how to: put your eclp in a filofax organizer

If you follow me on Instagram (@pinkbowplannery), you probably saw my post this weekend:

Yes, that is my brand new Erin Condren Life Planner inside my even newer Florescent Pink Filofax Original Organizer. This picture makes me giddy to look at. (I'd be even more giddy if it wasn't blurry, but a gal does what she's gotta do...and that means using her iPhone to take all of her pictures and edit them quickly.)

Ever since I purchased my ECLP, I've been really enjoying using it--I've actually managed to stay organized and I haven't forgotten to do anything important. And as much as I loved it, I was just not that into the coil. I'm a Florescent Pink Filofax girl at the core. My Personal size went EVERYWHERE with me. But, as I mentioned in my last post, it just wasn't that functional for me anymore.
So I did some research on putting the coil-bound planners into Filofax planners. One thing led to another and I ended up making a purchase of my gorgeous A5 Florescent Filofax. For several days I thought about using two planners, but honestly, that seems totally ridiculous to me. I love the color of the Filo, but the ECLP is working for me BIG TIME! I even printed out some printable inserts for the Filofax. Once my right mind kicked in I realized that if I just combined the two, all would be right in my planning world.

It takes some guts to uncoil an expensive Erin Condren planner, but I am SO glad I did.
Are you going to take the plunge? If you love the rings of the Filofax, but dig the layout of the EC, I'd encourage you to do it.
Here's how:

(Apologies in advance for these pictures. This went down at 10:00 one night after my little girls were in bed. No natural lighting for this gal!) 

Step 1:: Uncoil!

I had heard of many people just bending back the coil, but I found that it made the actual uncoiling kind of difficult, and I felt like it was kind of a challenge, so I just ended up cutting off the little flipped up piece. (There are a lot of people wanting to buy unused coils, so if you want to sell yours, I'd advise not cutting it.) 

Here it is once I had bent it out. 

The uncoiling process. 

Here it is after I had cut it. This made it go SO much quicker!

"
Ta-da!

After this, I sorted through the planner and pulled out what I was going to hole punch for my Filofax, and what I wasn't really going to use. There is no way I'm using all 18 months of this planner right now, so I sorted out:

 12 months (July '15 through July '16)

 the notes section

yearly calendar view pages 

goals page 

the blue and purple blank stickers page 

...And everything else I put into a pile for safe keeping (aka, for me to lose somewhere in my craft room) 

Here's what's getting punched. 

Here's what I left out. 

Side note: I DID actually punch the clear pouch and I LOVE IT! I just ran some washi tape over the front and back of the coil holes and punched it as I did all my other pages. 

Now it's time to cut off the fringe.
I saw on the internet that some people used sticker paper to cover these up so the holes didn't get punched into your Wednesday and Thursday sections. Two things are wrong with this: 

a) WHO HAS THAT KIND OF TIME? And sticker paper is expensive.
b) The pages are already quite a bit bigger than the traditional A5 Filofax pages. This would make it WAY too big. You have to cut off the extra for it to fit in this particular planner.

(I have really big writing and thus far I have not noticed the holes being punched into Wednesday and Thursday making a difference at all.)

Line up your pages so that you're JUST cutting off the holes. I found that I could do about 4 pages at a time. Seems like it'd take forever. Only took about 20 minutes. 

All that "stuff."

Ta-da! All cut and ready to punch!

Of course, if you have an A5 punch, your life is going to be super easy--just stick them in there and punch away. I only had my Personal size punch (link to purchase on Amazon), so I used Washi to mark where I needed to line up the top and bottoms of the pages to punch the holes perfectly.
This was the most challenging part. My tip to you: Use one of your A5 Filofax sheets to mark on the EC page where your holes need to go. Line the holes up in your punch, put the tape on and do the same for the other side.

The Orange washi is where I'd line up the top of my page, then I'd flip it and line it up with the yellow washi on the other side of the punch. (It's not as confusing once you're actually doing it.) 

Punched and ready to go! 

The process really wasn't hard at all. And it didn't take nearly as much time as I thought it would. Once I was done, I was kind of underwhelmed with how well they fit into the planner--the tabs just made the pages way too large. So the next day, I moved all my tabs to the top of the planner and it. was. PERFECTION.

Of course I'll be doing a How-To about that whole tab-moving process. Next week.

Friday Favorites

I spend a great deal of time on Etsy and Instagram looking at all the gorgeous planner decorations available. At the end of the week, I love to look back through my Etsy favorites--so here they are! {All shops are linked, so support these awesome shops!} 

I love any and all things watermelon, so when I saw this adorable watermelon washi tape, I fell in love! I also love how bold the watermelons are--sometimes washi tape can get a little pixel-y looking.
{Shop here}

I placed an order for a few Libbie & Co stickers and received them today. They're really pretty, and the sheets are BIG! The shipping did take a while, but it's good for me to practice having some patience. Plus, if you check Instagram, they usually have a coupon code you can use.
{Shop here}

I also placed a Station Stickers order, and while I mostly ordered boxes and flags for my planner, I was also sucked in by these cute summery critters! The sheets are tiny, but are a good size for using inside your planner boxes while still leaving a bit of room to write!
{Shop here}

As an art teacher, any and all things watercolor make me happy. I absolutely adore this watercolor heart washi tape!
{Shop here}

And last, but possibly the cutest, these adorable downloadable birds. They're 1x1 inch and I am thinking of all kinds of adorable stickers I could make using their sweet, colorful selves!
{Shop here}

Have a fantastic weekend, planner friends!

Current Planner Setup

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Hello planner lovers! I am so incredibly excited to start this blog. I am currently on summer break, and while I'm not as busy as I am during the school year, I still find myself using my planner every single day. I feel lost without it, and now that I'm juggling schedules as a family of four, I need my written schedule even more than before.

I'm going to use this blog to share my planner kits, talk about how I use my planners, and of course share how I decorate it. I will also share links for any and all purchased planner decorations so you can purchase everything for yourself.

At the end of the school year I was using Cocoa Daisy inserts in my Filofax Personal Fluro, but I quickly became overwhelmed with the day-to-day use of a page-per-day insert system, and I was falling behind on planning ahead, simply because I didn't have the whole year's inserts in my planner. For a month, I actually STOPPED using a planner. EEK!

{Stickers from Cocoa Daisy}

I like to be able to pencil something in 2-or-so months in advance, and when your inserts are shipped month-to-month, that can't happen. I LOVE the colors and all the extras Cocoa Daisy offers, but it just wasn't for me. I can definitely see myself trying the Cocoa Daisy subscription again in the future if I can figure out a way to incorporate my long-term planning.

If you're no stranger to the planning community, you know that Erin Condren launched her 2015-2016 Life Planner early in June. I had told myself that I wasn't going to purchase one, because I had an Erin Condren back in 2013 and I just didn't love the vertical style of planning that much. But the more I looked in the Erin Condren groups on Facebook and on Instagram, the more I loved the way the awesomely decorated pages looked, and I just didn't care for the colors and designs of the horizontal layout, so I sprung for this beauty:

{Cover designs available at Pink Bow Plannery on Etsy}

I designed these covers for myself, and was SO excited when this baby showed up in that gorgeous, fancy Erin Condren box.

I'm still figuring out how to use the vertical style, and I really need to figure out how to write smaller. I'm hoping I can make this planner work for me, because I desperately want to love it...plus, I've designed a ton of cute stickers to use to decorate my weeks (you know, the important stuff!).

{All stickers available from Pink Bow Plannery on Etsy}

That's it for now! I am excited to blog more and more, so make sure you check back for some more in-depth, informative posts!