Mulberry Pop Planner

I know I talked about being happy with the planner I had and I'd started to organise inserts and thinking about what I wanted then work started. I also have been thinking that I want my planning this year STUCK in one book. As cool as it is to be able to pull information in and out there is a beauty and simplicity in something that is just your year. 

I'm using the kmart organiser it's a personal sized planner for work and it's great. Portable, simple and easy to plan with and suits me great.  But that leaves my private planning.  I really don't want them in the same planner and my work planner is too small and needs to be kept private. I am actually thinking as I get to know what I need to make myself a travellers notebook for work. It just depends on the books I think....But that is another story. I want to talk about another planner.

The Mulberry Pop Planner. 

Oh gosh I'm in love! This lady is an Australian lady making a planner the quality of Erin condren and inkwell press. It has Australian holidays and seasons which is just amazing. I'm so used to just ignoring the dates I don't know what I'll do! 

When I opened the box it came so beautifully packaged. 

It has a laminated cover I think like the Erin Condren. With a page marker that you can pull out.


The planner starts with a yearly overview and a goals page. So PRETTY :D I love all the purple in this planner! Can I say instant LOVE!!!! There is also a 2017 yearly overview at the back which is always useful.


It's set out in a weekly horizontal view. 

With a monthly view at the beginning of each month. I like that it's only one page. As I don't like my month view big I just need enough to have an idea of what's coming.



The monthly tabs are small down the side but the colours match the months. They do exactly what they need to.

Oh and there is a pocket at the back to hold you stickers and stuff.

Other interesting information:

The paper is 120gsm which is gorgeous to write on. It isn't glossy it has a nice matte finish which makes it nice to touch. It's a 8x6 sort of size so bigger than an A5 but when I put it up beside my A5 planner it appears smaller as it doesn't have the bulk that the binder gets.

You can buy your own from her website and just so you know I am in no way affiliated with her I just love the planner and had to share it with you :D It will be my one and only personal planner for next year... not including my work one.

Now I need to go make myself a pouch to put it in to keep safe for the year. I am so excited to be using this over the year :D

Happy Stitching,
Caitlin

Craft Every Day: Day 5

Now I'm becoming a bit of a planner fanatic. Nowhere near as bad as many who have collections with more than they could ever use. But I do frequent the planner boards on facebook including a couple of Australian ones. This is awesome because when Australian specials come up you hear about them and this one I HAD to jump on. Kmart is selling a personal sized organiser for $12 which is absolutely amazing.

Now I bought this planner this morning while I was out looking for other items. Of course I didn't like it as it was and although some sections interest me others were a waste. So because it's a RING binder style I pulled out the guts and grabbed out all the dividers. I then used some paper that I had to create dividers. I traced two pieces of paper (making sure one was backwards) and cut out the dividers and glued them together. I then traced and punched the holes. The only thing I think I will do is to laminate them so they stay in better condition as they are still a little flimsy.

So there is my craft for day 5 :D nothing is quite going as planned but I'm enjoying this experiment. I do like being conscious about the crafts I am doing. It makes them mean a lot more to me.

Happy Stitching
Caitlin

My Sister's New Planner

Now I have been umming and ahhing about making one of these for weeks. The problem partly being I couldn't find a good tutorial online (They all had raw edges on fabric) and partly because I couldn't see myself using one. I still can't really seeing myself using one but I do love it and I know someone who will.

Lets go back a couple of weeks where I was chasing my sister up about what she wants in a planner and the following conversation ensued.

Do you like this planner? (my A5 one) no it's too big. Well what do you like/need?

DO you need daily pages? Weekly pages? What do you need to write while out and about?

All these questions led me towards something very portable and smaller that she can put daily layouts in to keep track of her tasks but also an overview. On top of that she is an architect so grid paper to draw and sketch on while out is also an awesome idea.

Now the very reason I don't like the travellers notebook size is the reason my sister loved it. I got caught up researching how to make the inserts (surprisingly easy) and I made them up for my sister.

