Using small pictures in your Happy Planner is a great way to add personality and connect memories to your planning. However, learning how to correctly size and print small pictures can take some trial and error. In this step-by-step guide, as a professional custom planner printing manufacturer, I’ll show you my proven process for printing cute little pictures perfect for decorating your planner spreads.
Why Use Small Pictures in Your Planner?
Before we get into the nitty gritty of resizing and printing, let’s talk about why you’d want to use small pictures in your Happy Planner in the first place. Here are some of the biggest benefits:
Make Planning More Fun – Decorating your weekly or monthly spreads with small pictures makes planning feel more like art and less like work. It adds a pop of personality that plain text or stickers alone can’t provide.
Remember Meaningful Memories – Those little pictures might be from a fun vacation, your child’s latest art project, or a gathering with loved ones. Adding them to your planner helps cement memories and makes revisiting your planner pages more sentimental.
Add Visual Interest – Small pictures break up blocks of text and bring visual balance and movement to your planning spreads. This makes your planner pages more scannable and pleasing to the eye.
Now let’s get into the good stuff – how to make this happen!
How to Print Small Pictures for Happy Planner
Choose Your Picture Source
The first step is gathering up some small pictures that you want to use. Here are some potential sources:
- Recent trips or outings
- Your camera roll or albums
- Screenshots from Instagram or Facebook
- Image downloads from Etsy or creative market
- Images from Google
I prefer grabbing pictures from life events first before defaulting to stock image sites. But having a few filler pics on hand can help complete a spread.
Edit and Size Your Pictures
Once you’ve gathered some images, it’s time to edit and size them down.
Edit For Print – I use the PicMonkey app for quick and easy editing. Just a few tweaks to brightness, contrast, and cropping makes pictures print-ready.
Crop to Size – Next, crop your edited picture down to a planner-friendly size. Some common sizes I crop to are:
- 1′′ x 1.5′′
- 1.25′′ x 1.25′′
- 1′′ x 2′′
Resize in Increments – I don’t crop all my images to the exact same size. Varying between a few set sizes helps when arranging pictures on a spread. Too much uniformity can look boring!
Save Edits – Finally, save your edited and resized pictures to print. I save batches by month or project name for easy organization.
Print Your Pictures
With perfectly sized pictures now saved, it’s time to print! Here are a few quick printing tips:
Use Quality Paper – I’m a big fan of the Canon Pro Luster paper for rich photos that pop on the page. The slight sheen looks great behind clear stickers too.
Print in Batches – Instead of printing one pic at a time, I gather everything for a project or month into batches. Then I print 5-10 images per batch. Way more efficient!
Embrace the Trial & Error – Don’t stress if your first few test prints don’t come out perfectly positioned. Learning the right margin and layout settings for your printer takes some tweaking. But once you nail your printer’s sweet spot, it’s smooth sailing!
Get Creative with Your Pick Planning Pictures
Now for the really fun part – decorating your planner with those cute little printed pics!
Mix and Match – Play around with mixing large and small pictures on one spread. The visual variety makes pages stand out.
Overlap Borders – Let your tiny pictures cross box borders or extend into disc spirals. Breaking out of the boundaries makes pages feel artsy.
Layer With Stickers – Pop tiny pictures under or over stickers to create fun depth and dimension on pages.
The options are endless when embellishing with itty bitty printed pics! And as you get comfortable sizing and printing small pictures for your Happy Planner, you can move on to more advanced techniques like collaging.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are answers to some of the most common small picture printing questions:
What app do you use to edit pictures?
My favorite mobile editing app is PicMonkey. It’s user-friendly while still offering robust tools for color correction, cropping, resizing, and more!
What printer do you recommend?
I get the best results from my Canon PIXMA TS3520! The wireless printing works seamlessly with my phone for editing and printing on the go.
How do you avoid wasted paper from botched test prints?
The key for me is keeping a dedicated notepad next to my printer. Before hitting print, I first measure out margins and dimensions with a ruler to minimize misprints!
What adhesive do you recommend for sticking down printed pics?
I swear by tiny dabs of craft glue like Aleene’s Tacky Glue. It dries clear and keeps paper flat with a gentle hold. Perfect for my planner!
What paper type prints your pictures best?
For rich, true-to color photos I have yet to find a paper I like more than Canon’s Pro Luster paper. The subtle sheen makes images vibrant!
I hope these tips help you start embellishing your Happy Planner with meaningful little memories! Let me know if you have any other questions – I’m happy to help troubleshoot your small picture printing adventures!
In Summary
Printing tiny photos to embellish your Happy Planner is so rewarding. But learning how to properly size and print small pictures takes some trial and error. Use my step-by-step guide to start decorating your weekly and monthly spreads with meaningful memories!