DIY 2014 Planner

Hello everybody!

I am back from my holiday and it seems ages since I've touched my laptop. 

With just a few days left before we welcome the New Year, some of you may be looking for a planner. It is always hard to find that perfect planner be it the design, font or pages. So, this year I decided to make one for myself. Just a few months back, I did a personalized planner for a friend of mine and I was so excited to do one for myself when my holidays started.

After much planning, I decided to have a instagram inspired minimalist theme. I invested about 5-7 days to complete the whole planner, from designing all the way to putting the whole thing together. The design was done in Microsoft Publisher and Adobe Photoshop. Let me take you through what I have in my planner.

To stay true to my theme, I first decided to make the shape of my planner square. For the cover, I used a thick cardboard and covered it with floral embossed paper. To add a girly touch, I pasted floral fabric tape on the sides. Then, I took some of my favourite pictures from Tumblr and cropped it to square images. I printed the pictures in sticker paper so that it is easier to stick on the cover. If I can say so myself, I really love that the cover gives me a soft and feminine feel.

For the front page, I added a binding cover sheet. This is for me to stock up my post-it notes. I am always scribbling notes and errands. I wanted to carry around the post-its with my planner and I thought that this was a good idea.

Year at a Glance.

Birthdays/Dates to Remember. 

2 years ago I had a planner where I had this page to take down birthdays and important dates and it was really useful as it gave me more space to take down information on my monthly pages. I tried squeezing in 2 months per page but due to the size and space I could only only put one month per page.

I used a cardstock paper as a divider for each section.

For each month, I printed pictures of my family and friends in square. Again, I printed this in sticker paper.

2-page monthly calendar.

Weekly calendar.

I like to be organized and I usually write down the things that needs to be completed that particular week. 

Budget sheet.

I like keeping track of my savings and expenses. Having a budget sheet at the end of each month would be really useful.

I am the type of person who loves using post-it notes for some reason. So at the end of each month I added a transparent sheet to paste my post-its.

Schedule Page.

While I was browsing through planners and pinterest for inspiration, I never fail to see schedule pages. Initially I thought I would have no use for it. After contemplating, I decided to add one page and laminate it. The reason for this is to maximise usage. I can write it using a marker and erase it so that I can use that page another day.

Task Page.

Similar to the schedule page, I laminated this for multiple usage.

Meal Plan.

Instead of eating school food, prefer packing home cooked food to school. As I usually plan my meals ahead, this will help me when it comes to grocery shopping.

Period log.

Hahaha, please don't judge. This keeps me prepared. Ladies, I'm sure you would understand. *winks*

Notes Page.

I wanted to keep this as simple as possible. I wanted the empty pages to paste cut outs and pictures.

I made a folder using leftover craft paper to slot in pictures and stickers.

I also added an envelope to store my movie tickets and receipts.

Definitely there were problems when I engaged in this project.

1. I wanted my planner to have so many sections that I forgot to keep track of the number of pages.

2. I used a 120gsm paper instead of 100gsm paper. This caused the planner to be really thick.

3. I should have done my research way earlier as the printing shops do not support hard cover binding. Plus it was too thick for wire binding.

I thought of making my own binder but I couldn't find the right resources and I did not want my efforts to go to a waste so I just used ring binders. This was not a bad idea as I could use it as a scrapbook also. The only problem is that it does not stay as well as most planners but it gives the self-made feel. Despite the challenges, the best part is that it was really cheap to make!

I had a few requests for personalised planners but due to time constraint I did not take any orders. Plus my toner was running low and my laptop needs to be reformatted. I made my planner in such a way that it has almost everything so that if I'm taking orders in the future I have a template to work with.

I am not sure if I will have the time to do another one next year but I am open to ideas and making printables instead.

If you are still wondering if you should get a planner, I will be making another post on how I use my planner. There are many printables you can purchase online if you plan to make one for yourself. Some bloggers are so generous that they provide free printables for their readers.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this post! Feel free to comment if you have any queries!

Let's enjoy the last few days of 2013!

∞

Personalized 2014 Planner/Organizer

Hello everyone!

As the year is coming to an end, most people will start looking for a perfect planner to use for the upcoming year. Likewise, I am one of them. I must say I really admire those of you who don't use a planner and can still keep up with your schedule. I have time management issues and with a planner I am trying to reduce that problem. There was once I lost a planner and I made plans with 3 different groups of people on the same day. Yes that happens me, please don't judge.

Anyway, the reason for this as you may have realized is to share with you a personalized planner that I made recently for a friend of mine because she wanted to give it as a gift for her friend's 21st birthday. (I hope I didn't lose you there). It is took me about 2-3 weeks to finish this whole project including presentation. I am so excited to show you guys because this is my first Planner project.

