I do love a good bit of stationery and it seems like there are a whole community online of fellow stationery addicts. I’m not quite ready to drop £75+ on a designer planner and shed loads of stickers, but I did want to dip my toe in the planner addict world. So  I decided to place an order with the much more affordable Personal Planner UK and share with you my first impressions.

The defining feature of Personal Planner is that everything is customisable. I decided to go for the A5 size for £22.90 including shipping. You then choose the cover design, there are lots of options from a plain colour, patterns, images or your own photographs. I decided to go for the gold dots with the date in black and a black elastic. When it arrived I was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t gold foil (although I think it does say this on the website), but I still like it. I think it looks quite Kate Spade-like. I added my name to the top using my label maker which I think finishes it off well. I might use some gold foil nail polish to pick out some of the dots to add an extra dimension.

The planner is covered with a thick protective plastic which is slightly textured. The inner covers on the front and back are a sturdy card so should hold up well.

The inside cover has a little bit about the origins of the company which is quite a nice touch. The facing page is customisable – you can put your contact details, a motivational quote, fill it with emojis… I decided to keep it simple with my blog name (and a couple of anchor emojis of course) and leave space to stick a picture. I decided to pop in a card from a Lucky Dip Club box just using blu tack so I can switch it out when I get bored of it.

There are a number of layout choices to decide between. You can go for vertical columns, squares, or a horizontal layout like I have. I went for the weekend split into two, but you can also get it separate with thinner weekdays. I went for this layout as it’s similar to what I’ve had in diaries in the past, but I’ll see how it goes. You can opt for plain paper, ruled or striped. I went for striped as it’s a bit more subtle than fully ruled but I can’t write straight without some guidelines! You can also go for the timetable option with time stamps if you need an appointment style diary.

You also get options for three modules. I went for dinners, training and ruled on the facing page, but there are lots of options including to do lists, exams, graphs or leaving it blank. Plus, there are daily details you can add in such as weather tracker, work schedule (great for shift workers) and workout details. I left this option blank as I didn’t think I’d personally use any of them but I can see them being useful for others. I would love for them to include a water intake tracker in future – I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t say they need to drink more water and I would find this so helpful.

Another neat feature is the dates option. You can choose to have holidays and national days for your country automatically added, plus you can add personal dates such as birthdays, anniversaries and other memorable dates. You can choose to add them as a one off, or an annual event so that when you log into your account to make another planner, they are already there. I really like this feature and I love that you can choose to have ages added to birthdays. Very helpful for little ones and to make sure you don’t miss any milestone birthdays.

In the interest of everything  being customisable, you can even chose the colour of the plastic movable ruler. Probably not that essential, but handy as a bookmark and at least you can match it to the rest of your planner if you’re so inclined. I just went for a clear one because I’m boring!

The final decision is what goes on the inlay and back pages. This was a fairly easy choice for me. I wanted a month overview at the start of each month so that I can have an at-a-glance view of my blog posts for that month. I also wanted the 2016 and 2017 overview which I find helpful for planning things like annual leave. Lastly I added lots of lined pages for list making. Other options include pages for teachers to plan their timetables, an address book, and fun elements like colouring pages or sudoku.

Lastly, you also receive a movable plastic pocket which I popped in at the back to store some planner stickers. I got these water tracker ones from Dook Plook Designs on Etsy.

Overall, I’m very pleased with this planner. It reminds me of my high school one that I always found helpful! The order time for these is up to 2 weeks. I did receive mine quicker than that, I think it was 10 days. If you’re looking to order one for the New Year, I would do it now. However, you can choose to start the diary from any date so don’t worry if you’re a bit late to the party.

I’m looking forward to starting this soon. I’m also after some more cute stickers, if you are a planner addict and know some cool suppliers, please leave me their links below.