It’s Cara today from the Carpe Diem team and I love making my own traveller’s notebook inserts! Usually I use plain, lined or dotted paper for my pages. This time, I was inspired by the free ‘I Am’ printables to use those as the pages. 

Using Photoshop, I trimmed each page, made them into a PDF and then printed them as a booklet in Adobe Reader. This worked for the most part, only there’s a white border around the edges of the pages. My printer won’t let me print the pages of a booklet all the way to the edges of the paper. I’ll have to try a different technique next time.

I used the I Am… collection to match the printables and I started with the ‘Staying Positive’ paper as the cover and stitched down the middle of the whole lot before folding it all in half and trimming the pages to size. 

Since spring is still too shy to poke her nose out here in Luxembourg, I thought I’d try and coax her out with some flowers and butterflies. So after layering washi, paper and a sticker for a border, I added a floral tag and stickers and topped it all off with a chipboard butterfly.

I love to add pockets to the inside of my inserts. These are great for tucking away spare Project Life cards, stickers, receipts and memorabilia. I added some cards cut from one of the cut apart sheets. 

Pockets are easy to make, just take a strip of paper the height of your pocket and about 2 inches wider than the size needed and accordion fold each side down to size. Stick down the two sides and the bottom, being careful not to glue the folded bits together, and voila!

More butterflies are added here to further invite spring! One sticker and 4 die cuts. The die cuts are only adhered down the middle and I bent the wings up to make it look like they’ll take flight at any minute. A few more stickers and die cuts and the pocket is complete.

The ‘I Am…’ page is my favourite from the printables. I love capturing the everyday moments of life. They are what make life rich and wonderful and I love looking back over pages like this to see what I had been up to at that time in my life. Life seems to move slowly, but really it does change quite quickly, so these little records become priceless peeks into our own story.

I added a layered washi border to cover up the white border left by my printer and then layered some stickers to finish it off. What are you loving? liking? doing? etc…