Passion Planner to Passion Project

If you know me personally--or at least knew me in college--there's a good chance that you know that I'm kind of into book binding. My freshman year, I took a book binding course to fulfill an honors fine arts credit, and I totally fell in love with it. In addition to teaching me an interesting new skill and art form, it persuaded me to add on my graphic design minor. (My visual communications major left me missing the "artsy" side of things.)

In my junior year, I decided to make a book as my honors thesis project. When I was studying abroad in Italy, I knew I had to take advantage of my semester there to supplement my project. I interviewed a book binder and a book restorer, and purchased hand-decorated papers and Italian leather. 

Despite loving book making so much, my thesis project was the last book I made. Until now! Thanks to being particularly picky about planners (and not wanting to spend a bunch of money on one that I'll only use part of), I decided to make my own. 

I usually only use planners for big events. I used the notes section of my previous planner (a Passion Planner, which I did like. Great quality paper!) for budgeting. And that was about it. So I took those elements, added some space for meal planning and to-do lists (which were previously done elsewhere) and presto! I had a layout for my custom planner.

After buying some new paper (heavy enough I would like writing on it and it wouldn't bleed through too much, but not so heavy that it would fold poorly and be hard to sew) and scrounging up some cardboard I knew I had saved for an occasion such as this, I was ready to sew. Below, you can check out the layouts I created and see the sewing process, captured conveniently by Instagram stories.