Secret garden illustration

I've been working on a series of patterns inspired by my favourite childhood movie the secret garden. The pattern I showed last time with the palms was also part of these drawings, I'm not sure what the next drawing will be. But check out what's left of my pencils - the little one I can't even sharpen any more, its probably time to get some more. You can see in the bottom picture my little colour scribbles, I would like to say that I spend time drafting and planning out my drawings but in all honesty I don't these little colour swatches are me seeing what colours will work.

I'm a terrible sketchbook person too, I always look at my sister, Siena and my mum's beautiful sketchbooks but every time I try they never last long. I spend a lot of time planning and working out what I want to do in my head - until I'm clear about the design and then I just make it. This makes is hard when there are multiple projects I want to start. That is my trouble sometimes, with such limited time its hard to prioritise what I want to get done. I'd love to know how you plan your creative ventures - do you create sketchbooks? What have you found helps you create? I'm really going to try and push myself to be more organised, and to try and plan more, so hopefully you can help inspire. I have a week of leave next week, and because we bought a new car we have pushed back our Tassie holiday plans to later in the year so I will have some spare time. I'm going to try and use it productively and not watch Netflix non stop, we shall see how I go.