Studio Monday with Nina-Marie: Four Ways to Make A Planner Work For You!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And one last thing before you go… a Blog Candy Alert!! Follow our blog via email and comment on this post for a chance to win grab bags and blog candy! Remember to tag your awesome projects with #simonsaysstamp on social media so we can see what you are creating!
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  1. I really love the look of all the different planners. I just haven’t figured out for myself where to begin. Does that sound like a procrastinator or what!

  2. I’m not a planner person, but you sure have given some great ideas and tips to those who are! There is certainly an endless supply of options to choose from. TFS all of this with us.

  3. All of these cute and creative ideas for planners might just motivate me to get one…I definitely could use one anyway and who wouldn’t want to keep up with it using such cute products? Thanks so much for putting this information together!

  4. i love that you now have your own planner astuff and planner section, i have planners for work etc but mainly use planner stuff for cards not even planners LOL!!

  5. Thank you for all the info. I do have a planner but do not decorate. I have a hard enough time just putting the dates I need to in it let alone making it fancy!!!

  6. Those cute penguin planner stamps alone would make me want to organize! Thanks for the overview and fun ideas.

  7. Oh this blog post was written for me!!! I’m a self confessed #plannernerd. I also like to add in positive and motivational sayings. I only do decorating in my memory planner but every now and then I’ll pretty up my day-to-day planner. Most of my planning stuff has come from SSS – thank goodness they ship worldwide!

  8. I use a Foxy Fix for all my planning needs. My FN has all of my notebooks and planning in it well when I remember to use it, but the one big thing that I do use it for is my “Wish List” for my cardmaking. Thanks for sharing.

  9. I haven’t gotten a planner yet but how fun to get creative and still have a practical use. Thanks for the tutorial!!

  10. I love planners because it is an excellent way to stay organized and with all of the new stamps and embellishments, it lets you use your artsy and creative side.

  11. Very informative post, thanks for the inspiration. It is going to help me in the process of setting up my planning system for 2017. As a life long holder of some sort of agenda and a confessed paper/pen/stamp addict, this year requires achieving some planner peace. Cheers!

  12. I was a planner geek before planners became cool. Now I just have fabulous goodies to go along with my planner to accessorize my geekiness! :)

  13. Awesome tips! I have an EC planner to keep track of my day to day appointments but also just received my websters pages travelers notebook which is the fun one to decorate up!

  14. A lot of fantastic ideas for starting off the new year with our new planners. I have a few things I bought from last year but I am loving these new sets.
    Thanks for the inspiration Nina and Happy New Year!

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