Begin journaling once more

Hello friends, hope you are all well. I have been a terrible blogger, apart from DT commitments I have hardly done anything and barely done any visiting. My apologies for that specially!
Anyway, I finally have a journal spread to share, trying to carve out a few moments just to create...

I have never had the good fortune to attend one of Seth Apter's workshops, but did manage to watch some of his periscope recordings from Creativation, and this was inspired by those.

The background was done with a mix of acrylic paints and sprays.

Strips of paper, old book pages and background stamping came next.

The focal point, one of Seth's older stamp sets that has a matching die to go with it

Some doodling and stencilling and some words from a Prima/Finnabair stamp set.

And here the facing page, using the same techniques but this time another Finnabair stamp.

Well, that's it for now. I will be back later in the week with some design team pieces, and there will soon be a few more planner freebies coming your way too :o)

Meanwhile, stay warm, cosy and I hope you will find some creative time. My day-job is pretty crazy at the moment but I hope I'll have more time to blog soon!

xxxxx

In the Frame a project for Shimmerz

Hello all and happy Monday! Today I have a post up on the Shimmerz blog. So just a little pre-view here.

If you want to see more, - just click HERE

Have a good week all!

Recipes Folder, Freebies and more....

Hi all and thanks for dropping in. Today I want to share a project that is a spin off from my planner, - it's a recipe's folder.

I will share a quick tutorial on how I put it together, using a file folder and some of my own freebies which you are very welcome to use. I designed them so they would fit in more or less with my other planner stuff, which you can see here. They are inspired by the beautiful Blue Fern papers I used for the planner.

Folder:
1. Fold up the bottom of the folder to about 3 inches to create a pocket on both sides (to hold the recipes)

2.Cut along the two outer score lines in the folder up to your fold line.

3.Fold this tab in and glue down

4. Close the folder and trim down the side of the folder so it lines up with the tab.

5. Round the corners if wished.

That's the basic construction done, the front and back are now approx. 8 x 8, which is the size I designed my papers at so they can easily be printed on either A4 or 8.5 by 11 paper.

6. Next I printed my papers, trimmed them to the correct size, inked the edges, added a few bits of stamping here and there and all that was left was to adhere them to my folder and decorate the pockets.

Front

Back

I added a  few bits of stamping to it just for fun

They are from a set by Andy Skinner, just perfect for this project I thought...

Here is the inside with the pockets:

Inside left, decorated with a few diecuts

Inside right.

Please note it is important to adhere the papers to both the insides and the pockets before gluing the pockets down.

So how does this relate to my planner? Well I made meal planners for every week, see below:

This so that I can plan my meals ahead obviously, but my main idea was also to try out new and healthy recipes, rather than throwing something together with whatever happens to be in the fridge when I get home from work.  I keep the recipes on one of my Pinterest boards here. The ones I really like I print out, but instead of having them fly around I can now keep them in my folder :o)

Anyway, here finally are the papers in case you want to make a folder of some sort yourself.

This is the same paper as the one above, just without the recipe text so it can be used for other things.

I left this one plain, I used it for my pockets but of course it could be used for anything.

I am indebted to  The Graphics Fairy and The Old Design Shop who both constantly share an abundance of wonderful  free graphics that I have used again and again including here, both for stamps and images.

Like always, you are free to use my designs in whatever way you want, just don't sell them as they are.

Some grungy fun....

Hello friends and visitors, hope the new year is going well for you so far!
My mojo has been pretty low recently, so I thought it was time for just some play time and this was the result:

This started with a manila tag. My lovely blog friend Donna gifted me loads of these (thank you Donna)!!

It was a mop up tag and had some colour on it already. I added some random strips of book paper.

Covered it with a mix of gesso and crackle paste. As I was working on another tag at the same time, some splats of ink landed on it too....

While doing the final stages of the drying process with my heatgun, lovely bubbles started to appear, - all good for this type of project.

