Cara Vincens's Blog Posts

02.17.19

Hello, I’m Cara and I am addicted to travelling! I love a clean hotel room with a puffy white bed and it’s cute little tea and coffee bar. I love to visit new things and learn about new cultures. And I love getting away from the everyday to experience something new. I’m not home a week from one trip and I’m dreaming up the next. 

A Traveler’s Notebook is the perfect place to plan and document your travels, that’s what it was originally for! It’s in the name after all ;) Simple Stories' new Simple Vintage Traveler is a perfect pair to set up a Traveler’s Notebook just for travel. In it you could plan out your travels before you leave, house all your documents while you are away and even document all the fabulous sights you see.

I chose the Cream Dot TN and added some Black Speckle Washi and paper to make the pastel colours from the collection pop. 

I started with the pockets because it’s my favourite thing to decorate. I wrapped some washi on a card and added stickers, chipboard and die cuts in various sizes and shapes, sprinkled a few enamel dots (the new Spring Farmhouse dots match perfectly) and I love how it turned out.

I tucked that black speckle paper into the long back pocket, along with the Take Detours paper, added some ribbon trim and a tab and the pockets look fab!

I covered 3 TN inserts in papers from the collection and decorated those as well. I decided to keep the back 2 relatively flat with stickers, washi and die cuts only.

For the front insert, I also added some chipboard and enamel dots as I don't mind these bumpy items in the front.

I think my favourite bit is the dry-erase packing list that I made with one of the Layered Frames. I used a permanent waterproof pen to write the list and I can check it off with a dry erase marker. 

To make my TN the star of the show when I travel, I added lots of clips and tabs to the tops and sides, with extra hot glue so they’ll hold up in my carry on.

I also hot glued a chipboard hot air balloon and some ribbon to make a TN swag for the front cover.

If you’d like to see my process video, click here:

Travel TN Setup

Happy planning and happy travels! 

Supplies
01.27.19

It’s Cara here today and I’ve been trying to manage my time a bit better in 2019. I discovered calendar blocking a few months ago and it’s been working well for me. To help me keep on track with this, I’ve added a laminated list of my routines to my planner. It folds in half so that I can easily slip it into my traveler’s notebook. On the back, I added a checklist from the one routine I’m having the most trouble completing, my lunch time routine. And because this folder is laminated, I can use a dry erase marker to check off each task as I complete it.

I used the Good Vibes collection for it’s fun colours and pretty, peppy designs, these are my happy colours so I know they will keep me motivated.

The front cover is a sheet from the Good Vibes 6x8 paper pad trimmed down. I used a TN insert for reference to help get the size right so that it would fit in my TN. I initially added quite a lot of stickers from both the Good Vibes Sticker Tablet and the Mini version, but there were too many and it overwhelmed the bold ‘make today amazing’ so I took some off. I love how easy it is to remove these stickers without ripping the paper, whether it’s to simply move them around or to take them off completely if you’ve change your mind.

The back cover has that pesky lunch time routine of mine, I mentioned above that I’m having trouble getting it finished. I put it on a sheet of white paper and mounted it on a pretty floral paper from the 6X8 Good Vibes paper pad. I used more stickers from the Good Vibes sticker tablets, but I also used some from the Home Sticker Tablet for the bullet points of my checklist because they matched the tasks better (dish soap for cleaning the kitchen and a basket for advancing the laundry etc). I love that you can mix stickers like that from other collections because the sizes are the same and the colour schemes are very similar and always match.

The inside of the folder houses all my routines mounted on the backs of the papers I used for the front and back cover. I chose my papers wisely so that the two inside papers would match each other, they are both black and cream. I added clusters of the Good Vibes stickers and then laminated the whole thing, being careful to keep the pages lined up as they went through my laminator.

I also created a daily spread in my Daily Insert, so that I could try out writing in those routines into my schedules today.

And what TN would not be complete without decorated pockets? This may very well be my favourite thing to decorate. I love the cream colour of the inside of the Aztec Traveler's Notebook. It really makes the colours in the Good Vibes collection pop!

I mixed in some chipboard pieces, Bits & Pieces die cuts, stickers from the Combo Cardstock sheet and the 4x6 pack, all from the Good Vibes collection. I added a few tabs to a another sheet of patterned paper from the 6x8 paper pad and tucked it into the long pocket in the back.

I’ve created a process video for all of these projects and if you’d like to watch the video, you can pop over to my YouTube channel and watch it at this link:

Routine Checklist Process Video

Happy Planning!

Supplies
01.05.19

Happy New Year! It’s Cara here today and I LOVE a fresh start and that’s why I love Mondays. I love that fresh new week, a blank slate, but the very first Monday of a new year? Wow, it’s like my birthday!! And so, I’m super excited for this coming Monday and this coming week.

I’m using the gorgeous Bloom collection today to pretty up my January planner and that very first full week of this year. These stickers are so pretty and feminine, which is a great way for me to get motivated to work towards my goals. I have both the regular sticker tablet and the mini one, which is a fabulous way to always have the right size sticker on hand. No more thinking ‘I wish this sticker was just a bit smaller’.

What I really want to do is to put my first few goals for 2019 front and centre in my planner to keep them top of mind. I want to make sure that I’m reminded every day of what I want to accomplish this month. My three main goals for January are written in the notes section of my weekly spread with little check box banners with enough space to check off one per weekday.

I’ve also written each goal out at the front of this weekly insert so that I’ll see them often and I flip open my planner. My big goal gets the place of honour on the front cover and the other two are written just inside. I used the matching Bloom scrapbook papers to cover the insert and the inside front cover along with cards from the cut apart sheets.

A tip for when you are covering inserts: make sure that the book will open and close smoothly after you'd added the paper. Close the book before sticking down paper completely on the outside. I'll stick the front cover, close th book, then I'll even wait to cut the width of the paper until after it's stuck down so that I'm sure there's enough. When adding paper to the inside leave a fraction of an inch near the binding to make oping and closing a cinch.

Since my first goal is a big one, I am also including an entire spread dedicated to it. I 'borrowed' some pages from a blank insert and stuck them in. I started a list of the steps I need to take to make progress on my goal, but I didn’t include the entire list because I don’t want to overwhelm myself. That would just backfire and I’d make no progress. This list is already long enough to get me started and once I get close to finishing it, I can add in new steps. I also added in 3 mini monthly calendar stickers to the bottom because I’d like to make some real progress towards this goal in January, February and March.

I also used the Bloom chipboard to make a couple of planner clips. I added a bit of the Bloom washi, dated the page with stickers from the Numbers tablet and added a tab and covered it with a clear tab sticker.

I will have a process video up on my YouTube channel on Monday, so stay tuned for that and if you are reading this after Monday and can’t find the video, simply search Forgotten Resolutions along with The Hooting Pirate and you should find it.

Happy Planning!

Supplies

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