Week One – Summary of Resources

Here are the resources I used in week 1:

1. Arlyna (A:Bloggism) – Printables – Planner Pages
2. Vintage Glam Studio: Lilac Dreams Planner Stickers – Free Printable Download
3. Etsy – OCDKitty Daily Planner Printable

Week One – My Own Filofax

While it was very fun creating my own inserts (see post – Creating the Inserts) , when it came to filling up my own organiser, I was a bit more lazy. I instead searched online for the most basic templates I could find, which would give me the ability to customise it as much as I liked.

The most urgent inserts for me were:

1. Daily Planner
2. Monthly Calendar
3. Notes Pages
4. Weekly Planner

So I set about finding the most appropriate free printables that I could, using, of course, Pinterest.

Here’s what my organiser looked like at the end of the week:

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Now, let me take you through how I got here and what resources I used.

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To begin with, I desperately needed a daily planner to help me keep track of everything. I’d been using printouts for weeks now, just as paper copies, and I had grown so accustomed to documenting everything that it was definitely on the top of my priorities list.

I found my daily planner, monthly calendar and notes page in the same place. It wasn’t easy though. I wanted to make sure I had made the right decision, so I went through all the variables of key words I could think of to search for all three of those pages. I decided to only look for ones that were already available in personal size, as I had had a lot of trouble trying to change the size of sheets when printing. After reaching the bottom of the pinterest search for every set of keywords, I decided that Arlyna’s Planner Pages (found here) where the best fit for what I needed.I loved how simple they were, and I thought the colour scheme was beautiful.

However, the pages didn’t exactly fit my needs, so I had to customise them a little using cut up post-it notes and printable stickers (found here), which unfortunately I had to just print on paper and use glue to stick as I did not have any sticker paper.

Here’s what the daily planner page looked like when I had customised it:

I still had some problems with the page, specifically that:

• The to-do list was too small.
• I has used up the notes section to track my water, coffee and cigarette intake, meaning there was no space left for actual notes. (See how I overcome this by reading on.)
• I had covered the reminders section with a meal plan sticky note.

But other than that, it was perfect for what I needed, and I decided it would do until I could be bothered to create my own sheet.

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As mentioned before, I also used Arlyna’s Planner Pages (see above for link) for my monthly calendar. I liked how it was spread over two pages rather than one, as one personal size page is just too small for an entire month. I also liked that there was a notes, to do, and reminder section for the calendar. That, and the pretty colour scheme, attracted me to this printable.

Unfortunately, the days were arranged very strangely on the top of the calendar, so I decided to cover those up with colour blocks (which I printed out, cut to size and glued on) and to write new dates on the top.

Here is what my calendar looked like when I was finished customising it:

As you can see, I also colour coordinated my calendar:

• Teal-ly Green: Work
• Blue: Appointments
• Pink: Social Events
• Orange: Reminders of Outgoings
• Bright Green: Friendly Reminders

Once that was done, I was very happy with it.

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I also needed a notes page, which I also got from Arlyna’s Planner Pages (see above for link). She gives three options for note pages: lined, squared and blank. I decided the use the squared pages as they gave me the most freedom in terms of what I could use it for.

I really needed an itinerary for my plans on Saturday, as it was going to be a very long day with a lot going on (including a lot of travelling), and so I used the notes pages to create this plan. I didn’t want it to say ‘Notes’ at the top though, so I used the printable stickers (see above for link), cut them into strips and stuck them down to make a funky colourful header. I also used the stickers as weather forecast stickers by cutting out the small circle ones and writing down the predicted forcast (e.g. I drew a cloud because it’s meant to be cloudy, and 22C because that’s the average temperature that day).

Finally, I also used the stickers to create a ‘NOTES / TO DO’ section on the last page of the plan, in case I had to add anything later.

See here a few pages of the plan:

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Finally, I used the card holders that were attached to the filofax to create a little dashboard. I cut the printable stickers into strips and inserted them in there, ready to use. I wanted to add to this, but knew that I would have to wait until payday to do so.

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Quick note: Also, as I was unable to afford a filofax hole puncher yet, I decided instead to just use the actual ring binder itself to poke holes through the sheets. I used one of the inserts that had originally come with the filofax as a guideline for the holes, which I drew on with a big marker so that I knew where to poke the binder through the paper.

And that is the end of week 1!

Week One – Creating the Inserts

I began my journey with two personal organisers. Both were Personal sized – one red, one black leather. The red was for myself, as I am a sucker for a bright coloured binder, and the other was for my best friend, Tory, who begged me to make her a personalised organiser (on commission, of course).

Before I could even begin on my own organiser, I started on Tory’s. She didn’t have too much of an idea what she wanted from it, other than that she needed something to keep track of her work and her life when she returned to university for her second year. Using this, and my existing knowledge of organiser pages that I had learned from pinterest, I began creating inserts for her filofax.

I started (stupidly) at the end of the month, and so I had no money in my bank account until payday. Therefore, I was unable to purchase any kind of good software to create these pages on. Instead, I used Microsoft Publisher, which actually surprised me with how capable it was of handling what I needed to do.

I’ve never been much of a graphic designer, so this was the most difficult part for me. I knew that she wanted a red and black themed organiser, and so I set about building sheets with this colour scheme.

I started by creating a calendar, beginning in September 2015 (because I knew the organiser had to be finished by the time she went back to university) and ending in August 2016. I measured the dimensions of the inserts that had originally come with the organiser and used those as a sizing guide for the pages I was creating (taking into account the left margin which needed to leave room for the ring binder).

Once I’d created a look that I was happy with, I needed to know about any personal additions she wanted. There were a few birthdays that I needed to add in, and I did so. She also wanted her university term dates in there, which I also did.

Next, I created for her a daily planner (purchase here) which encompassed all the aspects she needed – a section for a hourly schedule, a to do list, a section to input her work, a water intake section, and a meal planning section.

Then I created some very basic sheets – a notes page, and a bucket list page (which she had specifically requested).

Those are the sheets that I created for her. (Sorry for the rubbish picture, but the lighting is terrible here.)

I then had to wait until I had a bit of money so that I could buy some necessary equipment to turn these sheets into actual insets for her filofax.