Two posts ago, I gave you the overview of my DIY day planner.  Yesterday I showed you how I did the “foundation”  paper and the daily pages.  Today I’m going to tell you how I set up the monthly and yearly calendar pages.

Both of these are drawn by hand.  The months I did that way because, frankly, I like them.  It’s nice for them to be a little less than machine-perfect.  Since they’re just straight lines — and especially with the grid already there — they’re not very hard.  And of course you only need twelve a year.  The hardest part is making sure you don’t louse up which day of the week the dates go on for a given month.

The yearly overview I did that way because it’s easier to just write it out by hand than try to arrange all those tiny numbers in rows and columns in a software program — at least for me.  It’s pretty tedious but, again, it only has to happen once a year and then it’s done.

Monthly Pages

These monthly pages are drawn on a full sheet of paper, folded in half, then the outer edge trimmed down a little so it doesn’t get bound in.  Before you draw the pages, make sure you know which way you want the calendar to fold out!  You’ll want it a little closer to one end than the other, so once you trim the edge you aren’t cutting it off or something.

Then here’s how I drew mine:

About 1-2 squares up from the bottom, and three squares out from the binding edge, start your calendar grid.  You need 7 calendar squares across and 5 up, each 5 tiny blocks by 5 tiny blocks.  When that’s done, I go up one square from the top edge of the calendar grid and draw one more horizontal line, to make a space for the days of the week.

Write in the days of the week.  I personally like to start the week with Monday, because that way the whole weekend is together on my calendar, which is handy when events span a weekend, but it’s up to you.  That’s the beauty of doing it yourself. 🙂  Then write in the numbers.  I like them in a corner (I just write the number in one of the little 1/4″ x 1/4″  squares) so they’re not in my way, but if you’re artsy, you could incorporate them some other way.  I use my computer’s calendar to see which dates fall on which days.  Just make sure you match them up right!  If your computer’s calendar starts on Sunday, for instance, and yours starts on Monday, you have to watch out for that.

Year-At-a-Glance

DO NOT trim this sheet down; you’ll run out of room.  You’ll just have to bind this one at the unprinted edge, and fold it over a couple of times so it doesn’t hit the binding.

Pretty much as far to the binding edge of the paper as you can get, write your months.  Each month’s abbreviation takes up two spaces across, and there’s a blank space between the lines.  The top one is about 5-6 squares down.  (You can put it a little lower if you like, but I wanted the bottom blank to leave room for a “key”  — I’m going to stamp symbols on it to show where holidays fall.  Eventually.)

Now across the top of the page, starting one up and to the right of “Jan,” write the days of week, one day to a square, repeating.  They fit better if you use just a one- or two-letter abbreviation.

Now here’s the tedious part.  One month at a time, sort out which day of the week the month starts on, and write “1” in that column (and, obviously, on the row for that month).  Then “2” beside that, and so on across the page.  If that doesn’t make any sense, check out the picture.

When all of the dates are filled in for all twelve months, get a colored pencil of your choice and gently color in the columns that comprise the weekends.  (Or just one weekend day, or whatever.  It just helps to break up the weeks and make the page easier to read.

(It does help, by the way, if you put something on here to indicate what year this is.  Not that you’d get confused now, but you might when you archive it.  I have the date written on the outside of the fold, so you can’t see it in the picture.)

In case you’re finding this post directly, and haven’t read the earlier two, the printable graph paper can be found in this post.