 Then after making the inserts I sat staring for a while and looking up tutorials for how to make a midori but nothing really made sense to me. Then I was on the quilting group I'm a part of and they were talking about the new One Thimble magazine and the stichidori tutorial. I knew the tutorial was coming out I just didn't know when and then it felt like fate.


This meant a trip to the fabric store on Monday and then I trip to spotlight on Tuesday for the wadding and elastic. By Tuesday afternoon I had finished!!! It didn't really take long and I was highly motivated to finish.

Doesn't it look pretty :D I love these fabrics.

So did anyone get close with their guess?

Happy Stitching,
Caitlin

I really hope she likes it!!!!

Planner Epiphany

This is one of those times that I've been lusting after the new range of Kikki K. planners. The emails come to my inbox each week and the colours are just beautiful. The orange and blue and just pretty. But then I turned around and thought long and hard about it. I was looking at spending $80 on something that although pretty and gorgeous and lovely wasn't exactly me. Have a look at the pretty eye candy below :D I borrowed it from the Kikki K. website. Planners are so pretty to look at! Warning following that link can lead to dangerous thoughts and the urge to buy everything.

Then I looked at my planner and I thought about it. I realised something really important. I LOVE the planner that I made for myself. The cover is so ME!!!! It means something to me. More than just a pretty cover or something with the right colours. I can't ever buy a cover that can be as special or be so me. It is one of the reasons why I craft in the first place. I make because it means more than something store bought. Quite often you can buy things instead of making but they aren't as or as long lasting. I can never buy something so special to me anywhere, in any store. Now I do think I will have to check out some of their notepads and sticky notes from that collection as those colours are just scrumptious. But I don't need EVERYTHING.

I don't need the latest craze, I don't need everything that everyone goes absolutely crazy about and I truly don't understand the need to buy the latest all the time, I remember reading on some of the planner groups on facebook when Erin Condren brought out her new rose gold planners and the horizontal layout. Everyone was going BONKERS for them and then within 2 months there were numerous people selling their horizontal layouts because they found they hated the layout but they got caught in the craze. All through the Kikki K. planner groups at the moment as soon as the new range came out people started selling off the last range so they could get the latest one. It gets a bit stupid and the amount of money people are putting out is unreasonable.

I'm already looking towards next year and I know that I'm going to keep my current planner. I want to make the inserts better but that was always going to happen... I may make myself another planner cover so that I have a spare one because I can... but it won't be about having the latest craze.

Sometimes it just takes realising that you like what you have already to be happy and work with what you've got.

Happy Stitching,
Caitlin

Styling my planner

Ohk so I've become a little bit obsessed with my planner at the moment and trying to keep track of what is happening which really isn't much. BUT I was avoiding doing any other work and not in the mood to stitch so I had some fun creating a set of stickers for my planner.

I used my cross stitch base the bigger girl to create a set of weather characters. I will have to get my cross stitch program out and turn these into patterns as well. Would anyone be interested in that?

They have been printed onto sticker paper here so it's easy to use them.

I love them in use on my planner! They are so cute and just make me smile everytime I see them. I do love cute and pretty :D 

So pretty :D

Now I am after some feedback. I'm thinking of offering these stickers on my etsy shop as stickers but I want to gauge whether others would actually be interested in something like this before I fiddle with prices.

Unfortunately I would be shipping from Australia so that wouldn't be great but then maybe I could offer the file to sell to print your own stickers.... I'm not sure and lots of thoughts are in my mind.

Happy Stitching,
Caitlin

Inspiring my planner

So I know when I was looking at buying a planner at the end of last year one thing that was really inspiring me was the kikki.k. website. I LOVE stationary (I think it is a teaching trait) but I think it's more that I love things that match. Matching makes me soooo happy. I may also have visited the kikki.k. store and had just a little fun.

Alphabet stamps are becoming my new favourite toy.... I need to stop buying more.This is one I found at kikki.k.

I also bought this gorgeous dashboard kit. I am using the stickers and the bookmark is great for keeping track of where I am this week.

 

I also wanted to pretty up the paper I'm using so these notepads add some pretty colour.

