Tutorial Thursday: Planner Bookmark

Planners are a big trend in the papercraft industry at the moment and I have to admit in the last few weeks I have been swept up in the craze. I used to have filofaxes and calendars and planners but then went digital for many years. Now that I am a scrapper, cardmaker and all around papercrafter, it was only a matter of time before I was lured back into using planners, especially with all the options for creativity that now seem to abound! I am making my own planner with personalized inserts and calendars, so of course when I wanted a bookmark for my planner I decided I needed to make my own, and thought I would do a tutorial for making one using some of my gorgeous La-La Land Craft dies.

To start your project gather up the papers you would like to use for your bookmark and a pattern for the base of the page you would like to make. I wanted a wide bookmark so that it could hold sticky notes and I could write out my meal plans on one side! I designed a page that would fit the height of my book and not quite as wide and I added a little tab at the top to mark the page. I chose to use several dies from La-La Land Crafts: the Cherry Blossom Branch Die, Garden Bench Die, Stitched Nested Circles and Stitched Elements banner die.  I thought that the Cherry Blossom Branch Die and the Garden Bench Die fit perfectly for our photo inspiration challenge this week: 

Take your pattern for the bookmark shape and cut it out from your pattern paper.

Next, cut out your die cut elements from your other papers.

I wanted to personalize my bookmark by making a banner to say "This Week" and then the days of the week inside little circles. I chose my font on the computer and then printed out the text I wanted, making sure it fit within the space in the die cuts.  By printing the text out on a sheet of copy paper, you can then take a smaller piece of your patterned paper and check that it will fit the text as below.

I added a strip of double sided adhesive to the top of the patterned paper. 

Adhere the piece of pattern paper over the text on the copy paper, making sure not to put the adhesive over the text part but just above it so that you can remove it easily.

Now take the piece of copy paper with your pattern paper adhered to it and run it through
your printer, printing out the same text. It will print out in the same place onto your patterned paper. Remove the pattern paper from the copy paper.

Align the die cuts over the text centering them as best you can 

and then run them through your die cutting machine.

Once all your pieces have been cut out, glue them down to your bookmark base sheet.

Place your bookmark in a laminating sheet and run it through a laminator.

Trim around your bookmark and leave some of the laminating plastic on the left side where
you will be punching your holes. I used my Cinch machine to punch my holes, but you can
easily use a single hole punch. You can use a piece of paper from your planner to mark your
holes to make sure they are spaced correctly. This could be used for a coil or ring binder
type planner, just adjust the holes accordingly.

To make this bookmark easy to move from day to day, cut a slit on every hole, 

this will let you pull it off and reposition it whenever needed.

Here is my bookmark slotted into my calendar space in my planner!

And here it is with my meal plan set up in it! You can write on the laminating plastic with
sharpie and use alcohol wipes (or I use nail polish remover!) to erase it for the next week!

I hope you found this tutorial useful. Give it a try, it is a lot of fun and
makes a very practical addition to your planner!