Seemingly Crafty: Ready for 2015!

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/357121445425242693/

New year, new beginning...

Each year we hope for a great year, the best so far, a year filled with happiness, success and fun moments that will become our greatest memories... No matter what the previous year was like – whether it was good or bad, we get the chance to start all over again, to make a change, to start something new. That's the magic of new beginnings!

I start every new year with a brand new planner that will help me organize all my upcoming responsibilities, events and ideas. And this year I decided to go with a DIY planner. To be honest, it was a lengthy project and it took more effort than I thought it will. But in the end, it turned out into one of my most special planners till date and I will proudly carry it around throughout the year.

For this project I decided to try something new – journal binding.

I started with preparing the pages. I didn't make my own planner templates because I found these free printables on http://www.thehandmadehome.net/2014/06/free-planner-and-calendar-more-2015/.

These are awesome, colorful and fun, and made my project a lot easier. The only „problem“ for me was their format – the smallest is A5, and I prefer my planner at least 2 times smaller. So I decided to print them out in a smaller format - which didn't really work. The major problem was that I couldn't get the smaller pages to overlap nicely when I printed them out two-sided. Then I tried to arrange them by using Microsoft Word, and this time it worked! Here is what I did:

1. I copied all pdf files to clipboard and pasted them as pictures in Word.

2. I resized all the files to the same size and arranged them on a page – I ended up having 4 smaller pages on one page. The sheets looked kinda like this:

Sheet for monthly / weekly pages

Sheet for "weekly" pages

Sheet for "ideas" pages

The arrangement was made according to what I wanted to get when I print them out and cut the sheets in half. For an example, I needed "February" page to be printed on the back of the "January" page and "April" page on the back of the "March" page. In the same way, "Thursday to Sunday" page needed to come out on the back of "Monday to Wednesday" page. Also, I made a few pages with inspirational quotes from my collection of words on pinterest.

3. When I was satisfied with my new adapted templates, I printed them out, two-sided.

4. I cut the sheets in half. Since my bottom margin was bigger than the top one, I had to cut the excess of the paper on the bottom as well. So there was a lot of cutting. :/

5. Then I created 4 groups of pages - one is a mix of "monthly" and "weekly" pages, two contain only "weekly" pages and the last one contains "ideas" pages. I folded the pages in half, thus giving me my signatures and I was finally ready for the binding.