oh hi.
did you know that I’m marginally obsessed with the Happy Planner system from meandmybigideas? You didn’t? Well, let me count the ways as to how…
Well, not really. What I’m mostly doing is just bringing up how I’ve been working on doing custom ‘content’ for my planner. I started with making Trails of Cold Steel themed pair of covers for it last year, and have since decided that I’m going to make more themed covers for it over the next few months- especially as I’ve been wanting to do more creative stuff, thanks to the pandemic.
So to start on these, I’m creating a new category, and have added my downloader system to my personal blog so that I can give people access to these new covers and let you all make use of them as well if you use the Happy Planner system, as well.
See it in Action!
Below, I’ve included the video of the cover I posted of the cover on instagram. There are some tricks to it to make it work, so I’ll provide them as well in this post.
How does this work? First, you’ll want to print out the pages. As they are, they should be the right sizes on a letter sized printout. Print them and cut them out to the edges of the images- all four images. I used a paper cutter to keep the edges straight. Then once I was done with the cuts, I used a corner rounding punch, like this one, to round the edges.
How to Use the Template
I apologize as I didn’t photograph the process of making this cover. I’ll do a detailed set of shots on the next cover I create!
If you look at the images on the printout, they have a set of weird black holes on them. These holes, and the shape of them, are important. These are what the discs slot into for the planner. A way to cut them is using one of the hole punches provided by MAMBI for the Happy Planner set- the smallest of these is for the classic (it uses 9 rings; the mini uses 7 rings). (You can also find them for way cheaper instead of that Amazon link I posted. You just need to be smart and look carefully.) However, in the case of the covers, we’ll be using a more labor-intensive method. You will want a regular hand-held hole punch and scissors.
Once these have been printed and cut, glue your two pieces together and then laminate them. Trim all of the excess lamination and then get out the punching tools.
The black on the art is meant to be a guide. Use your handheld hole-punch on each of the center rings, and then use scissors to cut a narrow line between each one. This is needed to create the ‘grip’ for the discs. The image below from my cover should show you what to expect. Though my punches weren’t on line with the guides as I was testing how the guides looked. Future planner covers may not have them, but more of a guide for how to punch the holes in.
In the case of my planner, I opted to use the gold tone metal discs that you can find on Amazon. The best part of discs like this is that you can put them aside when they’re not in use and use them again later if you want to redesign your planner.
Future Plans
My next project will also to be making dividers. I’m in the process of testing out templates for them now, so once I have something a lot more solid, I will be able to share them here. I hope, if you use planners yourself, that you get something great out of this. Happy planning!