Another Happy Birthday!

Yesterday, while browsing one of my card magazines, I stumbled across something similar to what I'm about to show you. I loved it and though I struggled to achieve something similar, I made two cards from it, and I love them more than I thought I would.

First up, we have the navy and charcoal grey card. The light grey circles were added mostly to cover a mistake or two, but I kind of like them. I just wish they could have been placed differently.

Here's a close up to show you two of the different stamped circle borders. They were made using a couple of my Stampin Up stamps from the Big Flowers set. I had to cover the flowers with a circle, to only get the border I wanted. It was tough, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

Here's a close up of the sentiment. It proves that my stamping abilities can be improved. But I love this sentiment. It also shows the texture of the yellow paper.

Then I made one in pink, without random light grey circles. I think it looks a lot better without it, but I also think that the texture on the red/pink circles adds to the card.

Here you can better see the details of the circles.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope to see you again soon!

Have a wonderful day!

-Alex

Personal Planner Turned Address Book

Good morning! Today I'm going to share a brief overview of my new address book. There are a few things I wish I had done differently now, but I'm still happy with how it turned out. I think it would have been better if I would have made them double sided, despite not wanting to. This way I could have inserted dividers so I could easily find the letter I was looking for.

As you can see here, it's almost crammed into it. I used cardstock because I wanted something sturdy that wouldn't bend or get damaged too easily. I don't want to have to spend more money than needed to remake it if it gets ruined. I alternated the pages between charcoal grey and raspberry.

This is what I see when I open it. In the left pouch I have my little calendar in which I keep track of mail coming in and mail going out so I know who's letter was sent when and can easily look it up if they ask. The striped cover I made myself using some scrap pieces. On the right is my black Sharpie Pen.

*I made note cards using this technique and I'll explain how to best achieve it in that post.

This is what my planning stage for this looked like. In the end, I moved the photo to the top, and cut 1/2" off the right side so that all my pages would fit. I made this template in Microsoft Word and typed everything out.

This is the template I used in Word. I made a table and split the row in the middle into two columns, one with three rows. Or you could make your table in Excel and simply merge the cells on the left into one, and leave the three on the right. Or you can come up with a layout all your own. I didn't want the borders in the middle to show, so I only turned on the outside borders. In word, the dotted lines show the border, and when printed it looks like the photo below. 

You could combine like/hobbies like I had in my original layout, and you could also insert the photo directly into the table. I cut the outside borders off of my printed copies, as they were only there so that everything was the same size when cut, without doing unnecessary measuring.

At the back of my address book, I inserted some adhesive mailing labels, and I also slid some smaller pieces of stationery into the back, in case I decide to write a letter on the go. 

And that's my address book! I'll ask a few penpals if they'd  be comfortable having me share their page (minus their address) so you can see what the finished page looks like and share that later!

Have a wonderful Wednesday everyone!
-Alex