Ok lovelies, I'm killing THREE birds with one stone today! Since posting a sneak peak of my new inserts back in March, a bunch of you have been bugging me to share more details. It has taken me almost a month and a half, but here I am with details to share! As an added bonus, I've also FINALLY done a video of my current set up. The sound ended up a bit wonky, but oh well. You can't have everything.
The idea for new inserts came about after a few pet peeves about store bought inserts became too much to bear. It was nothing major, little things like not having Saturday and Sunday together on monthly pages, only having one column for to-dos, etc. Then I realized that I don't have to deal with pet peeves in my planner, especially because I have a rudimentary knowledge of design, along with the Adobe Suite.
But as a through and through paper person, I had to doodle my designs before going digital. So I traced existing pages and came up with this:
It's not the prettiest thing in the world (I'm a designer, not an artist) but it at least gave me a visual of what I wanted to create in InDesign. After playing around a few hours, I had this:
Of course, that is also before cutting and punching. In addition to printing out a few days to test the layout, I printed "edit sheets" that I kept in my binder. I used these to jot down and changes I wanted to make as I noticed them.
For example, I realized pretty quickly that using colored boxes for the date on the monthly pages was far too busy. I also learned that I preferred having blank space on the left page of the dailies- it gave me more freedom to use the space for notes, doodles, etc.
After a few more edits, I had these:
I made the decision to pre-date the monthly pages, since there are only 12 of them. I got too lazy to mess with the dailies, and it turns out I really don't have any issues with writing/stamping in the dates myself.
In the end, I now have extremely customized pages that may not be useful to anyone other than me. But after a bit of interest in whether or not I'd be selling these pages, I decided to give you a surprise - the file for free! (I may still sell printed copies, but I have to determine whether or not it would be cost effective.
Until that decision is made, you can grab the file for the two pages per day layout HERE! A quick note on printing - it is a two page PDF, but ignore the first page! I just had to insert it so that the two page layout was side to side. So, just print page two back to back, making sure to have it centered on the page so they line up when printing. Hopefully this is clear, but if you have questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments! The added bonus of the undated pages is that if you already use a weekly, you can just print a few of these from time to time if you know you're going to have a busy day. I'd love to know how they work out for you!
And, as an extra special surprise, I've finally done a set-up video, which includes the new inserts. You'll have to forgive me on the weird sound issues - I have no idea what that was all about.
I hope you enjoy the video and the freebie inserts. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below or on the video page!
