Leafy watercolour planner

It takes me ages to do anything lately but I have been slowly playing around with a new planner.   I think this one is going to be the one I will use, so I’ve just been plugging away at it steadily.  As I made it, I’ll share it.

First thing is possibly useful for lots of people.  This is a three-year run of yearly One Sheets. Use them for planners (print as A5 or 8×5) or print as A4/US letter and stick them on your wall:

2017

2018

2019

Then I have the weekly planner pages, two to a sheet.  Cut in half and hole-punch. There are four colourways, salmon, peach. blue and dusty purple.   Just to keep it interesting. The blank area by Week Of?  I thought it would be a nice place for a small photo, or a place to clip or staple something like a business card.

Then there are the monthly sheets, across two pages. Some variation in colours.  Again, cut in half and hole punch the outside edges then shift so the days are in order. I stressed so much over these, so if there is an error in them do let me know!

Then, for those who need it, there are the Daily Diabetic sheets. Also in four colours, and two-a-page.

 

Next, the hourly planner page and the Notes page.  These are as single pages so you can pick which pages you will print them on the back of.  You can print them as A5/8×5 size OR as A4/US letter.  Just select the size in your printer dialog box.

Nearly done! A couple of pages of bits – print them on sticker paper if you like.

These tabs are for the months, and there are some with useful words or phrases.  Use them as tabs, or cut them in half and use as regular stickers.

These arrows and flags can be used anyway you like!

So there you go.  Hope they are useful and do let me know what you think.

I did spend some time organizing my planner bits in a top menu, so any old ones are up there, in case you were looking….

 

Planner pages – to go with the mandala calendar

I have been working on a new planner for myself.  To go along with the Mandala birthday calendar, sort of.

One page that I have used over the last year or so is a blood sugar level monitoring page.  I’ve always controlled my tendency towards diabetes thru diet and exercise, especially since the heart attack. To keep myself on track, much better than just relying on the 3-month HbA1C, I track things using this page.  I’ve updated the design to go with the mandalas.

I have a Huawei smart watch that I use to track my steps.  I find that making note of my steps thru the day helps me stick to my 10,000 step per day target. I note the time I spend on the treadmill as Exercise.

Unfortunately I have some sort of inflammation making me weak in my large muscle groups at the moment, which is wreaking havoc with my ability to exercise. So my BSL has become more important to track at the moment. And if the treatment for whatever ails me is steroids (hands up if that made you say Oh no!) it’ll be even MORE critical.

Weak or not, one thing I can manage is sitting in front of my Mac! So I figured I would go ahead and tweak a few of my planner pages so they work together.  I know some people like a jumble of pages from various planner styles, I do too, but I figured I might as well make a few to match.

I did the 2017 and 2018 year-at-a-glance ones – and I had already created the .jpg before I noticed the bottom row of mandalas were misaligned. DOH! Fixed now…

I made a set of monthly calendar pages:

The apparently-mistaken ordering is intentional, as most printers automatically create a wide upper and lower edge border.  Flipped as these are, they print so the holes can be punched for two facing pages, to fit an A5/8×5 planner! The downside is they don’t work for people who use an A4 notebook sideways. Sorry. Do be careful when printing on the back, if you decide too do so.

I did a weekly pair too, which could be printed and used full-sheet sideways:

and that file has a bunch of colours:

As always, I learned a few things while creating these.

So, if any of these appeal to you, feel free to grab them:

Year at a Glance for 2017 and 2018.  Two to a page.

Month sheets for 2018 only. If you want 2017 month sheets, check out the post here for some mix&match pages to print

Weekly Planner Pages – 10 colours.

Daily Diabetic Tracker pages – seven colours, x2 so two weeks of sheets at a time.

Every person I know uses their planner in a totally different way, and uses totally different sheets. For example, I have zero interest in trying to plan my cleaning/housework or my yoga schedule, or my kid’s sports events.  So I don’t make pages for that sort of thing.  I prefer the week at a glance pages for overall organization, and I probably would use the monthly sheets rarely and the birthday ones not at all.  But that’s just me.

