Prepping My 2023 Seasonal Gluebook

With 2023 not too far off, one of the things I decided to do now, rather than later, is to prep my next glue book to start creating in come January. Here’s a video of how I set everything up here:

While you don’t have to do ANY kind of true preparation for a glue book – you can certainly just dive on in and start glueing things down! – I thought it might be fun to try and organize my next gluebook by months and seasons and make a gluebook around that for the whole year of 2023.

You can also watch the video on YouTube if you like.

The Inspiration Behind This Idea

While I was sorting through all of my magazine clippings and ephemera this past week, I realized I had a lot of different things that were seasonal – which isn’t too surprising when you consider that most magazines are seasonal in nature!

While I have enough Christmas and Halloween stuff to dedicate a whole glue book to just those two holidays, I had a lot of stuff for other holidays that really wasn’t enough for a whole book.

I am going to make a Thanksgiving junk journal out of one of my Trifold journals (and hopefully even before Thanksgiving!), because I do have enough for Turkey day to fill a very small junk journal, but for holidays like St. Patrick’s Day and the Fourth of July I really don’t have enough for a whole journal – sometimes not even enough for a whole page!

In sorting stuff out I realized I also had a lot of themes for different things that again, wasn’t enough for a whole book. I really liked making the few themed pages in my 2022 gluebook, and so I thought it would be fun to kind of plan out in advance different themes for different seasons.

And so, the idea to make a gluebook that is broken down by different months was born!

I also have a new rule when it comes to cutting things out + saving magazine images or even just cleaning up some scraps on my desk leftover from a different project – it needs to go into a glue book or journal – not in storage!

Planning Out What We Want in the Gluebook

One of the caveats of making a seasonal book is you do have to plan a little bit in advance. I am going to use a composition notebook again for my gluebook for next year (because really, they are great for this!) – so the first thing to do was figure out how many pages I would need for each month.

There are 100 sheets in a composition notebook, which is great because that gives us 8 pages to use each month, with 4 pages left over to use for whatever!

I’ve decided I am going to keep the first 2 sheets and last 2 sheets of the notebook blank – this way I can create sort of a table of contents in the front and an index in the back or maybe I’ll just make them.

After that, the next step was to count out the 8 pages for each month so I could create tabbed sections.

I can’t count (which any of you who have been following this blog for a long time can attest for – many times in my journaling prompts lists I’d have duplicate or skipped numbers – thank goodness you guys are always quick to help! I am not being sarcastic, I seriously, CANNOT count lol)

So, since I can’t count very reliably, and I have no 5 year olds around the house to help me out anymore, what I decided to do was count the pages for each month and then place a paper clip after reaching 8 pages for each month before actually gluing anything else.

Counting to 8 seems easy enough, but would you believe I had to do this 5 times before I was able to actually have 2 blank sheets in the front and back and 8 sheets for each month like I calculated?

I actually thought maybe for a minute somehow I must have gotten a defective notebook, but of course that’s not the case. Just goes to show machines are probably a lot better at counting reliably than us humans!

Anyways, which each section for each month with the correct days, I was ready for the next step, which was to make tabs for each month.

Finally, a Use for My Old 2020 Happy Planner

Like many people in 2019, I had bought a 2020 Happy Planner. Well, we all saw what quickly happened that year, and needless to say my Happy Planner was not really used at all.

Fortunately, this project gave me a great chance to use all the dividers in the planner a good use!

I used my paper cutter to trim each divider down, and then I just attached the tabs to the page for each month that I had marked after counting the pages out.

From there, the next step was to glue down whatever I had in my magazine clippings pile that I knew would be going into the journal, or maybe just didn’t have any kind of other journal/project to be used for.

While I could have just stuck all my clippings in a container to glue down later, we are doing a stashbusting challenge right now, so I figured rather than putting things in storage I would actually USE them.

Not to mention, it’s just fun to glue stuff down!

I actually filled up this journal a lot more than I expected already, although of course there’s still TONS of room to add lots more things!

Month By Month Pages

Like most gluebooks I make, I am not going to plan too much on what goes into each page, although some things I’ve kept together.

For example, in July, I made a whole page dedicated to images of picnic & grilling food, since we usually have a lot of those kinds of events with family. That one is pretty much already full surprisingly – I didn’t think I had all that much stuff!

I also made pages for things that remind me of different people who have birthdays in different months.

And of course, sprinkled in whatever I had for whatever holidays that fall throughout the year – Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, etc.

I’m very hopeful this year’s journal will have less chickens, but you never know – we shall see! Also don’t know if I’ll actually make a table of contents or index at the end, but still a nice idea to have some extra pages.

I think I will probably also have a “whatever I feel like” gluebook happening in conjunction with this one, but I love the idea of making one this way because I think it will get me into a better routine with giving my glue books more attention (because, seriously – there are so many benefits to having one!) – and most importantly, I don’t have to worry about storing magazine clippings or trying to sort and organize them – just stick them down in whatever month they make the most sense for!

I’m super excited for this gluebook! And of course, if you are making one like this (or even one NOT like this lol) – please do join us in our Facebook group or tell me about it in the comments below – I love hearing from you and seeing what you create!

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