Helen Wang - September 2, 2026

The Themes of 2027

Overall Theme

The overall theme that ties the 12 sub-themes together, is... Hobonichi Colours!* I did worry that this would be too niche as many people do not use the Hobonichi, but I reassured myself with the fact that at the end of the day, these are just colours. If you don't use the Hobonichi, you can think of these just as colour palettes I picked! And this thought isn't disingenuous, because for most months, the Hobonichi colour is just an accent. When I started planning this collection, the first note I made was that I did not want the themes to be monochromatic. I wanted these stickers to match the Hobonichi colour of the month, without being obnoxious–hopefully I succeeded in that 😅  As for the monthly themes themselves, I tried to capture emotis going about their mundane lives, with a bit of whimsy. You will see what I mean later...

*Hobonichi Colours: The Hobonichi Cousin planner has a colour for each month, and I think it has become a recognizable colour palette!

behind the scenes!

The Story of Each Theme

Alrighty, let's talk about the monthly themes, and give each one some attention! While I did assign a theme for each month,  very few stickers are rigidly associated with the assigned month. This means, customers are free to shuffle months around! If you have a theme you particularly like, you can even use it for all 12 months... no judgement here. Another note is that the original sequence of the themes is based on the Northern Hemisphere. I do release a version of calendars & sequence for the Southern Hemisphere, but the colours will not match the Hobonichi colours :(

click a number to view the month!

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January: Good Morning!

Starting off  bright and fun! Since January is the start of the year, I made this theme all about the start of the day: morning time :) I wanted January to include ideas of starting fresh in the new year, without it being overwhelmingly about "new year new me".  This calendar features an emoti taking a big stretch and yawn,  surrounded by some doodles of my ideal morning routine. In the full collection, you will find an emoti practicing their morning yoga, reading while having breakfast, and sporting a bombastic side-eye at whoever woke them up...

Fun fact: The theme I scrapped for January before I settled on this one was "morning cereal". Think milk cartons, lucky charms, cheerios, and cocoa puffs. However, after I finalized June's theme, the two themes were a bit too close for my liking. I still incorporated the idea of the morning, and doodled a milk carton!

February: Something Sweet

I have nothing against Valentine's Day; in fact, it's one of my favourite holidays! Despite being a single pringle for most of my life, it's one of the few holidays I make an effort to participate in, by showing love to myself. That said, I for some reason make it a mission each year to make February's theme sweet & lovely, but not Valentine's related. Someone needs to study my brain.

February's colour in the Hobonichi is a pretty soft brown, so I pulled that in through the delicious chocolately baked goods in this collection.  I think my favourite doodle of this set is the toaster oven; not sure why, but I think it's so charming! 

Fun fact: The themes I scrapped for February before I settled on this one were (1) peachy (2) quirky decor. The peachy theme would have been quite similar to the final theme, in the sense that I wanted there to be a bunch of various peach desserts! Quirky decor was supposed to be a fun bedroom of duck, fish, and other silly decor.

March: Pondering Pond

Many might be familiar with this! Not only is it matching with the Pondering Pond washi tape we put up for preorder this June, I also dedicated a YouTube video showing the illustration process for the clipart. As mentioned, my intention with this collection was not to make things monochromatic, and the Hobonichi colours only act as accents. In this case, the gorgeous orchid purple shows up in some of the wildflowers, fish, water lilies, and other little doodles. I would say March is  the theme that is the most fairytale-like and least realistic. This features my favourite sprout emotis in their natural habitat, pondering about the meaning of life. I also like the rocks.

Fun fact: The themes I scrapped for March before I settled on this one were (1) farm life (2) meadows. If you watched my 2026 collection video where I rambled on for 40 minutes about the 2026 collection, you might remember that I also scrapped a farm & meadow theme for March 2026. I don't know what it is, but I just cannot get this theme right, sigh.

April: Flower Shop

If you are familiar with my work, you will probably notice that I sprinkle in a lot of florals in my designs. In fact, the 2024 collection was entirely about flowers! I find flowers pretty (duh), fun to draw, and they just make anything look a bit more elevated. But another important reason why I do so, is because Mama Tater (my mom) loves flowers. She oversees a lot of the printing & cutting for our store, and she texts me photos whenever she's printing something with an emoti that made her smile. So, here is a month dedicated to all things floral :) More specifically, it captures the wonderful adventure of going to a flower shop to pick out a bouquet, just for yourself–this is something I want to do more of next year! 

Fun fact: I was originally going to make April a rose-focused theme, because my mom's favourite flower is the rose. However, I already did this theme for the 2024 collection, and mid-way through designing, I felt like the colour palette just made April look... heavy. I don't know how else to explain it!