Disclaimer: I did not steal anything from anywhere. Everything is owned and done by me unless stated otherwise. In terms of design I researched for inspirations in various platforms such as blogs and Pinterest before creating my own version. I just thought I should clarify in case. 

This is how I presented it, Planner with a slot in cover. Initially I bought this super cute pastel colored polka dot box but unfortunately it could not fit. I only had a few more hours before I met up with Shazeena to pass her the planner so I worked with what I could find at home. Using an empty cereal box and some leftover scrapbooking materials, I came with this one. 

I did a similar DIY tutorial on this. Click here if you are interested!

My paper was too small to fit the whole cover so I used fabric tape as the border to give the cover a more feminine and cute look.

 Sneak peak of the front cover.

TADA! The front cover.

Shazeena mentioned that her friend likes rings, skirts, sunglasses and she's a Tumblr-ish person. So I decided to make a Tumblr Inspired Cover. 

Click here if you are interested to know how to make it!

This is how the front page looks like. I made a small folder from craft paper in the front to slot in any receipts or small notes. I designed the inserts in Photoshop and used chevron prints as the main pattern design. 

I downloaded the chevron patterns from a site but I can't remember where. My sincere apologies to the designer because I am not able to personally credit you.  

The mandatory yearly calendar for the year. I used a basic nude color tone as the background and used brighter colors for the months to create a colorful contrast.

The months are basically the same throughout, the only difference is the way each month is introduced. In the beginning I used different colors for each month, but when I assembled them using Microsoft Publisher, it did not flow as a whole planner. So, I decided to stick with the same background for all the inserts.

Her birthday falls on the 30th October so I made this month slightly different compared to the rest.

Keeping the same color palette in mind, I designed the weekly planner to complement the monthly planner. I always run out of space when I fill in details in my monthly calendar, so I wanted to give extra space to jot down details as well.

To give this planner a more personalized touch, I added pictures to before introducing each month. I have this "Polaroid Action Tool" on Photoshop CS6. All I have to do is click on that action and it does everything for. Just how awesome is that? Also I inserted a translucent paper before each month.

This is the notes page.

 I am currently using a budget planner because the planner that my best friend made for me got wet and messed up. It was so horrible, Sorry Roslina! I still feel horrible about it.

I digress. I have a post-it inspired notes page in my current planner that I bought for $5 and I thought that it was really cute because I can paste pictures or any notes that I want to keep to just keep me going after a hard day. Since it was too cute, I used that as an inspiration to come up with my own version and this is the final look.

This design may be because of my own personal interest. As you can see from my blog header, it's a mustache with glasses. I was cracking my head on how to design the last notes page and then I came across a picture on Tumblr secretly telling me "use the mustache, it is so cute!". I may have exaggerated the details a little but that's the story behind this. 

A lot of things did not go according to plan:

1. I wanted to do a wire binding instead of the normal comb binding but due to time constraint I had to choose the latter. But it still turned out great! 

2. I forgot the set the colour in CMYK mode on Photoshop before starting on the design so there was a difference in the way the color turned out. Even so, after assembling them together it was pleasing to the eyes if I can say so myself. 

3. The pictures didn't really come out as high quality but the Polaroid effect didn't make it look too bad.

Even with these mishaps, I was really happy and proud with my work. October was a month that I had been dreading because of the overload of assignments but this project was a good distraction for me as I was able to take my mind off school for a while.

In terms of cost, I bought 120gsm paper and manually printed out using my printer. Let me just tell you how much I adore my printer. It is a BROTHER laser printer with color and auto-duplex print function. Plus it was less than $700 when my cousin and I bought it in the IT Fair just a few months back. I don't own a binder so I had to get it done in a Printing store.

That's basically it. I hope you're not disappointed that this is not a DIY tutorial. As most of the things were done on Photoshop, I am not able to do a step by step tutorial, Plus, I am just an amateur. I did not do this for free, Shazeena bought this from and I really want to thank her for her support. I will be doing my own planner this year and I hope to share with you guys by the end of this year.

If you are interested in any of my designs, I may be open to designing your own personalized 2014 planners. If you have your own printer and just want the printables, I will be able to do that as well. Planners and printables will be charged accordingly.

 So, if you guys are interested comment down below or reach me in any social media platforms (details are in my connect page). Do take note that I am still considering this and it will be subjected to the response I get. Unfortunately, this is only open to people who are in living in Singapore. 

Have a great start to the month and thank you for all the support! 

∞