Painted Moleskine Weekly + Notebook planner walk through.


I started out with this red Moleskine planner. The red was okay, I bought it because at least it wouldn’t be lost among all of my other black Moleskine notebooks.

Rather spontaneously one evening I wondered what the planner would look like in a light blue/turquoise with the red strap. I wondered if it was possible to paint a Moleskine notebook. After a quick Google search I found out that someone else had attempted this with acrylic paint, but posted no results. I began painting.

The first of many coats on the front cover, not worrying about this being even because the other layers will fill it in.

This is how I avoided painting the red strap. It was awkward for sure, but the effect is awesome.

A few coats in. You can still tell that there is another color underneath there, but it’s going rather nicely. I let it sit over night.

Another coat after that. Things are smoothing up rather nicely.

The back looks good as well. As you can see I did end up getting a little bit of paint on the strap.

After letting that dry completely I decided I may as well begin adding to the front, it was far too plain for me otherwise.

A quick sketch of what I wanted to do. I decided I wanted to try giving the girl curly hair (I have curly hair, but always seem to have trouble recreating it in drawings and especially in paintings) I also wanted her to be a zombie.

Using the sketch as a reference I redrew it onto the notebook. Yes, this sketch looks like complete crap. It’s just a guide. NOTE: If you’re going to try this, make sure your strap is secured around the notebook, then line up your drawing or else you’ll cover your drawing and it will probably drive you mad. I’m very glad I remembered to do this. Also, I drew this sketch onto the cover with a very fine tipped drawing pen as pencil wasn’t showing up at all.

Starting with the green skin. You can see that I was beginning to change the lines of her chin here.

With the base layers of the green finished I began painting the white hair. I thought the contrast would be quite nice.

… I forgot to take pictures for a bit. The darker green “shadows” were done with a slightly darker green than the rest, a fine tip brush and water. Just add a little bit of paint and a lot of water. You can smooth the color on your painting later, but adding the shadows this way gives your painting some depth. The thicker green line around her face and hairline will be blended out later by mixing the green you used for the skin with water and painting over these lines a bit, blending the colors together.

I sketched her nose on with the darker green and a fine tip brush. You can see that the darker green lines are smoothed a bit here. I also added a few slashes of yellow paint as highlights here and there.

I drew on the lips with a black Copic Multiliner pen I filled it in with red paint. I did the same for her eyes with some brown paint I also added in eyelashes with the Copic pens. Here you can see the highlights a bit better. I also drew in some of the “curls” in her hair with Copic Multiliners. The background was done with a darker turquoise and water. I just gradually painted outwards with it to give it some dimension.

I thought I was finished. Those of you that are not fried from painting your planner for a few days will probably notice that she doesn’t have eyebrows. I noticed this just before I uploaded pictures the pictures to show it off for the first time.

A little bit more line drawings with Copic Multiliner pens, some dots of “light” on her lips and eyes with a white pen and some shadows in her hair added with Faber Castell Manga pens and we’re getting closer to the end.

I decided she needed some thicker Copic Multiliner black lines in a few places to cover mistakes as well as some more shadows. She is ready to be primed at this point.

NOTE My acrylic paints are strange. I asked a few different artist friends of mine and they say that theirs never act like mine. So after this next step you should be done, if not, you can continue on to what I ended up doing.

Supplies I bought from the local craft store. Some painter’s tape (rather expensive $5 for one roll) and Krylon UV-Resistant acrylic coating (cheaper than the art brand alternatives, found in the spray paint section about $12).

I taped the edges of all my pages together so they wouldn’t get glued together with the sealer. (This tape works AMAZINGLY well for this, no sticky residue, no trouble getting it off the pages, no tearing, nothing.)

The fumes were getting to me so I used the cowled neck of my sweater to keep from destroying my brain cells.

I sprayed the planner outside on some taped down pieces of computer paper.

I sprayed one of my old paintings with the sealer as well during this activity. See, my acrylics are broken and they dry a little tacky or sticky. Things stick to them all the time. The painting (which is about a year old now) was sealed before, but continued to be sticky until after I sprayed it with this Krylon sealer. It’s no longer tacky and that’s amazing.

Before the sealer the planner was a little tacky, things would get stuck to it temporarily when it was in my purse and that’s annoying. I let it dry on my printer like this to try and allow the sealer do it’s job. It didn’t work, I tried a combination of two different sealers over the course of that week (it had been about a week since I had finished painting it that I applied the sealers) and each one seemed to make it more sticky.

I got tired of it so I took some quality Scotch packing tape and taped over the cover. I should have slowed down a bit so I didn’t get the creases in the tape, but oh well. Nothing is sticky now and the tape is holding REALLY well.

Overall I am very glad I did this. Aside from that week or two of being sticky and hard to use it’s been amazing. I love that it looks completely unique and I can easily find it in my Moleskine collection. I may end up painting one of my black notebooks a lime green in the future. I never did figure out what is wrong with my paints. I really don’t think that anyone else will have that problem, but if you do, the quality packing tape (not Target brand, like their adorable post-its, it sticks to NOTHING) thing works really well. The picture above is my customized weekly planner (which I use for work and the other is my daily planner where I write about my personal life and things going on).