May: Map of Town

My interest in drawing maps started when I had the idea to illustrate a map washi tape. Unfortunately, I abandoned that design because I ran my chair over my scanner's cable, crushed it, and felt demotivated to keep sketching the map washi tape lol (I have since gotten a replacement cable). Again, as mentioned in February, someone needs to study my brain. 

I do eventually want to go back to designing the map washi tape, but for now, we can enjoy this idea through the May theme! I really challenged myself to use bright, bold colours in the artwork. Despite that, as a lover of pastels & neutrals, I still tried to keep it not too overwhelming to the eye, and cohesive within the theme and with the other 11 themes.

Fun fact: Initially, May's theme was supposed to be Pondering Pond, which is now March's theme. I then changed May to June's theme, and June was supposed to be Map of Town. Finally, I settled for this one. I will talk about why in the next slide! 

June: Grocery Store

At the back of my Hobonichi Weeks, I have been collecting various produce stickers as a fun project. I also looove the grocery store, and grocery shopping in general. One of my quirks is staying up for my local grocery stores (yes, plural) to update their weekly flyers, so I can look through the pretty pictures and sales. Anyways, grocery shopping is something common to most of us, and it can be seen as a boring chore to some. I wanted to take this mundane activity and add a bit of whimsy to it! You will find doodles of produce stickers, typical grocery items, and emotis walking in between the aisles with their shopping cart or basket!

I have to state that I made a big sacrifice for this theme. As some might know, I strongly dislike cheese. I never liked it as a child, and I think over the years, my body's nauseous reaction to the smell and taste of cheese has caused an internal hate towards it. I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to go against my nature and include a cheese doodle for June; ultimately, I recognized that I am in the minority, and a grocery store set must have cheese.   

Fun fact: As mentioned in the previous slide, I will explain why May was supposed to be "Grocery Store" and June was supposed to be "Map of Town", but I switched them at some point. May in the Hobonichi is a bright spring green, whereas June is a darker, muted green. My instinct was that the bright spring green would work best for colouring in produce, but I felt like that was too safe and generic. I think this darker green produces an interesting colour palette and it makes this collection work for all seasons, rather than leaning spring & summer!   

July: Day At The Office

July is beginning of the second half of the year! Since January represents the beginning, I thought it would be clever to make July about the afternoon, to play with the idea of the second half of something. That said, this is called "day at the office" because "afternoon at the office" was way too long of a title lol. I love a good contrasting colour palette,  and I think the peachy colours pop so well against July's Hobonichi teal.

This calendar features an emoti walking stacks of paper around at the office, an evil printer ready to jam things, and a coffee station to fuel the day's work. Later in the collection, you will also find an emoti that is slumped in their chair, bored out of their mind.

Fun fact: The theme I scrapped for July before I settled on this one was "home decor". The colour palette was the teal, with light to hot pink. I just realized now that I scrapped both of the decor related themes for this collection (February & July)... oops. 

August: In The Bathroom

Don't click out please–just hear me out. Going along with the idea of adding some whimsy to ordinary, mundane things, I thought it would be fun to dedicate a month to a place we all need to go to...

I assigned this theme to August for two reasons: (1) the colours worked well with the muted blue of the Hobonichi (2) since the bathroom is still associated with some unpleasant things, I thought making it my birthday month would show that I do not mean to offend anyone with birthdays in other months. Sorry to the my fellow August-birthday-friends who might not like this theme haha. You might also be familiar with this theme, as I did a preview by releasing a matching washi tape of it this past June!

Fun fact: The theme I scrapped for August before I settled on this one was "Talk of Town". Think greyscale newspapers with a hint of muted blue. While this would have been a fun theme, I felt like the colour palette was a bit too dreary for August.

September: Bread

Good ol' bread. From chomping on a croissant while picking up a baguette from the bakery, to carefully buttering a piece of toast in the morning, bread is unironically something that unites us globally. Okay, I will cut the deep talk, I just simply love bread and I think they made fun stickers haha. To go with the bread theme, we also have doodles of bread toppings, wheat, and a cute toaster! 

Unfortunately in recent months, I have needed to greatly reduce the wheat products I consume to not further trigger my mysterious skin condition (sigh). It's not much, but to represent the gluten-intolerant and people with celiac, there is a few gluten-free symbols throughout this collection!

Fun fact: The theme I scrapped for September before I settled on this one was "nuts". Wow, September is not an allergen-friendly month lol. I didn't go with the nuts theme because I already did something similar in... 2023 I think? I did make sure to include a few doodles of almonds and nut butters here!

