do have one because a friend sent me hers who actually did not want to use it after these changes. She tried to use it, and she's a lover of the monthly planner, but some of the changes. So this is the first time they changed the dashboard last year. And this gives you an idea what the dashboard might look like in color this year. Of course, this is last year's design. This is not evolved design. But here is an important thing to note. Something that bothered her were the colorful dots showing through on her monthly layout. And I can understand that even with the Erin Condren thick paper, you can see the monthly dots when they're colorful. You cannot see them when they're in light gray on canvas. But as you are going to color them in or mark them out, as you can see, using these Erin Condren new dual tip dot and chisel tip markers, these are bleeding through badly with the dot. So I can't recommend these because the dots are bleeding through and really nothing else bleeds through on Erin Condren paper, and even it bled through to there. So that is something to really think about. We'll talk about it more when we get to these markers. So these changes to the dashboard last year, because this dashboard is different than the dashboard in your weekly planner, I know some people loved it and some people didn't because it's basically telling you what to put where. Your goals go up here, your important dates, your important projects, and your tracking. So I know the big question this year was gonna be, are there any changes to this? There are not any changes. It is the same as last year. So I am sorry, my dear friend. I know you're gonna be disappointed that it did not change back this year. So your monthly planner has a monthly dashboard page, and then you have 10 lined notes pages. I have seen people do so many things with these 10 lined note pages. What they do is they turn it into kind of a bullet journal, like weekly spreads. So whatever they need throughout the month for their weeks. So technically, if you needed two pages per week, this could give you a two page per week spread if it was four weeks, and then you have an extra two pages, because there's 10, but they would not be a spread to see at the same time. So what a monthly planner offers you is just the flexibility of only having a monthly and having 10 notes pages. Whether you just want those 10 notes pages to make a daily list, whether you wanna draw kind of like a bullet journal, like spread for your month. I know my friend who used it as her monthly, I absolutely love what she did. She drew a series of boxes, like one would be self care and health, one would be to do's for the week, one is a spiritual box, one said a smaller box relationships, one said finance, and one said professional slash continuing education. So basically she had drawn a series of boxes, it was like a bullet journal like spread, and she labeled her week up here, so she would use a page per week in here, have her dashboard and have her monthly layout. The reason why I've heard some people don't like this dashboard is because they like their blank sections to work with, they didn't need a habit tracker and that's taking up a lot of room that used to be dot grid. So those are some complaints I heard last year, but then I also heard some people who like it because they love having a monthly habit tracker on here and they didn't wanna have to draw out their own. So I'd love to hear your thoughts down below. And especially if you're a monthly planner user, I'd love to hear how you use your notes pages back here to give us all ideas. I've also heard people using this as like a budget or a finance planner. There are lots of pages to record expenses and do any kind of charts that you want. And then you also have just your monthly spread to record, you know, bills, expenses, or if you record how much you spend each day or your paychecks. So I think this makes a great budget or finance planner with a lot of flexibility too. Now let's talk about the paper. It is your same 80 pound amazing Erin Condren paper with tooth to it, which is like a little bit of texture, which grabs the pen and ink and marker. You know, so many people love Erin Condren paper, including me. I was actually surprised. Let's talk about these markers. I'm surprised that these markers bled through. These are dot markers that say glitter at the top. And I was like, where's the glitter? I mean, they're really cute on the side. And I thought, wow. I mean, a lot of like tween to teen girls, I feel like would love this set of markers. It's just, it's fun. It's sparkly looking. And one end is a dot marker and that has glitter in it. I will try to show you to show up in the video. And the other end is just your chisel tip highlighter. And so I've tested them all here. I'm gonna try to show you so you can see the little bit of shimmer. Some of the colors show the shimmer better. I feel like the light aqua blue and the hot pink probably show the shimmer the very best. But as you can see, we had all this bleed through on the page and even bleed through to here. So I mean, unless you're gonna be using these on poster board I think most people don't want, you know, their whole page ruined with bleed through with the dot marker. I mean, I thought it was a good idea because marking your habit tracking, you just do a little dot and I just went along here and I just did a little dot. And I don't feel like I pushed extra hard and yet, you know, we have the same bleed through thing on our monthly layout. So I can't recommend them for this. Now, if you are just marking off your habit tracker on here, let's say with a pink