One thing to note is that these are all one-sided prints.  I tend to use the blank backs of the pages for notes or  a daily hour-by-hour list.  Here are those two files.  

Daily Planner (hour by hour)

Notes page

And just in case it is useful, a sheet with Notes and Hours

Well.  That should keep you busy for a while.

{wink}

Half-Sheet birthday calendars – and stickers

OK, so I started these the other day, got super busy yesterday, but here they are.

Both half-sheet Mandala birthday calendars, although I did them as a straight 2-a-page file.  One comment suggested that the booklet style PDFs won’t work universally for every printer, so it is easier for me to just do them this way.

B&W (for colouring in) 

and colourful ones to print and be done.

You should be able to click the image for a closer look. Nope, sorry

I also had a go at making some banners.  You can print them on full-sheet sticker paper and cut them out.  Here is a close up.  I noticed a little tweak I could make, to do with the alignment, but no time now.  I might fix it later, when I do have time. There are two sheets – one with plenty of Birthday/Anniversary/Milestones ones, and some blanks, then a whole 2nd sheet of blanks.  There are also little triangular flags too.

Grab that PDF here

To be honest, I am not sure how useful they are for the BIRTHDAY calendar, but more for planners.  And that makes an interesting point that you might not have thought of – the half-sheet calendars can be hole-punched along the side and integrated into your A5/half US letter planner!

Cool, humm?

So there you go.  Have fun with them and LMK how YOU use them.

Planner side-by-side

I am experimenting with a Year-at-a-glance planner sheet.  It is a tricky one to get right for both US letter and A4 paper.  Give it a go and see what you think – I haven’t done specific topper pages, but you can always just add a strip of patterned paper, or stamp onto the blank bit at the top.  Just fold in half with the print edges lined up then slice up the middle. Depending on the paper you use the sheets will be slightly different sizes – A4 makes two at about 5.75 inches, and US letter is about 5.5 inches.

 

Grab it here!

And you can also print it and punch holes along the top edge, to add to a 4-ring, 3-ring  or 2-ring binder.  Haven’t tested them all so not sure about the 2017 placement, but again, you can always stick paper over it and add the year with number stickers or stamps.

 

Enjoy.

Year at a Glance for planners and 2018 DIY

One of my followers, Moz, made one of my all-time favourite calendar projects.  I’ve shown it many times but if you missed it you can see it here.  She always does 18 month calendars so often asks for at least a part of the next year much sooner than I expect – you’d think I’d expect it by now LOL!

I’ve done the DIY (Decorate it yourself) calendar for 2018.  

Grab it here.

Another follower always needs her calendars resized, which is more work than it once was, due to some changes in the OS I use.  BUT I know the size she needs.  To accommodate people who need different sizes, I will now plan on spacing things out as above.    You can cut outside the lines and get a bigger calendar block, up to about 4 x 5 1/2 inches, if you need it.

So that is two special requests down!

Lastly, I had a request for a planner Year at a Glance sheet.  You may recall I made a series of planner pages that included a variety of toppers that you can print month at a glance sheets on.  I’ve done two YAAG for 2017 that fit.  I know for sure they work perfectly on A4 paper and I believe they will work reasonably well for US letter paper.

There is a plain version and a fancy font version, as well as the watercolour planner surround –

Grab that here.

and the calendar sheets look like this:

 

Grab the PLAIN FONT version here and the FANCY FONT version here

You can easily print them and decorate the top as you like, even just sticking a strip of scrapbook paper over it and adding the year back with stickers!

So I think that takes care of any special request type things.  Phew.

Interesting Planner printables

I love playing around with weird ideas that pop into my head.  You know the planner pages I added recently?  I had the idea to expand on them in what I hope will be an interesting way.

I first created, as requested, the full 12 months of the side-by-side lace-strip planner pages.  That looks like this:

BUT what I have added is just the lace strips on each page. If you print that you will get 12 sheets, each with a lace strip at the top edge with NOTES: at the far right. The files has been created so the two “pages” print side-by-side on a single sheet, and no matter what size paper you select, the design will be scaled to fit and print in the middle of the sheet.