A mix of Decoart Media paints and various sprays added colour, the art stones and threads that are all the rage at the moment added more texture.

The sentiment is also a 7 Dots Studio label.

The vintage image is from a 7 Dots Studios Cold Country collection. I edged it with Stampendous Aged Silver EP.

The sentiment is also from the 7Dots studio Cold Country collection

I trimmed the top of the tag, mounted it onto a mini canvas and that was pretty much it.

A Shimmering Experiment

Hello, hello, it's preview day here today.

My whole project is over on the Shimmerz Blog, where I had some fun experimenting with some brand new products. They also have a new blog and shop, with fabulous new products at very reasonable prices, do check it out!!

Happy Monday everyone have a great week!

Friday Planner/Calendar freebies

Hello dear visitors, thanks for dropping in. Christmas seems to just have flown by so quickly and here we are on the final day, Epiphany or 12th night.... Time to put all those decorations away.
Thanks for all your lovely comments on my planner. I am having great fun using it. But today I have some freebies to share which you can use if you would like to make your own planner and or calendar, or indeed whatever you like. I am sharing pages for January, February and March. More to follow soon I hope.

This is January, it is designed to be printed on A4 card, I'm sure it will work on 8.5 by 11 too.
Below will follow 2 half pages (A5). That's how I have been using mine, though I just cut the A4 in half, but if I printed again I would use the half page designs instead.

Here is February, again in the same formats.

And here finally is March. Obviously you can use all of these freebies for anything you like, - it's just that I use them for my day plans in my planner.

If you want to see how I set up my planner and have used these papers, just click HERE

Well that's it for now, - back to normality after all the Christmas busy times, have a good weekend!

xxxxx

Planning my planner

Hello all, - hope your new year has started with a bang!! I am approaching 2017 full of hope and excitement for better days to come....

In the last days of 2016 I decided I was going to design my own planner, and today I will show you the first few pages and the cover. This is a project in process, and I will show more pages as the month (and year) progresses....

The base for the whole planner was a file folder that I trimmed to the size I wanted. I covered it with some of my favourite Blue Fern papers, strengthened the edges, and made the closure with a Grungeboard element and a Tim Holtz Hitch Fastener.

Here's the back, as you can see, I used some of Tim's industrial stickers as decorative elements. (One of my aims with this project is, not only to become more organised, but also to use up some long forgotten bits and pieces from my stash.... Grungeboard and stickers being the examples lol).

Here are the first inside pages, a pocket on the left for keeping important things to hang onto, and the January calendar page on the right.

I made tabs for each month and each of those pages will then be decorated with bits and pieces (these are from the Graphics 45 Place in Time collection).

Each monthly page is then followed by some other pages, below a quick run through some of them:

A weekly overview page, to write down  the main focus for each day page

Followed by  a page to detail other important things for that week. Here I am showing you the page of week 3, but each of the weeks has two pages like that.

 I am having great fun decorating them with die cuts, stamping stenciling etc. I hope this will keep me focussed in actually noting things down and getting them accomplished....

Each month also has a pocket with blogpost planners. I am keeping these loose, so I can use them as needed.

And finally my day planners, also kept loose in a second companion planner as the main one would get far too fat otherwise. I designed the backgrounds digitally and may well share these as freebies in the next few days, so stay tuned... They are kept under a belly band so they can be easily accessed. I'll use the back for additional notes etc, keeping them loose like that will make it possible to review things easier.

Here's the cover for the day planner, also made from a file folder in a very similar way.

And here the inside, belly band on the left and a side pocket on the right for additional notes etc.

There are also other pages still in the main planner , meal planners and grocery lists, health and fitness and expenses trackers etc, but by now this post is long enough, so I am keeping some for another day.

Well that's it, I am ready for the new year ahead, hope you are too. I love all the new ready made planners out there, but I really wanted to make my own, and so far I am having great fun with it!

xxxxx