However finding matching pretty stuff at a decent price is hard, which means I have to compromise. I've been using a set of cheap dividers I bought at officeworks when I first set up the planner intending to decorate them more but never got around to it. So instead this last week I went through my decorative paper and found the set of fairytale card. 8"x8" and figured it worked very well. I was right because they look awesome.

I cut a bit off the edge and used some pretty sticky notes to decorate. I then laminated the card and punched holes so I can use them as dividers. Don't they look so pretty.

And my pretty sticky notes from Kikki.K. look gorgeous as well.

It has been a couple of weeks since I made these dividers and I'm loving them still. They are pretty and make it easy to find the different sections. They seem to be holding up really well.

How have you prettied up your planner?

 Happy Stitching,
Caitlin

Capture 30 - how I'm using my planner now.

I know that the way I'm using my planner has changed a lot in the last couple of months since I signed up for the capture 30 class. I talked about it here. BUT for me the most amazing fact is that I'M STILL USING MY PLANNER!

Yes it keeps moving around and yes it changes but amazingly I'm still keeping track of my life. I'm not letting it just pass me by despite the fact that some days can feel like it. I'm also getting myself more organised in life but also on my blog. So I went looking at printable blog planning help and didn't really find anything that I liked SO I made some for myself. I even used them to plan this post. It gets my blog stuff off my monthly calendar and into a place where I can look at it and plan.

I want to show you what my planner looks like now and offer you some printables if I can work out how to give them to you...

I'm finally making it really work for me. It's been feeling like I'm slowly working out the kinks. Just last week I moved around the sections in my planner to make the order work for me and I also took out all of January because it was starting to get crowded to turn the pages. I'm going to have to get a spare binder to hold the old months.

Now I know I've shown you my project life pages and I took those out of the planner a month ago or so because they were just getting too bulky and I was worried about the photos being bent with me toting it around all the time. So they are in their own binder and looking very pretty though I still need to make a cover.

Inside my planner I'm still using the monthly spreads. Though I've moved them so that the notes section is before the calendar not after and that seems to be working a bit better. 

As you can see February ended up really full and March is slowly filling up. I'm definitely appreciating a tiny pen when I need to fit a lot in. 

I also still have a notes section where I'm writing weekly to do lists and tasks. Sometimes I break it down into days if I'm super busy but at the moment weeks seem to work for me. So when I open my planner now the Notes section is first then the calendar. I created a printable to do list which sits in the middle. I think it looks really pretty. I also decorate pages as I go to make them look interesting and not just boring.

I have been enjoying my calligraphy it's all through my planner at the moment.

I also have a section just devoted to my blog. This is where I have most of the printables as this is where I need to be super organised otherwise I let time get away with me.



  You can see the monthly spread I made it so I can add the month and the numbers myself so it works for any month. I also printed it back to back just to save me paper and space in my planner. Too much is one sided and not really working.

I even colour coded the different blog posts because I'm now posting on two blogs and I needed to keep track of it better.  I can also keep track of when the post is scheduled/organised and when it publishes and what social media platforms I've linked it to. This helps with facebook and instagram mostly but also sometimes pinterest and ravelry with some projects.

Here is the blank look and also an ideas page that I created. Washi tape looks so pretty along the top.

Here's how I was planning before. I was using a blank page that I would pretty up but I was finding it wasn't quite organised enough so I made the blog post planner pages. You can see them in action below. It makes it easy to see what I still need to do. I very rarely handwrite the whole post so that is enough space to get the start of the idea out and then I hop on the computer to do the rest.

I'm really happy with the way the planner is working for me now but what I want to focus on in the next while is making it pretty. The dividers I have are functional but I'm going to have to make some pretty ones and have some fun with colours.

If you want the planner pages urgently send me an email/comment below with your email attached and I'll email you the file but if you're willing to wait I'll work out a way for you to download it. It shouldn't take me long if I actually put my mind to it, I've just been very busy.