That in itself could be useful, I suppose, if you wanted just a nice decorative sheet for your planner with lots of space to write.

I also designed two other files.  One, like the lace file, has 12 sheets, each with a decorative strip across the top.  Like the Lace one, it starts with what I have assigned as JANUARY, and ends with what I have assigned as DECEMBER.  The strips look like this:

but that is not the order they appear.

A third file is a single sheet, meant to be printed 12 times.  That is a watercolour floral and looks like this:

The second element is the calendar pages.  I did three – well, two and a variation.

Big Date

Big Date with the days and Month larger and darker

Modern, with a fancier font

Again, these are 12 sheets on month a page.

Here is how it works.  Figure out how the paper feeds thru your printer.  This is critical.  Print a single sheet, print all 12, of whatever calendar page you want.  Them load a page, or the stack, back into your printer and print the decorative sheet of your choice over the top.  The decorative elements will be centred just like the calendars are.  So you could print January with the lace strips using the fancy font calendar – see the selection to print the page selected in the sidebar?

and the other option to print page 2 only?

And you might be able to fill the page more completely by selecting the BORDERLESS option

 

The point is, you can print any of the calendar pages onto any of the decorative element pages, as you prefer.  You could even just print the calendar pages and add your own decor – stamps, patterned paper, washi tape, even a photo strip.

Now, I would LOVE to be able to perform all these actions to show you they do work, but my stupid printer is out of black ink.  I have a full smaller black ink cart but the fat cart is empty and it won’t print without all the carts having at least some ink in them.  I hate that.  Anyway, give it a go and see what you think.  For me, this is a great way to share LOADS of different options and allow people to customize planner pages by picking a combo they like.  And it means with three calendar options, I can add tons of decor topppers quickly and effortlessly!

Calendar sheets (12 months, each month across 2 planner pages. Designed to be cut in half, and hole punched to lay side-by-side)

2017 Fancy Font calendar

2017 Big Date (light text)

2017 Big Date (darker text)

Decorative sheets (12 months, side-by-side)

Lace Strip

BoHo strips

and finally

Watercolour floral  (one sheet to be printed 12 times, one per month)

Hope you have fun with this.

My DASH diet planner

Fair warning – I am not planning on adding this as a download, as it really is useless unless you buy this book. I did buy it and read it and love it.  In the past, when I have been successful in dieting it has been down to cutting out carbs and most fruit. We have always eaten a ton of veg and lentils, black beans, white bean mash, but far too much meat.  This version of DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) doesn’t cut out any one food group.  It seems like a plan that is sustainable.  But making sure I am getting everything I need while not overdoing things in certain areas was always going to take some planning and attention.  So I created my own personal planner that has the bits in it I need. I have been using it (since yesterday when I began the Phase one diet properly) and so far it IS helping to keep me on track.  I was happy to share it on the FB Support group (kindly linked to me in a comment by follower Bridget) because the folks there have the book and can make use of the very specific info – and won’t be misled by the abbreviated info in the charts.

But if you are following a specific diet, you might consider making one of these for yourself.  Just the making of it helped me a lot! Because I have a Filofax style planner, I first made them to print and slice down the middle like my other planner pages:

This is the serving checklist – basically a prettier version of what is in the book

I also made a sheet that tracks my weight, blood sugar level and activity – this is the first version, the final one includes tick boxes for water consumption.

I also did a sheet that highlights many of the meal suggestions for the Phase One portion.  I figure by Phase Two I’ll have a better grip on it.  Plus it is too hard to squeeze as much info as I would need in a small sheet LOL!  I have the book to refer to.

The tick boxes are so I can keep track of how many times I have a particular meal over the week.  Phase One is only two weeks so this sheet is only useful for a limited time. There is a Phase Two serving checklist too, that will become the bulk of the planner over time.

But it also occurred to me that many people won’t have a planner.  And aren’t going to be keen to buy one just for tracking their diet.  So I re-jigged the layout so the sheets can be printed on an A4 or US letter sheet, sideways, and used in a standard 3-ring (or 4-ring) binder.

