my carpe diem memory planner: week one | hip kit club

January 13, 2017

Hi everyone! I’m here with a spread in my 2017 memory planner. I’m using my Simple Stories Carpe Diem planner in Robin’s Egg Blue as my memory planner for the new year. This is a new system for me, as I used a Heidi Swapp Memory Planner last year, so I’m just finding my groove in this new planner. For my first week spread, I used bits from my December Hip Kits. I decorated my January dashboard and even incorporated a small 4×6 pocket page to add a bit of Project Life flair to my pages.

For my dashboard–as well as my pages–I decided to add a bit of watercolor to the pages. I used my Prima watercolor palettes and used colors that matched the pretty papers of the kit. So lots of mint, pinks and purples. I dabbed a bit of watercolor on the bottom corner of my dashboard in order to give the page a bit of color without overdecorating it with paper and embellishments. In the top right hand corner, I covered the birthday section with a squared piece of the plus sign paper from Maggie Holmes Bloom collection. I wanted a little section on the top to write out the month, which I did with the Charming thickers from the Crate Paper Heart Day collection.

I embellished the square on the top and bottom with little banners that I either cut from branding strips or used from the exclusive HKC die cut ephemera from the PL kit. On the bottom banner, I added a strip of the American Crafts Teal glitter tape that I cut into a thin banner. On the top, I added a few phrase strips of the exclusive HKC cut apart sheet that read “Goodbye 2016” and “Hello 2017,”also from the PL kit. I embellished it with a Carta Bella enamel dot from the Embellishment kit and a gold puffy star sticker from Heidi Swapp that’s in the PL kit. I did the same on the bottom of the page over the small watercolor splotch. I layered a couple of banners and embellished with a phrase strip that says “Happy New Year!” and another enamel dot and gold puffy star sticker.

For my weekly pages, I began by adding a few watercolor splotches in lilac purple, mint and pink colors. I personally think I went a little overboard with the watercolors here, as I find them a bit harsh and wish I had left more white space, but you live and learn. Once I had that down and dried on my page, I took the branding strip from the HKC exclusive Sparkle paper from the Main kit and used it like washi tape along the bottom edge of my weekly inserts. On the bottom right page of my spread, I placed the pink sofa die cut from the Pink Paislee Take Me Away ephemera pack, layering a die cut from the exclusive HKC ephemera pack that reads “a perfect day!” on top of it.

With my base pages basically done, I began to play around with photo placement. I matted all of my little 2 inch photos on the American Crafts Lilac Cardstock, except for the four photos I used in the pocket pages. I placed my photos as close to the day of the week they were taken, as a few of them were from the same day. But I’m not too picky about where they go, as I know they are all from the same week.

Once I knew where everything was going to go, I used a couple of branding strips and cut them into small banners to cover up the days of the week and replace them with my own. I only did this because my inserts had a Monday start to them, but January 1st was on a Sunday and I wanted to include that Sunday. I used the gold acrylic number stickers from the My Mind’s Eye Yes Please collection that’s in the Embellishment kit to number my days. It creates a bit of a bulk to my pages, so maybe not so ideal for planners, but I liked the look of them and used them anyway.

When I had my photos down and all the banners and dates in, I began embellishing. I used a few gold puffy stickers from the Heidi Swapp sticker sheet to accent a few of the photos, as well as a few of the phrase cut aparts from the exclusive HKC cut apart sheet. The pink “throwback” tab piece was from the Take Me Away ephemera pack from the Main kit. I also added a few of the gold star sequins from the Pink Paislee Birthday Bash confetti pack that was also in the Main kit scattered about the spread. That is the extent of the embellishing. I kept it minimal because the watercolors added so much interest on its own that I didn’t want to overdo the spread.

Now, since I had four photos left over that I wanted to include in my week, I decided to include a small pocket page to house them. I used a 4×6 pocket insert from Simple Stories that fit two 3×4 horizontal cards. I used the “Fantastic” and “Here & Now” cards from the PL kit, covering the backs of those two cards with the watercolor brushed strip paper from the Pink Paislee Take Me Away collection. I kept these cards really simple. I added one photo to each card and embellished them with bits from the kits. I didn’t include any journaling as I just wanted a place to showcase photos of my art journal that I made that week. I did however, use a couple of phrase stickers from Simple Stories Posh line that I had in my stash to add a few phrases to the cards that I thought fit.