It is a brand new year, and I have a brand new layout for my planner.  I don’t know about you but I actually use my planner as my date book.  I have never been a fan of electronic date books and still prefer to write it down.  Last year I started creating my own date book using ECD Planner line, however I had trouble make enough pages to stay ahead of my schedule.

However, this year I have figured out how to mass produce my pages so that I can easily in one sitting knock out six months of planner pages, and it occurred to me that you might actually be interested in the process.

The key to mass producing your date book pages is a stamping platform.  By using a stamping platform, you can repeatedly stamp all the pages in the exact same way.

Step One:  Die cut all your planner pages.  I stamp one week at a time onto each page face.  I used Planner Essentials – 1 and Planner Essentials – 2 to make the labeled month pages and Planner Essentials – 4 to create the pages that go in between.

Step Two:  Once all your planner pages are die cut, you can start stamping.  I used a combination of Schedule stamp set and My Life stamp set to create my day boxes.  Stamp all the pages in the same way.  You can see I have lined up the holes of the planner page along the side of the stamping platform.

Step Three:  To stamp the other side of the pages, using a bumper as shown above so the stamps stamp in the same place.

Step Four:  Once all the pages have been stamped the first time, clean then move the stamps and set them up to stamp again.  Repeat the process the same as before.

Step Five:  To get an entire seven days onto one page, I divide the large box into two separate days with decorative line stamps from the My Life and Schedule stamp set, and stamp the days of the week into the boxes.  I keep my date book so that Mondays are the first day of the week and Sundays the last.

Step Six:  Stamp the month onto the taps to easily find the month and date I need.

It took me less than an hour to die cut and stamp out a full six months of pages.  Each week looks the same, so I can easily track my schedule and fill in the details easily.  I had write in all the numeric dates with a black pen to help keep things clear.

While I can easily keep my schedule through June, I realize that this makes for a very boring planner.  So to jazz it up, over the weekend before a week begins, I stamp and ink the page.

To ink up the page, I pull out either distress inks or distress oxides and blend color in both straight onto the page and through stencils.  I also stamp images onto the page.  For this week I used the bubble stamp from Patterns 2 stamp set and a collection of blue distress oxides in Tumbled Glass, Mermaid Lagoon, and Faded Jeans.

To spice the page up a little more, I added a few more stamping details from Retro Labels Saying stamp set and more stamping from Patterns 2 stamp set.

The next week I used the grid stamp from Patterns 1 stamp set and distress oxide in Picked Raspberry, Millet Lavender, and Victorian Velvet.

This week was give a little extra stamping from both the Retro Labels Sayings and Moments of Life Stamp set.

Even after ink up the page, I have no problem filling in my schedule with a gel pen.  I used colored gel pens to keep track of my entire families schedule, giving each member their own color.

Let me know what you are doing with your planner this new year in the comments below.  And don’t forget to pop over to Elizabeth Craft Designs Blog to see how all the design team is playing around with theirs.  Until then, Happy Crafting.