Planning my planner

Hello all, - hope your new year has started with a bang!! I am approaching 2017 full of hope and excitement for better days to come....

In the last days of 2016 I decided I was going to design my own planner, and today I will show you the first few pages and the cover. This is a project in process, and I will show more pages as the month (and year) progresses....

The base for the whole planner was a file folder that I trimmed to the size I wanted. I covered it with some of my favourite Blue Fern papers, strengthened the edges, and made the closure with a Grungeboard element and a Tim Holtz Hitch Fastener.

Here's the back, as you can see, I used some of Tim's industrial stickers as decorative elements. (One of my aims with this project is, not only to become more organised, but also to use up some long forgotten bits and pieces from my stash.... Grungeboard and stickers being the examples lol).

Here are the first inside pages, a pocket on the left for keeping important things to hang onto, and the January calendar page on the right.

I made tabs for each month and each of those pages will then be decorated with bits and pieces (these are from the Graphics 45 Place in Time collection).

Each monthly page is then followed by some other pages, below a quick run through some of them:

A weekly overview page, to write down  the main focus for each day page

Followed by  a page to detail other important things for that week. Here I am showing you the page of week 3, but each of the weeks has two pages like that.

 I am having great fun decorating them with die cuts, stamping stenciling etc. I hope this will keep me focussed in actually noting things down and getting them accomplished....

Each month also has a pocket with blogpost planners. I am keeping these loose, so I can use them as needed.

And finally my day planners, also kept loose in a second companion planner as the main one would get far too fat otherwise. I designed the backgrounds digitally and may well share these as freebies in the next few days, so stay tuned... They are kept under a belly band so they can be easily accessed. I'll use the back for additional notes etc, keeping them loose like that will make it possible to review things easier.

Here's the cover for the day planner, also made from a file folder in a very similar way.

And here the inside, belly band on the left and a side pocket on the right for additional notes etc.

There are also other pages still in the main planner , meal planners and grocery lists, health and fitness and expenses trackers etc, but by now this post is long enough, so I am keeping some for another day.

Well that's it, I am ready for the new year ahead, hope you are too. I love all the new ready made planners out there, but I really wanted to make my own, and so far I am having great fun with it!

xxxxx