I was lazy and cheap and printed these on printer paper, standard quality, hence the colour difference.

What I did notice in that process is that the meant-to-be-cut pages won’t work in a binder like this – the sheets are flip-flopped, so the MON-WED days are on the RIGHT rather than the left.  Of COURSE it wasn’t going to be easy.  But hey ho.

I feel lucky that I have the skill (sort of)  to customize a personalized planner for specifically what I need to plan for.  And it makes me realize why I found it so hard to create a “generic” planner for OTHER people to use.  Everyone has their own ideas of what a planner needs.  I remember back when we used NeXT computers, post-PC, pre-Mac.  There was an object-oriented programming tool that let you group individual bits of code just the way YOU needed to, to build a program without starting from a blank screen.  It fascinated me, and made so much sense.  Wouldn’t it be totally cool if you had little building blocks for a planner that you could drag onto a properly sized blank page, and its reverse,  to create your own customized version? And change the colour or font with a click? Then just send it to your printer and BAM! WHAT? Prefect planner!

Ah, dream on….

Mini-planner

So this is something that I thought might be useful.  Basically, I had the idea I wanted a planner to fit in my purse.  But I didn’t want to go to all the work of making a whole new one.  All this is,  is a 1/4 page version of the original one.

That is 5 3/4 x 4 1/4 (approx.) which is a shame, as fitting into a 6×4 photo sleeve would be handy.  I would trim a bit of the border (in the centre below) so it is 4 inches wide.  I first tried a split ring as the “binder” but wanted something more “bound” but still changeable.

Too fiddly.

Instead I used something I have seen and always wanted to try, the paper-clip and rubber band binder.  Of course,  I have a million loom bands everywhere, and they are pretty and colourful so I used them instead!

So simple and the pages open flat

And on the back, you just see the bands.  I looped two together so it was long enough.

Is it obvious enough you don’t need a tutorial on it?

My plan is to retain the Covers and YaaG pages month to month,  swap the month one for the new Month as needed,  then swap out the daily pages each week.  Small enough to carry around with me, where the big planner is more for home.  The if I am out, making an appointment, for example, I can see if the day is clear, make a note of it, and add it to my desk planner when I get home.

Here are the files:

Months Only (Covers) – each “page” has 4 quotes, two with the wide border for the holes on the LEFT (front cover) and two with the holes on the RIGHT (back cover)  so there will be some that can only be Front covers and some only Back.  You can trim them close to the coloured area and mount that on another bit of card to change that if you want to use a particular quote for the front and the PDF doesn’t work that way.

Year at a Glance – 2015  and 2016 .  Both have YEAR at a Glance and MONTH at a Glance on the same side. Print NOTES on the back. (corrected and added the year so they are clearer)

Week at a Glance – Print the same on the back

Use EITHER Daily OR Daily Hour by Hour – print the same, front and back

All backs can be NOTES, if you prefer, so if you wanted to print the Daily pages so you had Notes on the back you could.

Here is a flip-thru.

Cover

followed by two NOTES pages

Year at a Glance

followed by two NOTES pages

Month at a Glance

followed by two NOTES pages

Week at a Glance

followed by 8 daily pages and a NOTES page

Back cover

Here’s an idea! By trimming the pages down to 4 x 6 you can slip them right into your Project Life sleeve.  I like the idea of people seeing what daily life was like in that amount of detail, right there with the photos.

 

Planner bits

I am still not able to figure out a good overall set of instructions for easily printing my planner.  But I will add the files and what I used as the basic guidelines.

Paper weight

I will first repeat that I used heavier weight cardstock when I printed mine – 160 gsm.  I like the look and feel of that weight.  I also used standard print quality.  Just for your info, I’ve printed a month divider on the back of the Year At A Glance sheet. I can see the text thru.

I would possibly test 90 and 120 gsm.  Either one might be just thick enough.

