DIY Matchbook Notebooks

These matchbook notebooks are so simple to make and useful in lots of ways.  I often find I get ideas for new designs and things to make when I'm about to go to sleep, so I'll be keeping one of these to jot down ideas by my bed.  Being small, they're also great for popping in your handbag as a mini sketchbook (or for shopping lists) - especially if you're like me and cram a lot in your bag - I don't travel light!  You could also make them as favours to give away at parties or weddings - so many possibilities!

Materials:

Thin card / thick paper for the cover (see below for the scrapbook paper I used)

Paper for the pages - anything you like - white, coloured, lined or squared!

Stapler

Scissors / craft knife and ruler

Bone folder

First cut all of your card and paper to size - I cut the card for the covers of my notebooks 23 x 8 cm and the pages 7.5 x 10.5 cm.  You can experiment with different sizes!

Take the cover piece of card and measure and score 9.6cm from one end and 2cm from the other.

The number of pages you can use will depend on the thickness of your paper and the size of your staples. I used 12 pages in mine. Place your pages in the centre section of the cover, fold over the small end and staple the pages in place.

The long end of the cover should be able to just tuck under the short end when closed.

To finish off, I also added some patterned paper tape to the covers of some of my notebooks...

A note about the papers used in this project...

For the covers of the notebooks I printed scrapbooking papers, which I have designed, onto 240gsm white card.  I used the rows of budgies design from my 'Budgies' set of papers, flower pattern from my 'Jessica' set, yellow spotty design from the 'Sunflowers' set and green chevron from the 'Summer Garden' set.  All of these, and more, are available to buy from my Etsy shop.

Positive Thinking

The subject of this post is something which I have been thinking about for some time, but it has taken me a while to find the right words and work out exactly what I want to say.  I started this blog mainly for my work; to share things I have designed and made, so I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about other things and mention something that I've not talked about with many people in 'real life' let alone online. But I want to try, because I read other people's blogs and find it helpful finding people with similar experiences and I don't want it to be a big secret, something to feel ashamed of.

I suffer from anxiety.  Some days it's not too bad and others it can affect me a lot.  Everyone experiences anxious thoughts at some time, but if you have experience of anxiety and panic attacks you will understand what I mean, how unpleasant it is and how much it can affect your life; the things you do.

Maybe it seems silly, that it's taken me such a long time, and a fair bit of worrying, to actually not say very much.

I wanted to mention it though, because it was the motivation for an idea of a new series I want to do on positive thinking.  Whether you have trouble with negative thoughts or not, positive words and phrases can be really beneficial.  So I'm starting a new series of hand drawn, positive words, phrases and quotes as a way to both help myself and as a way of sharing positivity with you.  It will also be an opportunity for me to practise my hand lettering.

I already have some ideas of words and phrases I would like to illustrate, but I would also love to hear what positive words, quotes etc you like.  Leave a comment below and I might illustrate them in the coming weeks.

P.S.  I couldn't help having the Morecambe and Wise song 'Positive Thinking' in my head while I drew this :)

Spoonflower Year of the Monkey contest and Free Swatch Day!

It's been a while since I last entered one of Spoonflower's contests, but this week's theme caught my eye and I decided I had to have a go!  The theme is Year of the Monkey, in honour of the Chinese new year, and I quite quickly had the idea of creating a design with monkeys in a forest of trees.  The challenge of creating this piece was to make sure the repeat worked with the trunk of the trees not having an obvious join and fitting the branches around each other.

I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else came up with for this contest!  You can see all of the other entries to the Year of the Monkey contest (and vote for your favourites!) over on Spoonflower... http://www.spoonflower.com/contests/336

I also wanted to let you know about Spoonflower's Free Swatch Day.  They recently introduced a new fabric - cotton spandex jersey.  I think this sounds like a great fabric for sewing comfortable clothing and can't wait to see a sample of this myself!  The free swatch day starts at 10am EST on Thursday 21st January (that's 3pm UK time).  The offer runs worldwide and includes free shipping, so it's a great time to try out a design you've been admiring in the Spoonflower marketplace!  You can see my designs in my Spoonflower shop.

Rainbow Colours and Free Printable Planner Page!

I can't get enough of bright, rainbow colours at the moment!  They are such happy colours, especially good to see on a dull winter's day.  I've been having fun experimenting with colour this week, working on some new designs which I can't share with you yet.  However, I have also been using bright colours on some printable planner pages which I can show you!

