Hello crafty friends, it’s Nina-Marie here wishing you a very happy Monday! With the new year now here, it’s time to start working on your plans for 2017!

Planners are a very useful tool in helping achieve your 2017 goals, make your creative plans happen and keep your daily agenda on track. For me, my planner is indispensable; I use it daily for keeping track of my work and blog schedules.

We all use our planners differently; some of us decorate them, use them as agendas, journals, inspiration books, or even as memory keepers. In today’s video, I will be sharing four different tips for making use of your planner… and make it work best for you!

PLANNERS AND PLANNER INSERTS

At Simon Says Stamp we carry many different brands of planners, including the Me & My Big Ideas Happy Planners, Simple Stories Carpe Diem, Webster’s Pages Color Crush and Jillibean Soup A Day In the Life. Most of these are fully customizable and the coordinating products from many of these planners are interchangeable between each other. This gives you even more customization options!

As an example, I created a planner for one of my friends recently using the Jillibean Soup A Day In the Life planner. I filled it with inserts from both Jillibean Soup’s Day 2 Day planner page inserts and the Carpe Diem planner inserts, lined paper and page dividers.

ESSENTIALS & ORGANIZATION

I find it very helpful to keep my planner organized; not only the planner itself, but also my planner supplies. I love using zipper pouches to keep my planner essentials neatly stored and at hand so that they are ready when I need them. This saves me tons of time in having to search for something.

There are a variety of these zipper pouches available, but some of my favorites are from Jillibean Soup, Me & My Big Ideas and Prima. Essential supplies I have on hand in my pouches are: washi tapes, sticky notes, pens, stickers, postage stamps, return address labels and anything else I find I need to slip inside.

DECORATING

For those that love to decorate their planners, there are a plethora of options to choose from! I think stamps are a perfect option for decorating your planner because they can be customized completely by changing up ink colors, masking, etc. I personally am not a huge planner-decorator. It doesn’t fit my personality and lifestyle all that much. However, I do like adding stickers, quotes and sayings, and little inspirational bits and pieces to my planner pages and pockets. While I don’t personally decorate my planner as much as others do, I think it is a beautiful art form and is inspiring for me to see how others decorate their planners.

For those of you planning on decorating your planner, I recommend selecting items that fit your personality; and don’t feel like the planner has to coordinate either! I think the more mixy-matchy the planner pages are, the more exciting and reflective they are of your life and creativity. If you need a bit of a kick start in selecting decorative elements for your planner, you’ll want to check these out:

INSPIRATIONAL ELEMENTS

This could arguably be one of the most important aspects of your planner! Because your planner is very much a part of your daily life, you want it to be filled with things that inspire, uplift, encourage and overall make you happy! Just like your home is filled with things that you enjoy and love, and friends support and encourage you in different aspects of your life, a planner should be filled with these same things; elements that make you smile and encouraging words that push you forward into the day.

For me, I love to tuck inspirational quotes that I print online, or write down encouraging words I heard recently into the pages of my planner. I also enjoy making things like bookmarks that have uplifting sentiments on them to mark my place. Having sentiment stamp sets that include quotes or sayings on them is a great idea for your planner, especially if you are like me and enjoy having inspiring words around you!

And remember: inspiration doesn’t have to be just words either! I also love to save printed images, photos, postcards, ads from a magazine, etc. in a zipper pouch or pinned to a page in my planner, which I can reference when I am in a creative rut. Whatever it is that you find inspirational, you should try incorporating these elements into your planner! Planners might be a collection of dates, to-do’s, goals and appointments, but they can be made more fun by sprinkling more of ourselves in between the pages of our daily life!

I hope the video below and today’s post gives you some creative ideas and mojo to get your 2017 planner started off on the right track! Thanks so much for visiting me today and have a very happy Monday!

WATCH THE VIDEO

MORE PLANNER INSPIRATION

Did you know we have a Plan On It product category that features Simon Exclusives that are perfect for your planner needs?? You’ll want to check that out HERE! And remember we have a Plan On It gallery where you can find inspiration using Plan On It products, as well as upload your own projects using our Plan On It exclusives! You can find the Plan On It gallery HERE.