A4 versus US Letter paper

I’ve tried to make these usable on both A4 and US Letter. That meant some compromises.  This is how they print on A4 – the size I use:

 

There is some margin.  Not a ton.  Just printed front and back the sliced down the middle.  I don’t have any US letter paper, but here I have printed the pages on an A4 sheet, but set to US letter and Scale to Fit when printing.  The black line denotes the smaller length of US letter paper.  The width is slightly wider but only by 1/4 inch.

So a bigger border top and bottom, meaning less usable space.  I think you need to know this is you are using US letter paper, BEFORE you start printing!

Here is an overview of all the double-page spreads.  Any of them can be printed front or back of any other one, then sliced down the middle to produce two pages, with a border for hole punching. Click to see larger. You may be able to come up with combos I’ve not used!

Belongs To

Month at a Glance

Month dividers (12)

Daily x 2

Daily hour by hour

Sunday

Sunday Alternate

Notes Filler

End of Month

Month Tabs

Just months

 

Here are all the PDFs:

Belongs To – intro page with contact and emergency info

Year at a Glance (2015 and 2016 versions)  corrected  and added the year info to both

Month Dividers – quotes, incorporating Week at a Glance left page

Months_Only – to randomly insert inspirational quotes

Month Tabs – 12 with text and a few extra blank ones

Month At a Glance – to create a two-page spread

DailyX2 – print back to back to make four day sheets when cut apart

Daily HourByHour – daily variation.  Use EITHER/OR (they don’t play well together)

Sunday – Daily, incorporating Week at a Glance left page

Sunday Alternate – Notes, incorporating Week at a Glance left page and notes

Notes_filler – side by side Notes pages

End Of Month – use it if needed anywhere

I cannot stress strongly enough that you really need to know how the paper moves thru your printer before you begin.  When printing back to back, do a test sheet before printing a large number of pages!

 

A4 paper people – print as is.

US Letter people, select US Letter as your paper size and SCALE TO FIT

The simplest version.

Print  Belongs To –> Print Year at a Glance on the back.

Print the Month_Tabs

Print ONE Month Divider –> Print Notes_filler on the back

For a month, Print EIGHT Dailyx2 or Daily HourByHour sheets, same on front and back

Print FIVE  Sunday sheets –>print your chosen DAILY sheet on the back

Note: I realize I don’t have the Sunday sheet with an HourByHour version on it.  If you really need that one, drop me a comment and I’ll try to make one.  

CUT ALL SHEETS IN HALF

There will be some extras.  Set them aside and check before printing the last month or two you need.

To assemble:

Start off with the Belongs to and Year At a Glance pages

• Add the Month divider (Two Notes pages follow, then Week at a Glance)
• Add six Daily sheets followed by one Daily sheet with Week at a Glance on the back.
• repeat
• Add the month tab on the daily sheet that corresponds to the 1st of the month

You can print as many Notes_Filler sheets as you like to mix in

Another addition: print a Month at a Glance for each month with Notes_filler on the back (or even leave blank on the back) and slip them in just before the 1st of the month.

The slightly more complex version:

Print  Belongs To –> Print Year at a Glance on the back.

Print the Month_Tabs

Print Months_only –> Print Notes_filler on the back

For a month, Print EIGHT Dailyx2 or Daily HourByHour sheets, same on front and back

Print FIVE  Sunday sheets –>print your chosen DAILY sheet on the back

There will be some extras.  Set them aside and check before printing the last month or two you need.

To assemble:

Start off with the Belongs to and Year At a Glance pages

• Add the Month divider (Two Notes pages follow, then Week at a Glance)  for the first month
• Add six Daily sheets followed by one Daily sheet with Week at a Glance on the back.
• repeat
• Slip the Month_only quote pages in randomly, wherever you want a quote and a notes page, or place them as closer to the beginning of the month and add the tabs to them rather than to the page for the 1st of the month.

Note: this might send things a bit skewiff, where you have a week with one day in it at the beginning or the end of a month, but if you are ok with shifting things slightly, it works OK.  