check mark, you are not gonna see it. I do not see that there. But these markers, they are very inky. And a couple of these I would use as highlighters for my studies, probably the light blue and the light green. And I would say the rest of the colors, maybe the peach. These colors are probably too dark for me. I don't love using dark highlighters in like my study books. So those are my thoughts on the glitter dual tip dot and chisel tip markers. These are 1650 for a pack of six. It lists the colors on the back. And of course shows you how you can make a smaller to a bigger dot. So those are the markers. And as much as I'm saying the markers are not winners for me, I think the monthly planner is a winner. I think it's great that they offer the monthly planner. All of this will be up today on their website on June the 4th, except for one item in this video that I'm showing you later in the video, the monthly project desk pad will not be out until June the 11th. When you get to the end of this planner, I am guessing this is one of their extra add-on sections that we talked about in their launch video this year. They've added on a productivity section unless something changed and they're just adding this to the monthly planner, which I don't think so. It wasn't in my email note. So this would be an additional cost and add-on section kind of like you can do in your yearly planner. This is adding a productivity section on. So you get a tab and it has three line sections for three different lists. You have ticked checkoff boxes. You have a big box here and then you have opposite it a dot grid page. I like this productivity layout. I think it could be used for a lot of things, planning a party, planning a project, planning a goal, planning your new school year, your summer, just it's some great notes pages, project planning pages. Then you have your heritage and awareness observances listed out. Then you have 2026 pre-planning back here with three lines below each month for being able to have some room to write and extra notes room at the bottom. Each planner comes with two sticker sheets. Of course, if you get the colorful evolve, they're going to be colorful. I'm sure they're offering this in bold blooms also if you get bold blooms and then you have your nice pocket front and back. Since my planner did not come with a ruler or with their perpetual calendar, I think that the monthly planner does not come with those things. I say that only because my launch box didn't come with the perpetual calendar packet either and that was just a mistake, but I do not believe your monthly planner comes with a ruler or a perpetual calendar little packet, which I am actually surprised about. So maybe it was left out of my launch box. I guess we'll find out once this is on the website. That is your seven by nine monthly planner. Now let's look at this new baby and the other accessories we have not talked about. You know what? Since I tested these in here, these little washi tape sticker pack, that's what this is called. This is called your washi tape sticker pack. And it's kind of like a matchbook, although mine is not staying hooked down like super well. So FYI on that, but maybe over time, like it's staying now. You just gotta bend it more. As I was pulling off some of these washi strips, already like my whole little thing came out. So that's an FYI. I don't know how well they're gonna stay in here. I wasn't pulling super hard, but I was just pulling off the first like one and as pulling it off two of these, which other one? Two of those already came out. This one too came out. So these are washi tape stickers though. I like the premise of them. I just don't think that they're all gonna stay in that book over time. It's like a little sticker. And at first I thought, oh, these are gonna be too hard to get off. But of course on camera, I'm not gonna be able to get it off. But actually I was able to get them off pretty easily when I was prepping this. There we go. So it's a thin washi tape, basically made into a sticker, you know, label size. So you're not having to tear anything and you can just stick it down. There's two habit tracker ones in there. There's a today one. And then there's just the striped ones. And this little book is 850. It has the beautiful color blends look in there. And if they would stay hooked in there, I think this is such a cute little travel thing because it could stick in any folio. It could even stick like in the pocket of your planner, like boom. And you can have it with you if you wish. The second thing is this tabbed sticky booklet, which I think is absolutely adorable. The packaging on this. I mean, look at this. You get all these different sticky notes and it truly folds like a book. You get your Monday through Sunday. So maybe this is your dinner planning or your big appointments for the week. You get your habit trackers. You get your just purple lines. You get your to-do list on khaki, a brown plain, a cute aqua with white. Although this would be hard to write on with most things. You'd have to have like a dark Sharpie marker and a purple dot grid here. Now I have tested this out. This is not your like 3M. There's no 3M or Post-it brand written anywhere on here. And they are, so they are not the super sticky. They are pretty thin paper. So you just need to know that also. And the other caution is when I pull off sheets, there's a tiny bit of sticky, not a lot, but a tiny bit left on the sheet below it where it will make it hard to write with pen on that area. So I really wish those issues were fixed because other than that, I think this is such an awesome product, especially the habit