I started off designing some printable planner pages to use myself and decided to make some to list in my Etsy shop too.  I have added printable monthly, weekly and daily pages as well as a 'things to do' list and notes page.  They all feature a rainbow watercolour spots design and come as A4 sized sheets.  I am using them for both my own personal goals / reminders of things to do as well as for my business.  I wanted to keep the designs quite simple and undated so that they can be used year after year and for a range of purposes - such as home management, meal planning, small business, fitness planning and more.
This is what the monthly planner pages look like...

And these are the weekly, daily, 'things to do' and notes pages...

All of my printable planner pages can be found in my Etsy shop here.

As a special offer to my blog readers I am making the year planner page for 2016 (which is also in my printable planner set) available as a FREE printable!

The year planner has a box for each month (no dates included) - which you can use to write important dates, goals etc.  You could print it to go in your planner or pin it on the wall.
It comes as an A4 sized page (29.7 x 21cm / 11.7 x 8.3 inches) - and can be printed on other sized papers, such as Letter, by using the print size 'to fit' setting on your printer.
You can download the PDF file here - you can view and print the planner page with Adobe Acrobat Reader.
I hope that you like it!

*** Please note: this free printable is for personal use only! You can print it as many times as you like for your own use, but you may not redistribute it in any form (digitally or printed) or modify or claim it as your own.  If you would like to share the planner page on your blog, Pinterest etc please include a link back to this page (not the download link). Thank you!

Hello 2016!

I hope that it's not too late to wish you a Happy New Year!  I took a couple of weeks off over Christmas/ new year so it was back to work on Monday.  The last few days were spent catching up with paperwork and writing out my plans for the year before returning to my blog.

The new year is a good time to freshen things up and it got me thinking to all the things I want to do, for work and my own personal goals.  I've not exactly set myself new year's resolutions; my plans are more like a continuation of building on things I started last year plus a few new things I want to try. It's easy to be hard on yourself if plans/ goals didn't go as you wanted, so instead I'm trying to look at things more positively and see things I haven't achieved yet as goals to still be worked on, and the new year is just giving me motivation to get going! (I think this might also have something to my sister, who is a Primary School teacher, talking about the 'growth mindset' she teaches to her children; encouraging them, when they find something difficult, to say they can't do it yet!)

I also like to reorganise things (and make them look prettier!) so was looking forward to the start of the new year to tidy up, change things around in my art room (and house), put up new calendars and use new planners.  I had this pretty diary for Christmas to use for work - I love the colours on the cover...

I seem to have been on a mission to make everything more colourful this week!  I designed new planner pages (calendars, to do lists and business records sheets) all in a rainbow of bright colours. So far they are just for me to use, but I will be adding printable planners as a new product line to my Etsy shop soon.

Before I get going with all the new things for this year I thought I would just take a quick look back at 2015...

Last year I set myself a goal of blogging at least once a week, well I managed 49 posts in 2015 so I wasn't far off that goal and it was more than I managed in 2014.  This year I hope to meet, and exceed, the goal of 1 post a week.

I took a look back at the top 5 popular posts of 2015...

5 Printable Advent Calendar Village

In this post I shared how to make the colour in printable advent calendar village I designed.  This will be coming out again next Christmas!

4 How to make 'Celebrate' card

This was one of the first things I made using my Silhouette Cameo cutting machine.  I used the machine to cut some of my designs on my Christmas cards and I plan to use it in more tutorials this year.

3 May Review

This was the surprise entry to my top 5 posts - I didn't think any of my monthly reviews would be in the top 5! In this post I took a look back at some of the things I did in May, like new designs I had been working on and photos from my garden.  I haven't decided if I will continue with the monthly reviews this year, instead I may include the things I covered in the reviews in shorter, separate posts spread throughout the month.

2 How to Make: Dragon Cut and Sew Plushie

One of my proudest moments of 2015 was seeing the Dragon Cut and Sew Plushie design I made rank in the top 10 of Spoonflower's contest and in this post I shared a tutorial on how to make him.  I was also thrilled to recently see that 2 of my dragons had been made up and sent to Spoonflower for their Softies for Mirabel handmade toy drive.  I hope that the children who receive the toys will love playing with them!

1 DIY Upcycled Jar Flower Vase

There were several other posts which I particularly enjoyed working on in 2015; like the Halloween Cookies and 3 DIY Picnic Ideas, but this one for painting and upcycling jars was the most popular post of 2015.  I hope to be sharing many more craft projects and tutorials in 2016!