Happy Crafting,
Caitlin

WIP Wednesday

This week I got some new mail. I was very very excited to get my latest VOODOO RABBIT toy club. I do have a confession though shhh... I haven't sewn my last one! I do have the pattern cut out at least. Other projects have taken priority.

I do have a concert coming up in a couple of weeks and I will need something to add to the raffle so I will have to get myself into gear and start sewing something. It will probably be a giraffe or a hippo.

I have been practicing my calligraphy skills because I want to be able to use pretty writing in my journal. When I was a kid I got given a calligraphy set to learn how to write and I still have the book which was very exciting to find.

So I've been having a go and I'm having a ball. My writing isn't always neat but it looks better than it did. I will be showing you more another day because I want to talk to you about how my journal/memory planning is going but this is something I've been working on throughout the week. It is so fun to use calligraphy pens.

I also managed to finish my ZickZack Dishcloth.  It looks awesome! Well at least I think so.... which has got to be a bonus. I know I had to back track a couple of times with this cloth as I got distracted and forgot to count properly but once I got into the pattern it was easy to follow. I did add one more repeat of the pattern as I found it wasn't very big.

If I was to do it again I would add another 6 stitches to the width. ( If you do add width the pattern is multiples of 6 + 10 for the border. So one more to the width would be 36 +10 which is 46 ) 

I just realised I seem to have a thing for zigzags at the moment. I've also been working on my Chevron Triangle Quilt for my friend's baby but I will show more of that later. There are too many pictures to show.

Happy Stitching,
Caitlin

WIP Wednesday 4/3

Well this weekend was a very odd weekend. We had a new kid move in across from us last week and because of that we barely saw the kids all weekend. It was a pleasant break from the whining to be amused. So I actually managed to get some decent crocheting in DURING the day. You will get to see the results later in the week. I finally have a tutorial written on how to make the Mug Cosies that I made before Christmas and you will be seeing that tutorial on Friday. So tune in then to get the awesomeness.

KNITTING

I have been knitting this week and teaching myself some new techniques. I didn't even realise I had anything particularly new to learn. It's my first serious go at lace and I had a ball. I also taught myself how to do a crochet cast on. This was very exciting as I have been taking a class on craftsy (Essential Techniques Every Knitter Should Know by Sally Melville) and found that I have more to learn than I realised. I also have been learning that I can always, ALWAYS learn more.

I've already given this cloth to my mum and I want to give it another go in a different colour for me. I did cast on another cloth in a different pattern but I've managed to entirely stuff up the pattern so I'm not going to show you that at all! The pattern is called the leaf lace cloth and it's a free ravelry download. 

JOURNALLING

But I've also been doing some scrapping. (I never thought I'd say that!) and organising my latest photos from January.

I've shown you these pages but I finally did some journalling about the activities. I added that to a card on some pretty paper and used some gorgeous washi tape.

 I think it looks sooo pretty.

 We went out for dinner and got all dressed up one night. Though James took some convincing. My sister joined us but I forgot to get a photo of me and couldn't convince James to pose.

I added a flip card to the top of this page. It looks so cool. With using 6x8 pages I have to be creative about getting the journalling into the pages as well as the photos. It's exciting because the kids have been really happy to look through it and see all the photos. It's why I made it.

Happy Stitching,
Caitlin

P.S. please join me tomorrow over at ANDSEWWECRAFT.COM I'm talking about knitting and what we have to learn it could lead to some interesting discussions.

WIP Wednesday

Well I started off thinking that I hadn't done much. But then I remembered that I hadn't been on since Thursday so I have actually got a couple of projects to show you. Not all of you follow instagram so that is even better :D

I'm this far along with the jeans skirt now. I'm in the process on getting the bottom tier gathered up and sewn on but matching the gathers is taking a while..... I'm trying to work out how to get it looking neat but that will take effort.

I also got some photos printed and I actually put together some project life layouts. I am in love with this method if scrapbooking. It is so easy. 

That is my mum at the top of this layout she looks so lovely.

This was some of our holiday fun. I got some great photos of the kids.

 They are all very simple layouts but they suit me and my purpose.

So happy stitching,
Caitlin