October: Night At The Office

Ah, nearing the end of the year. You have probably caught-on now that as we progress through the months, we are also progressing through the day. After a day of hard work in July, we don't get to go home; we stay at the office and work overtime. 

I'm kidding, please don't take this as my encouragement to overwork yourself! I moreso wanted this to be an ode to night owls, featuring an emoti clacking away when the world is still. Inspired by lo-fi YouTube music playlists, this gives me a cozy and serene feel! I also wanted this theme to work well with Halloween, without explicitly adding Halloween-related elements. This is I believe the only month that is somewhat monochromatic, but I think it works well to capture the night time ambience.

Fun fact: The theme I scrapped for October before I settled on this one was "plums". I love stone fruits, and I become a fiend for plums when they are in season. Unfortunately, I could not translate my love for eating the fruit to a cute collection. Maybe I will revisit those sketches one day...

November: Museum Musings

Something familiar once again! This was another theme I sneakily previewed, by releasing a washi tape version first. This was our second bestselling washi tape during the June preorder! While the Museum Musings washi tape was heavily focused on famous paintings, the idea I had for the full sticker collection includes all sorts of things one can find at museums, such as sculptures, dinosaur fossils, and... stationery fossils?! The calendar features an emoti sketching at the museum, and later in the collection, you will find an emoti ready to dig-up some treasures.

I struggled with November a lot, mostly because I felt like fossils and bones aren't typically found in planner stickers, and I wasn't sure if it would be too niche. I do like how the pieces came together in the end, and I hope you do too!

Fun fact: While I always wanted November to be Museum Musings, I redid the artwork and calendar 3 times. This was the 4th version. I told you, my brain needs to be studied.

December: Happy Stationery

The end of the year is when we all get giddy about our new planners and stationery, so here is an ode to that! I was kind of sad that I decided against doing the "quirky decor" theme for February (who is to blame?), so I incorporated a bit of silliness to December. In addition to journals, fountain pens, inks and clips, we also have fun fruit stickers, a Baggu-like bag, and a tiny fish somewhere.

This is a rather safe theme that I know most will like, but I think it ties everything together nicely for the year. I tried to incorporate the bright red of the Hobonichi colour in a way that wasn't overpowering, and I ended-up with this almsot primary colour palette!

Fun fact: I just finished the December artwork a few days ago, and I did not have a theme in mind until I started working on it. I was completely drawing (hah!) a blank, and I pretty much winged this one. Despite that, this is probably one of my top favourites of the bunch! I hope you like it too :)

Inks That Didn't Happen...

Fun fact: This spring, I proposed a collaboration idea to Robert Oster for a set of 12 inks to match the Hobonichi colours, as part of this collection. We did hit a bottleneck as I wanted 15-30mL bottles (as opposed to RO's 50mL), and I also got overwhelmed by the idea of doing 12 inks, especially since selling inks isn't something I specialize in. And so, I didn't bug Robert about it further... and I'm glad I didn't, as Hobonichi came out with a perfect set of matching inks!

Conclusion

That's all I have to say for now :) Partially because I am tired of typing, and partially because I have a mountain of stickers left to design. I often find myself cutting out things I want to say when revealing new products, but I wanted to give myself the platform here to tell the stories behind the pieces. I'm excited to share the rest of it all with you, because these calendars only capture a slice of the collection. Thank you for your time and attentin, and take care of yourself!

FAQs:

• When will you release the 2027 collection stickers?
  The date is to be determined, but it won't be for at least another month. When I do have the date set, I will announce it through our Facebook group, Instagram, and our email newsletter.
• Why is it not released earlier?
  I understand that especially with the planner season excitement and possible holiday shipping delays, it would be better to release the annual collections earlier. However, as the sole artist for everything in our store, it is infeasible for me to get the design work done earlier, in conjunction with the design work I do for our store during the year. Every line and sparkle is detailed by me, and there isn't a shortcut I can take without compromising my values. I am working as hard as I can to get this collection done as soon as I can!
• Where can I get the free digital calendars?
  The free digital calendars are available for our Facebook group members, and the files will also be shared in the September & October email newsletter for anyone without Facebook.
  
• Will you have stickers for X planner? 
  With so many various planner companies and sizes, it is infeasible for me to make a dedicated kit for every planner. Instead, I release separate add-on stickers of various sizes, and customers can piece together their own kit. For example, there will be label stickers available in 4 different widths so customers can pick whichever fits their planner best. Similar to the 2026 collection, I will be making a quiz for the 2027 collection, which will tell you which pieces work with your planner.