Handmade Notebook & Travel Planner

I decided today to make some notebooks as I wanted to use the cute pencil and paper from the Cricut Simply Charmed cartridge. I also had two ring binder book kits from magazines which is not used (one was for a recipe book and the other was a diary from a recent copy of Simply Homemade magazine).

Each book set had 2 rings, 2 squares of thick cardboard, stickers and a paper pad (one had calendar pages and the other recipe pages). I only needed the cardboard and rings for the main design of my binders.  I covered the card in parcel paper, added a square of craft card to the front (to cover where the parcel paper came together) and then punched two holes for the binder rings. I then used this as a guide for where to punch the holes on the back piece. 

I then set about decorating my books. As I'm going to Orlando this year I decided to make a travel planner so decorated the front with the map of Florida (the green shape) and added the wording by cutting adhesive sheeting on my cricut mini and then glittering it. The cricut mini cut through the adhesive sheeting perfectly. I used depth 4, pressure 4 and doubled cut - this cut right through the two backing sheets and adhesives so I may try depth and pressure on 3 next time so the bottom layer stays intact. I was so impressed at how good the cuts were.

For my inside pages I used Craft Artist and designed a number of different styles pages including an itinery for each day as a guide, places we want to visit, restaurants, days left on our park tickets, things to do before we go and a currency chart. I printed them double sided and then added dividers in between each section using cordinations cardstock cut a centimetre wider than the papers. I added labels using a Dymo machine.

The yellow card is covering my trip details.

With my other binder I decided to add the calendar sheets from my free gift set so I can use it for a blog & Design Team work planner.

The great thing about these binders is that you can take them apart and change the contents. They also hold a lot so I'm going to use my orlando planner as a mini scrap book of our orlando trip once we return and I can then keep the parts about what we did each day.

I loved making these and also loved using up the bits I had laying around so they didn't cost me any extra (only the printing) and far cheaper and more personal than buying a travel planner