Join me as I use foraged mushrooms as inspiration for this month’s plan with me. September is still summer, but I classify it as a fall month, even though the temperature indicates otherwise.

What do you think of the fall season: pumpkins, corn mazes, falling leaves, and pumpkin spice? I think of lacing up walking shoes, crunching through a forest, and breathing in the crisp air. I’m not into foraging for snacks along the forest trail, but I like to see nature’s beauty.

September Plan With Me Inspiration: Foraged Mushrooms

The inspiration for September’s plan with me came from doodling some mushroom houses. Then I started studying the different mushroom shapes, and one thing turned into another.
Here’s a link to my Pinterest board with all sorts of mushroom houses & forest mushroom inspiration.

The mushroom houses are a great place to start a watercolor or gouache painting project. Gouache works very well in bullet journals. Better than watercolor, in my opinion. I think it’s because gouache sits on top of the paper rather than being absorbed. Even though the pages were simple, I used various styles with and without, giving each page a unique feel.

I find that my bullet journal is an excellent place to experiment with styles, especially week-to-week.

Plan With Me Video

September Plan With Me: Mushroom Covered Trees Welcome Page/Cover Page

I had a vision in my mind’s eye of how to create the bark for the September Welcome Page. In this case, I was grateful to use gouache paint so light paint could cover darker colors. Because I was a bit messy when it came to trying to make the bark texture.

After laying down the base color, I used a thin #2 round brush loaded with paint to gently apply paint as I twisted and turned the brush. This technique works best if your grip is loose and you adjust your hold to higher on the handle. I lost track of how many colors I used, but I think it was 5-6 and a combination of a couple of colors.

Once the bark colors were dry, I added the mushrooms to the trunk with lighter colors. The contrast of the mushrooms to the tree trunk helps emphasize them. Swirly lettering using a Crayola super tip marker finishes the page. All in all, I love this September cover page.

September Plan With Me: Monthly Calendar & Weekly Pages – Simple Mushroom Drawings & Layouts

For September’s Plan With Me calendar & weekly pages, I decided to go very simple.

I split each page into quarters for the weekly layouts, so each spread ended up with 8 sections. Many bullet journalists use the extra square in the design to write their to-do lists or other notes. I like to have a place for doodles. So that’s what I used the extra space to include. I didn’t stick with just one medium. Instead, I used a mix of Crayola markers and gouache to experiment with simple layers and shadows.

Since I’m starting a new journal this month (and going to try to keep it through December!), I decided to do a partial week for the first week. Since I do Monday-Sunday on my weeklies, it worked out perfectly on a spread.

My favorite page is the blue background with the morel mushroom closely followed by the page featuring mushrooms inspired by maitake and oyster mushroom clusters.

September’s Additional Plan With Me Pages

I always include a habit tracker page and a place for notes or a brain dump – although I might have to add another page at the end if I fill up this page. If I add another page for a brain dump, it will be called “foraged thoughts.”

I don’t know about you, but I hate to write numbers. For some reason, they always end up wonky or terrible. So I used a couple of my horizontal number stickers to combat this problem.

Products Used

Here are some of the products I used to create the mushroom-themed plan with me.

Getting Ready for the Month

I’m excited to venture into fall, and the theme for September’s plan with me provides extra motivation to break out sweaters and cozy blankets. I might not use them, but I sure am motivated. I love this back-to-school-almost-fall season.

In summary of this September plan with me, I think that simple layouts & foraged mushrooms are a perfect way to plan for fall in my bullet journal.