I have to confess, even though it’s hard to admit, I am horrible about keeping my prayer life, scripture study and Sunday school notes straight. I have tons of notebooks laying all over with notes scattered throughout all of them. I have tried several different methods to get all of my notes organized but haven’t been successful until now…
I finally sat down and looked through several of my notebooks to see exactly what I mainly wrote down and what categories or subjects I wrote about when studying scripture or what prayer notes I was taking. I then jumped on the computer and decided to create my own custom note taking system.
I hope that you will find the FREE 14 page PDF as useful as I have. The FREE PDF comes with a pastel Faith, Hope, Love cover, 3 full page tabs (1-Scripture Study, 1-Prayer Journal, 1- Thoughts & Notes), a 2 page layout for scripture study notes, 3 pages of prayer journal sheets, and 3 pages of thoughts and notes sheets.
I have been using disc bound planners for a while now and absolutely love how easy it is to add, remove or move pages around so my new Scripture Study / Prayer Journal had to be formatted for the disc bound notebook systems. I was originally going to format the PDF in an 8.5 x 11 size, but I have recently discovered the wonderful world of the Happy Planner by Me & My Big Ideas! So, I formatted the PDF to fit the Happy Planner size. I will be posting more about the Happy Planner as soon as possible because I am so excited that I just purchased one and am in the process of setting it up. 🙂
Anyways, on to the DIY Disc Bound Scripture Study / Prayer Journal how-to…
Supplies
Printer
Card stock
Regular copy paper
Paper cutter or scissors
Disc style hole punch or standard punch
Lamination machine or self-laminating pouches
Discs for binding
Download
The first thing you will need is to download the Free DIY Disc Bound Scripture Study / Prayer Journal PDF.
The second thing you will need to do is print out the pages of the PDF. I printed the front cover (pg 1), all three tabbed divider pages (pg 2, 5 & 9) and the back cover (pg 13) on white card stock. I also printed the simple gradient (pg 14) on the back side of the card stock covers so they wouldn’t be just plain white.
*** I made the last page of the PDF an enlarged gradient (bigger than all the other pages) so you could use it as a backside to any of the covers or tabbed dividers without having to worry about how it lined up compared to the front side of the cover or divider.***
All other pages were just printed on plain copy paper but you may want to choose a heavier weight paper. It’s up to you. You can print as many as you want to start with. You will have the saved file so you can always print more later.
Cut
Cut out all the pages. Sounds simple enough right? I used a paper cutter and then just trimmed around the tabs on the tabbed dividers with a pair of scissors.
Laminate
I have just purchased a super awesome (but inexpensive) laminating machine so that is what I used to laminate the front cover, back cover and all three tabbed dividers. You can choose to skip this step or you could also use self-laminating sheets or just clear sticker paper to make them a bit more durable.
*** Side note, I also laminated the front and back cover twice just to make sure they were nice and strong. I am rough on my notebooks because I end up dragging them everywhere. ***
Cut Again
Here we go again… more cutting. You could send the file to Staples or your local print / office supply place to have them print and cut them for you. I’m just cheap and like to save every dime I can so I print and cut myself.
If you use the self-laminating sheets which can typically be found in Staples or on Amazon you will want to make sure to leave a little bit of a border when trimming the laminated pages otherwise depending on the type of laminating sheets the back side of the lamination will come off as a lot of laminating sheets come with a sticky front side but the back is not sticky. Please read the directions that come with the self-laminating sheet package. Since I used a hot laminating machine I was able to cut right to the edge of the printed pages.
Hole Punch
Next, head on over to the hole punch. I used the Arc punch because of my love for disc bound notebooks, but you don’t have to have a disc style punch as you can mark out the holes, use a standard single-hole punch and then just cut the little slits for the discs. If you don’t have a guide to find out where the holes are to be punched they are 25 cm apart. Since I made this to fit the Happy Planner size, there will be 9 holes for discs.
*** Important Reminder: Make sure you punch the correct side of the back cover. I messed up the first back cover because I just punched it like all the rest instead of turning it over and punching the back side. I’m sure you won’t have that problem or forget right? I didn’t think you would 🙂 ***
Bind with Discs
The easiest part… bind together your pages with the discs. I used some old Arc discs that I had left over, but you can purchase the Arc discs at Staples, or now you can get the pretty ones with a heart in the middle at Michaels as part of the Happy Planner systems. (Goodness, can you tell I have become addicted to the Happy Planner?? I will share more information about the Happy Planner soon!)
Okay so now on to studying that scripture and writing down those prayer requests and thoughts. I really wish I would have had different colored discs, but the new ones I ordered in pink will be in soon 🙂
Let me know what you like and don’t like about how I organized the boxes on the different pages. Is there any headings you think I should add? Are you using all of them? I look forward to hearing how you like the PDF so I can adjust and improve the notebook. Make sure to comment below with any suggestions or how you use the Free DIY Disc Bound Scripture Study / Prayer Journal PDF.