Elizabeth Craft Designs designers and manufacturers of products that are ideal for use in paper crafting, mixed media art, scrapbooking, card making, and anything creative that your imagination drums up including craft dies, stamps and now Planner Essentials. Elizabeth Craft Designs is a family-owned company based in Evergreen, Colorado and has been in the industry and show circuit for a long time with top notch customer service and fast shipping!
Recently I had the chance to get my hot little hands on the new Planner Essentials collection, I was very intrigued. I have spent what feels like $1000s of dollars finding Planner Nirvana and haven't found it yet. The concept of this collection is to make your own planner from scratch using dies that cut the pages with the holes out of whatever paper you want. Making it fully customizable. The one element that really caught my eye was the planner insert strips. This allows me to make what they call a signature of my own or even a pre-bought one to fit in the planner.
Note: I received numerous messages asking what are the best dies/stamps to start when you are on a budget. If you are going for the day planner setup mostly then you will want to invest in the plain page insert and tab dies, these same sets give you enough elements to have enough options to make it your own. You can then add other elements as you can:
(Planner Essential 1, 4, and 5. Stamp sets Calendar -currently sold out and Schedule)
Now let's get started with this blog series where I take you through the full setup of my Elizabeth Craft Designs planner.
I received a beautiful Espresso Planner. I love the size, I don't usually like the ring binder style but it works well with this setup. I opened up all the dies and stamps and dug in...
I started with die cutting old book pages with the various different Planner Essential dies and prepared the surface with DecoArt Media gesso on my beautiful Fiskars mat.
While the insert pages are drying, I worked on stamping and cutting out the day boxes that will be used on the insert pages using Elizabeth Craft Designs Soft Finish Cardstock.
I stamped the box on the entire surface of the paper and then hand cut each box. I then used the Monday through Sunday stamps in each corner. I wanted one entire week on one insert page, so I did Monday through Thursday on the front, Friday on the top back side and put a space between that and the weekend. This is so I can decorate and put "weekend" in that area. I adhered all the boxes to the insert page once the gesso was dry using Beacon Adhesives 3-in-1 adhesive.
I start cutting the heavier cardstock signatures from {a vintage girl} new Hometown & Main Paper Collection. These dies make it so easy to use whatever paper you want!.
I wanted to get started on the first pages, the signatures I am still working on. So the first page of April I am using paper from Canvas Corp Brands as I wanted the red, black and kraft color scheme for my planner and they have the perfect paper for this.
Once the main page was die cut, I started adding all the different die cut elements that are available in the Planner Essential line. I still have to print some photos, but I left the top open to slide in later. I used a gear from the {a vintage girl} trinket set to add the steampunk look that is necessary for my planner.
I used Elizabeth Craft Designs clear double sided adhesive tape, for the flat surface of the honeycomb squares and Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L foam squares to give the dimension I needed for the date ticket.
Once I got a bunch of elements die cut in kraft and black papers, I started to assemble. Using Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L to add dimension in various places. You can see the white boxes on the insert pages in this photo.
Kept adding die cut elements and more chipboard pieces from the Trinket set by {a vintage girl}
This is as far as I got and is the first installment of my blog series of setting up my Elizabeth Craft Designs Planner.
Thank you for stopping by and be sure to visit the links for products and all companies that sponsor the work I do. It is much appreciated.
Dont forget we have new vintage planner sets coming to www.AVintageGirlShop.com that will be featured in this series!
