Planner Peek: Dianne

I  am so excited to bring you another installment  in the Planner Peek series!  I don’t know about you, but I just LOVE being able to sneak a peek inside other people’s planners. I love to see how they use them, how they decorate them, what type of planner they use, etc. I have asked my readers to submit photos of their planners and to tell us a bit about how they use their planning system. (You can submit your planner by filling out this really short and easy form. If you’re selected, you’ll get a free copy of the digital Sweet Life Planner worth $35!) All of the Planner Peeks in this series have been so fun to see.

This installment in the Planner Peek series features Dianne, a novelist and a blogger, as well as owner of an Etsy shop, Tiny Relics, where she sells planner stickers she creates herself. Dianne started out using an Erin Condren, but realized that it just wasn't set up the way she needed it to be. Dianne says, “I spent weeks poring over every kind of inserts on Etsy before deciding to make my own. I designed them in Pixelmator and then printed them out” Dianne now carries a Day Runner, about A5 size.  She changes the layout of her weekly spread pretty often to tweak and shift all the boxes to where she needs/wants them and she absolutely loves being able to DIY the pages.

There have been about six incarnations since April on her weekly page.  Diane finds that she keeps changing her mind about whether to have the days in columns or boxes, and how much space to leave where. She has so many 1.5 x 1.9″ stickers from her old Erin Condren that she wanted to at least have room for one or two each week. Dianne usually starts with the washi that appeals to her the most and then uses those colors or patterns to pick the rest. Her weekly pages have spots on each day for her to jot down what she worked on, whether that's a blog post or a chapter.  Dianne is also a type II bipolar, so she has a chart at the bottom to keep track of the overall level of her moods; at the end of the month she plots them out on a bigger graph so she can keep an eye on the patterns. Dianne says: “The whole thing is, and will probably continue to be, a work in progress. But so am I, so it seems fitting!”  Isn't this true for all of us?!?

Dianne made horizontal bookmarks so she could get to the monthly and weekly pages easily. She also started sticking in journaling cards, printouts, sketches, anything that she would like to look at when she pages through the planner. she has a monthly page for my upcoming goals, as well, and clipped in a picture of the rescue pig from Farm Sanctuary, which she supports every month. Seeing Rosa's picture up at the front of the month reminds her that, “I might not be able to save every animal but I did help save her.”

Every Sunday she sits down with her mountain of washi tape and stickers and her brand new pages, and,  “I decorate, then fill in appointments and to-do lists. I use my month-in-view pages as an editorial calendar, using stickers to mark blog posts, post on Patreon, et cetera. I like having the bigger picture on the month pages and then more detail on the weekly. I tried making a daily page but even though it was really pretty it just didn't work for me.”

The big butterfly serves as her dashboard. It was the cover of her old Erin Condren, and Dianne loved the image so much she decided to turn it into a dash for her new planner. Sticky notes and flags cover the back of it. In the card slots on the left are other flags, some Reset Girl stickers, that sort of thing.

Dianne states, “The main benefit of my planner is that it's a temporary memory bank for me. I've been on a lot of medications for a long time and my memory has been *slightly* damaged (memory issues are also a symptom of several mood disorders, especially bipolar), so I need a place to keep track of things like when I last brushed my teeth and what I wrote yesterday. It's as much a healing tool for my bipolar as it is an organizer – anything that can take stress out of your life is a powerful thing. It's a harmonizer. When I look through my planner at least once a day I feel calmer, knowing that even if my life overall is a mess, at least I know what day it is.”

Dianne certainly has learned the benefits of using a planner and I love her creativity.

I just love taking these planner peek tours.  For even more inspiration with your planner, check out all the Planner Peeks in this series.

Do you want your planner featured in this series AND have a chance to get the Sweet Life Planner worth $35 for free? Just click here to fill out the super short and easy form to have your planner considered for the series.

Leave a comment and let us know how you liked the planner peek and how it’s inspired you.