tracker and this weekly planning one that you could just plop it down in your monthly planner and use it for your weekly habit tracking, for your dinner plans. But I just feel like those issues with it are not great. It is really pretty thin. I mean, you can even see through it to the writing there and it sticks just fine right now, but I haven't been able to test it for a number of days. You know, I just don't think it's gonna have the hold that like Post-it brand does. You could use your double-sided sticky roller tape if you really loved these and just wanted to put them in there permanently. So that is my take on the Tabbed Sticky Booklet for $12.50. I am always completely honest with you guys. Now, this is probably my favorite product out of this entire box. I think the monthly planner is an awesome product, but this is really cool because it's new, Work Life Balance Planner. It is 25.50 for this A5 book. They have a how to use this planner. Your tabbed pages are the extra thick. They are your monthly pages and it's undated. So you can pick this up at any time you wish. Your monthly color is gonna just match the tab there. And as you can see, you have four months in here and four different colors. Your monthly color carries throughout all these pages. So you have a weekly overview page with Monday through Sunday, two lists. Then you can track up to four habits for the week. And this is your daily page. It is so interesting. And I really like the setup of it. You can circle the month you're in and the day, and then you have life and you have work. Life, you have up to five priorities and work, you have up to five priorities for the day. Then you have a list for each one. And then you have a gratitude at the bottom to end the day. I always love when gratitudes are thrown in and the bottom of the page is used in some way like that because it's harder to write on the bottom of the page. Anyway, it's their amazing thick 80 pound paper with tooth that it really handles all pens and all markers so well. I feel like if you're new to Erin Condren, you might have gotten a bad idea about their paper with these dot markers. Really, their paper handles, these are their dual tip markers. They don't sell these exact ones anymore, but these are thick and inky markers. And if you write in your gratitude the day for the day with that, you can see that it is a dark marker. So you can see a tiny bit of what was written there, but not hardly anything and no bleed through whatsoever. And most people aren't gonna be writing in their planner with a marker anyway, but I wanted to show you that, that it can actually handle markers. So then you have all your monthly undated pages. So nothing is wasted. If you jump in and out of this planner, if you use it for some days and you don't use it every day, if you don't use it over the summer, but you just use it during the school year or on work days. And when your month is up, you go straight into your next month, your next monthly color, and then your monthly pages for that month match. And there's your peach is your next monthly color. And this last section is not actually a month. So I just figured this out. This is a three month planner. Then you go into the last monthly section and it is actually meeting notes pages. So it says meeting topic, attendees, objective, lots of lines, next steps. And then you have your next meeting notes page and it rotates through these four colors that are in this planner and just gives you a whole section of meeting notes pages, which you could use for anything else. If you don't have that many work meetings, and then it comes with neutral stickers, important this week to do's and some labels, two sheets of those, and then that's it. So this is your work life balance planner. They put on here, writing it down is the first step. And I really like this new little product. I almost left this product out of the video cause it was kind of on the floor out of the way. This is your monthly project desk pad. It's not launching until June 11th. And actually I don't have a price on this one. It is your really thick air condor and paper. It looks like it's about 17 inches this way and 11 inches this way. So about 11 by 17. And you have, I really like the color they've used on here. You have your boxes that say project, project details, important dates, and then your week of. So each week of the month, what is your status on that project for up to five weeks? Or if you're working on it over a five week period, it doesn't have to be in the same month. What I'm focusing on. And then you have 10 very light lines for any action steps or to do's that you need to do. I feel like this is very aesthetically pleasing. And when you are done with the project, you can just tear that baby right off. It would make a great coloring page for your kids on the back because the paper is so thick. I do not know how many sheets are in here, but I'm sure it will be listed on the website. I'd love to hear your ideas about using this one also. I could see people maybe tearing it off and actually like putting it up on like a marker board or their wall and pulling it down when they need to write on it maybe so that it's like up there and you can see it. So that is the monthly project desk pad. So let me know what you think about everything in this video. I would love to hear your ideas about this new work-life balance planner. And then I wanna hear all your ideas about how you use the lined pages every month in your monthly planners. Thanks for being here, guys. Take care of yourselves so you can take care of others. And I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.