As before, you can print as many Notes_Filler sheets as you like to mix in

Another addition: print a Month at a Glance for each month with more Notes_filler on the back (or even leave blank on the back) and slip them in after the month dividers

The Crazy person Version (i.e. Mine)

This is what I did – but then I don’t mind the amount of crazy it takes to assemble this.  I am actually not really expecting too many people will go to the trouble of doing it this way, but  I am really happy with it, it suits my needs perfectly. Making it was both a solution for ME as well as a learning experience.  Now, if I decide to make one that I DO think might be useful to lots of people, I think I know what I would do.

You will need to print each of these ONCE

• Belongs_to  –>  print Year_at_a_Glance on the back
•  Month_Tabs

For each month you will need to print:

a Month_Dividers –> print Month_at_a_Glance on the back

That is the easy part.  If you print the entire Month_Dividers 12 page PDF, with the Month_at_a_Glance single page printed on the back of each of them, you will have, for each month, the divider, with a quote on the front, flip over for Week At a Glance sheet.

Now for the daily sheets.

For the days: You can choose to print the Daily_x2 file OR the Daily_HourByHour.  They don’t really mix.  Print the same one front AND back.  That give you four Daily pages when cut in half.

This is where it gets dodgy.  Because of the Week at a Glance sheets and the Monthly dividers, it isn’t as simple as just printing the number of days.  Printing double-sided means multiple options for left-side holes and right side holes are required.

I found that the best thing to do was print EIGHT of the Daily sheets (either one) and FIVE of the Sunday sheets, for 32 days.  Have the Year at a Glance calendar handy.  Start building your weeks. Use the Sunday, Sunday_Alternate, End_0f_Month and Notes_filler sheets to make everything work out, according to where the days fall.

Honestly? Writing it out makes it seem like a lot of work.  Maybe it is, but I didn’t find it that difficult.  Yes, it takes more time, but it needed to, for me to get the planner I wanted.

 

I hope the sheets are flexible enough you can print them to create a planner that suits YOU.  And at some point I’ll probably go back and use what I learned to create a version that is easier to explain!

Oh, and if you are keen on an A4 or US letter full size version, drop me a comment.  I have the files and it should be easy enough to add them as a single PDF so you can print as you like.

Does your head hurt?  I know mine does…..

{wink}

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finished my planner!

Finally.  I had to wait for the right weight printer paper (I like 160 gsm, but might try 120 and 140 at some point to see how I like that) and took time out to buy a car (mine had been in the shop on and off since the end of last year, over 2 months in total) and now have to dash off to collect DS after taking DD skating.  Busy Sunday, but I thought I would add an overview.  Pictures suck, sorry, but I am rushing to get something up before I have to bolt.

The Belongs to page opens it.

Luckily it’s pretty bog-standard so not missing much.

The I move to a Year-at-a-glance spread

The a Month divider page

and then  Month-at-a-Glance and Week-at-a-Glance pages

I always want the WaaG page on the left, just how my brain likes it to be.  Then the Daily pages

Each week ends on a Sunday so the flip over to the WaaG page on the left works out.

The month dividers arent assigned so I can pick the one I want for the month

It’s still overcast and a bit dark here this AM so the colours are not right, but you get the idea, I hope.

I would share it, but I have yet to figure out a simple, straight-forward explanation of the printing.  It will vary from month to month!  A month that has a one day “week” at the beginning or end?  Makes sense to group it with the following (or previous) week cause you really don’t need a WaaG page for one day!  Odd number days may need a “filler” sheet to make the WaaG page fall on the left.  The full, Monday to Sunday weeks are easy to explain.  The other ones?  not so much.

That is a weird contradiction.  I always use a printed calendar in the Sunday to Saturday format.  Planners, desk calendars, etc, I always think of the first day of the week as a Monday.  Monday to Friday is the week, Saturday and Sunday the weekend.  Like I said, just how my mind works…

Anyway, I may still share it if anyone is keen, cause I made it and I might as well.  But I might have a further think on what to add to accommodate those who want a more standard planner, without the At a Glance sheets (or with fewer of them)

Any and all comments on the design would be great to hear.  What am I missing that I need?