Hey, the crew it's Mark from Mark Your Pages and today I'm gonna show you how to create four creative drop shadows inside of your bullet journal or planner using Archer and Olive creative accessories. I love adding pops of color into my bullet journal and planner by creating these boxes with a little bit of dimension. You can create dimension just by using a darker color underneath of a box container , but it's a lot more fun when you can use patterns and different colors to get a similar effect. 

You can find more of my content on Instagram and YouTube at Mark your pages.

The materials that you're going to need today are going to be:

- Notebook or journal

• Notebook or journal
• Fineliners
• Two acrylograph pens (Darker and lighter color)
• Two Calliograph pens (Darker and lighter color)
• At least one roll of washi tape.

For the first drop shadow, we're going to draw an wide, elongated rectangle. Inside of this rectangle you can write a header, your name, or any type of title that you would need for your page. Starting on the bottom left-hand side we're going to move over about one square or about a quarter of an inch and we're going to draw one vertical line down.

Over on the far right we're going to move one square down or about a quarter of an inch down and draw another horizontal line out to the side. Now we're going to connect those two Create in another rectangle underneath or top one. Now you can do a few things with this new box. You could color this in with your fineliner if you wanted to to create a dark drop shadow or you can do what I love to do which is draw a diagonal or patterns inside of that box.

Next we're gonna draw a elongated rectangle that is vertically tall. And this time we're going to make a drop shadow on the left-hand side of our page. But we're not going to use our fineliners for this line. Instead, we're going to use our darker color acrylograph pen to color first. You're going to follow the same rules as the previous directions except this time we're going to draw a line on the left-hand side horizontally out one square and on the bottom of our long rectangle we're going to draw one vertical line about one square tall. And then we're going to go ahead and connect those two lines.

Now using this color acrylograph that we just used for those lines, we're going to fill in that entire space with that color. Once ithe paint marker is dry we're going to take our second acrylic rough color and we're going to draw some polkadots over top of our drop shadow color. 

And now you have another creative, colorful, drop shadow for your bullet journal or planner.

If you're the type of person that doesn't really like to use paint pens or acrylographs, you could also use brush pens to create a similar effectt. For this we're going to draw the same exact shape as we did in our previous example but instead of using a acrylograph were going to be using archer and olive calliograph pans. These are water-based markers that are double ended. Using the larger brush end, you can start around the same space you would draw your line, but instead, you can brush the color down and over to meet. It gives the same look with a lot less coloring in. Using your darker color, you can use the smaller brush end to add details, shapes, or texture.

The last kind of drop shadow we're going to make today is going to use washy tape. I have an ongoing love-hate relationship with washi tape. I love the way that it looks but I don't always know exactly how to use it inside of my bullet journals and planners. Creating drop shadows is a great way to use cool washing inside of your planner. Following the same rules that we talked about above when using pens and acrylographs, we're going to position our washy tape at that same length from the right hand side on the top.

When doing my vertical line, I like to cut the washi at the very bottom of my shape. That way when I put the bottom washi tape on the bottom line, I can end it right at the end of the washi that came down on the right side.

Now that you've learned a few different ways that you can create drop shadows inside of your bullet journals and planners, go ahead and explore with different techniques, shapes, colors, or any mix of the different styles that we did today. See more ideas here:

I hope that you have found these new skills and techniques helpful and I can't wait to see what you're creating online. Be sure to tag Archer and Olive and mark your pages so that we can see your beautiful work.

If you were looking for some inspiration on boxes, drop shadows and textures, you can download this printable for some really great ideas.