My Scrapbook Evolution-Blog: My March and April Planner Pages

I never really got around to making my March planner page. I kind of got caught up in the excitement of creating. As much as I blogged, I still made more projects than I could find the time to write about. Being productive is great and overall, I am keeping up with Project Life this year thanks to my planner. I am still dipping my toes into the planner addiction craze, so to speak. Using the Project Life Planner requires me to make it a habit. I am becoming more comfortable with that habit and I think it's going to stick with me.

While I didn't decorate the March tab until this week, I did journal in the calendar section. I am still not 100% sold on decorating the calendar itself. Why, you ask? I think there are two main reasons: I don't always have enough space to journal in and I kind of hate the printed paper. I am taking all of this into consideration for next year's Project Life planner. I might need a larger size binder. I don't think that will be a problem since this binder remains at my desk. I use it to plan out the making of my Project Life pages not to plan my daily schedule in. I now know that printing the calendar on regular paper is unappealing to me. Next year, I plan to use cardstock.

Design wise, I seem to find it comforting to add elements in the center of the tab. I am still keeping things simple and using flat embellishments. My favorite new supply is the thin washi tape from Little B. I love the way it separated the patterns on the tab and added just a touch of gold.

I did change the way I store memorabilia and cards I plan to use each month. Originally, I had planned to use a paper clip. However, I found the clip sometimes left marks on the cards. I tried placing loose items in a paper envelope, but they kept falling out. I finally had my Eureka moment when I received some plastic pouches from Deflecto Crafts. The pouches are 5x7 and fit in my A5 size planner pretty easily. The pouch only has a single hole in the center of one side. I thought this was a con at first. However, it was easy to punch holes with a simple school grade hole punch. I believe I could customize it to fit a larger size binder if necessary.

I wanted to see if I could decorate the plastic pouches. So far, washi tape seems to be sticking to it well with no signs of peeling up. I am finding that the planner is the perfect place to use up scraps or extra embellishments. I printed a few too many of the March Pocket Life 2x2 squares. They ended up being the perfect size embellishment for the pouches. I decided to see if I could use my sewing machine with the March pouch. It stitched through the layers of plastic and cardstock with ease. If you do stitch directly on your pouch, make sure to stitch close to the edge. You don't want to stitch part of the pouch shut and lose precious real estate for storing memorabilia.

For April's cover tab, I chose to step outside my comfort zone. I wanted a design that was different than the previous two tabs...something a bit off center. I also had my heart set on using an umbrella. Recently, I had gotten a stamp from my Pinkfresh Studio kit in which depicted an elephant floating away in the breeze holding an umbrella. Now was my chance to use it!

It turns out that planners are a great place to sharpen new techniques. Here was my chance to practice a bit more with coloring and shading stamps. I used a Faber Castell Big Brush Pitt Pen and some distress markers to do the primary coloring and shading. I was able to blend the colors a bit with some Yasutomo water colors. These are by far my favorite water colors as they have a touch of shimmer.

I decorated a second Deflecto pouch for April. This time, I ran the washi tape horizontally.

I used my craft knife to gently cut a slit through the tape so that the full pouch opening can be accessed. Instead of stitching the 2x2 cardstock square to the pouch, I adhered it with glossy accents. This seems to be holding well.

Using a Project Life Planner seems to be a good solution for me. I am learning to use it as my primary place to store memorabilia, specific cards I wish to use and notes for my pocket pages. I was frustrated last year whenever I discovered something I had missed and wanted to add to my Project Life pages. It was always such a paint to rework the layout design and often, I would just skip using whatever I had omitted. It doesn't look like that will be a problem for me this year.

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