10.08.16
My Planning Process with Hello Fall
Good morning friends! Brenda Smith here with you today to share with you a couple planner spreads that I’ve been making in my Marigold Carpe Diem planner. I wanted to walk you through how I approach making my spreads.
I first fell in love with the Carpe Diem planners because of the horizontal weekly format, which is PERFECT for memory planning. But a few months ago when the new Carpe Diems came with vertical weekly inserts, I couldn’t wait to give them a try! The vertical inserts have quickly become my favorite for traditional planning because I find the format works best for all the lists I have in my head.
The first thing I do is cut down some patterned paper to size to fit in the vertical boxes. The vertical boxes are 1.25” wide by 1.875” tall. I’m horrible at measuring with the little tiny lines on a ruler so I used the Pages program on my Mac to make a template (this can also be done in Microsoft Word). In pages, I chose “shape” from the top bar, and chose a square shape and filled it with a color. I resized by pulling at the edges until it was the right size. I printed out on heavy cardstock and then cut it out. I used this as a template to cut out all the rectangles for my vertical boxes.
I used the Hello Fall 6x6 pad and mixed and matched patterns to give myself a good selection. I also trimmed out tiny little pieces of patterned paper to use as layering pieces, kind of like I would use little bits of washi but paper instead.
I took some die cut pieces from the Hello Fall Bits and Pieces and layered them atop my patterned paper boxes and paper strips. I move everything around (without gluing anything yet) until I’m satisfied with how it looks and then I start gluing things down systematically.
Once I have everything glued down, I’ll break out my stamps keeping in mind sentiments that will work for what I have going on that week. I want there to be a little white space left after I’ve added journaling, so I make sure to use stamps that will not take up too much valuable space. The Simple Stories roller stamps (List It and Make it Happen) are perfect for this because they offer a variety of sentiments in the optimum size for planners.
I usually use either my typewriter or my Silhouette Cameo with sketch pens to do the lists and journaling on my planner pages. I like the clean and eclectic look it gives.
Occasionally, I will outline my die cuts or embellishments that fade into the background with a black pen just to make them stand out more. I felt like this spread didn’t need any help with that, though, so I left it as is.
Also in my Marigold planner, I’ve got a divided section for memory planning. I do memory planning in a few different planners with the idea that maybe some day, I could hand completed memory planners to my son and daughter after they move out. So I have a planner for memory planning that is more skewed toward my daughter and things she says and does and I have one for my son, and I also have a more generic family memory planner which is this one.
This time, I decided to add a few photos directly to my memory planning pages. They take up a lot of room on my page, but as long as I can write a few lines to remind of us of the memories, I’m not worried about it.
Now I know this might make some orderly scrapbookers have a bit of a panic attack, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret: as long as my photos and memories happen within that week, I’m not always careful to put them on the corresponding day that the pictures were actually taken. If I took a photo on Saturday but it doesn’t really work for my design purposes to be placed on Saturday, I don’t worry about it. I put the pictures where they look best and relax about the timeline. Nobody is ever going to look back at these and say, “Hey, that actually happened 3 days earlier!” Within the week is specific enough for me.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into how I’m planning Fall in my Marigold planner. Have you transitioned into Fall in your planners? Make sure to tag Simple Stories when sharing on social media so we can enjoy all the beautiful pages you're making in your Carpe Diem!
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