Custom Planner

Teeeheeee!! I am so glad she liked it!!! I have a single item listed in my Etsy shop, This Little Shop of Mine, at the moment: a custom planner.

I have only sold a couple of these and I don't promote it much simply because I work full time and I do it mainly as a hobby. Anyway, here is what Tame said about her planner:

WOW WOW WOW!!! I just got back from vacation, and this was one of the items that greeted me upon arrival :) It is SO BEAUTIFUL & FUNCTIONAL!! I've already have marvelous ideas for its future :) I can use it as a planner, journal, and project organizer (especially for my scrapbooking), and keep things all in one place (relatively!) Thanks so much for working with me on this creation, and I'll DEFINITELY be back for more items, and next years planner. Without a doubt the most creative & most favorite planner I've ever purchased :) Take care---Tame

In order to provide her with exactly what she wanted, I had her make a list of things she would ideally love to have in a planner designed especially for her:
I love these type of planner journals, especially stickers, patchwork, recycled, etc pages. Would it be possible to add about 4 pages for address/phone numbers, 15 pages for to do/projects, 12 pages for monthly finances/budget, 5 pages for lists (eg. one for books to read, one for movies to see, one for shopping to do, one for presents to purchase, and one for music to listen to), 2 pages for favorite websites, one page for passwords, and the rest of the journal be the monthly calendar page, daily planner sheets, and several pages stuck in for notes/doodles/scrapbook capability?
I really don't care what order the pages come in, what items/collages get stuck onto what, I really do like to be surprised!
Favorite colours tend toward royal blue-purples, burgandy, and orange-red.

Here is a peek at what she received:








Custom-ish Monthly budget sheet. This is printed on the back of each month's calendar page so that the finances for the month can be easily recorded. I tried to leave a bunch of blanks because I wasn't sure what she would exactly need for her personal budget:



Address book

Fun Dividers in Purple:


I added a few little cute stickers, but left the pages open so she could paste in her own pictures and ephemera:






"To-Do" Pages


"Journal" pages



Tame had requested a page for her favorite websites and also a place for passwords....I decided to try to help her keep her passwords private, so I hid the password list sheet under this cute Hambly owl:





Of course there are other surprises hidden throughout the book. I am so glad that she likes it! I had a lot of fun creating it just for her. Thanks for reading! If you are interested in your own customized planner, check out my shop!

Another Planner

Last week, I got a call from my student teacher. I was a little nervous about meeting her because I really love my job and I was worried that I would overwhelm her with too much information at first. We met for lunch and then I drove her around and we talked about kids, and teaching, and art. I showed her my classrooms and explained my schedule.


I thought it would be easier for her to stay organized if she has a copy of my lesson plan book so I whipped one up for her. After making my giant one, I already had a bunch of leftover calendar pages so this one was pretty easy to put together.



I am so glad I bought the bind-it-all. I literally covered the front and back pages, copied the monthly calendar pages and punched everything and put it together in around an hour. It was so nice.


I even made her a little folder in the back to stuff papers in there, just like I do!

School Year Planner

Whew! This week I have been dreaming about school every night and I still have at least 3 weeks of vacation! It's no surprise that I was super excited to start creating a new planner/calendar for the school year. It isn't completely finished...I still have to add a larger sized o-ring for the binding (should arrive via UPS today or Monday) and I want to add eyelets and an elastic cord to hold it closed but I will show you the basic steps I used to create this planner.





1. Found an old book and cut off the front and back cover. I could've used chipboard, but this was cheaper and sorry in advance for the first few pics, I seriously took these while I was making the book....at night, in my craft room.


2. Recovered the book with patterned paper. I used this really cool paper from Paper House Productions called Impressionists. I can't find it anywhere online...so if you find it somewhere, let me know because I bought it at a close out store and I would love to have more!

Also, I used those big sheets of sticky dots, they are perfect for this sort of project...I've learned not to use liquid glue or tape runners after lots of trial and error with this sort of thing.


Here, I scored the edges and creased them to make a nice cover.


Then I put some vintage patterned paper on the inside covers of the book.



3. Printed calendar months onto colored cardstock. I printed mine so that the months would be similar to the color wheel rather than in rainbow order...August is yellow...and December is Red...and by the end of the school year I am using greens etc. Anyway, I downloaded and customized the calendar pages from this site.

To elaborate a bit on what I did to each calendar month...I punched the edges with a scalloped punch or my lace punch.

I added a piece of the patterned paper on the back just because it was pretty and I wanted it to be a bit more decorative.


4. I drew up my daily planning guide based on Geninne's Art Blog that inspired me (Scroll down to see her journal pages. Isn't she fabulous??? I just love her blog, it is so beautiful!). I made copies of these (front and back) to use for the entire year. I wanted them to be blank so I could draw pictures or write out instructions and since I rarely plan my weekends on those pages, I left the spot where Saturday and Sunday would be blank for sketches or lists.



5. I made a little pocket for the back of the planner to hold notes etc. and I cut some of my favorite Hambly clear overlays to put in the planner at various points for visual interest.



6. Okay, I went to Hobby Lobby to buy a metal binding o-ring and I took it to school with me to use on the binding machine we have there. I used my 40% off coupon on a new 3-ring binder scrapbook album while I was at Hobby Lobby.

After attempting to use the binding machine at school with the zutter o-rings, I realized that I would have to have a Bind-It-All in order to finish the book. I called both scrapbooking stores within a 50 mile radius to see if they had one customers could use...or pay to use...no luck. So I made a phone call to a friend that gets the news paper and asked for her Sunday Hobby Lobby coupon since I already used mine from the online coupon site. I went to her house, picked it up, went back to Hobby Lobby, bought the darn BIA and took it home. In my attempt to bind the book, I made a few mistakes...but I am sure that no one will notice...also, Hobby Lobby only carried a 1/2" o-wire or a 3/4" o-wire and I really need to use a 1 1/4" so I had to order those from the website.



The finished calendar is 6" X 9" and the inside pages are 8 1/2" X 5" 1/4 which is basically a sheet of 8 1/2 X 11 cut in half, this made copying the pages really easy.



And for the record, this calendar is awesome in person! Now that I have figured out the ins and outs, I really want to make a few of these to sell in my Etsy store to make up the cost of the BIA....I hadn't planned to spend $40 buck on that this week. Do you think you would want to buy something like this or do you know someone that would? It would be perfect for a college student because it is set up in school-year order.
Thanks for reading!