Rachel Newman's Blog Posts

12.09.18

Hey planner friends! It’s Rachel again and I am back on the blog to share a little “plan with me” using my favorite basic essentials on the Carpe Diem Planner website.

Ah…nothing more satisfying than a fresh new week! First up, I use the clear number stickers to add my dates in my weekly planner insert. If you are like me and are a planner opportunist (hee hee, planner peace?! Try all the planners for me, please!) then having undated pages is great because you can not only change up the type of inserts, but the size of inserts, too. With so many beautiful types and sizes of planners, it seems a shame to be tied to just one! I always have a set of clear number stickers stashed in the pockets of all my planners so I jump into that particular planner any time I want.

A quick tip: I use a pair of tweezers to help with the placement of these stickers.

Once the week is dated, it is time to add my plans! This is where the FUNtioncal planning comes in. I like to use a mix of icons, boxes and headers to add my plans and these three stamps set help me do that.

I’ve mentioned my love of stamping before (see this post!) and for this week, I loved getting to use a color palette that matches the fun decorative elements.

Some planner girls make awesome “before the pen” spreads, but I tend to write in my plans right away. If plans move or change, you can just cover it with washi or put a sticker over it!

After the plans are all laid out and penned it, I spend some time decorating! This part has no function, but certainly helps me scratch the creative itch with no pressure to make it “perfect”.

Since my Aztec Black and White traveler’s notebook is all decked out for Christmas,

I decided to use washi and stickers from the Merry and Bright Collection, along with few stickers from the awesome Planners Basics sticker tablet. If I could only have one sticker tablet, it would definitely be this one. All the different colors gives the option to decorate with so many different color palettes.

Once I’m done planning, it’s time put my insert back inside my decorated insert cover. I love making insert covers because it allows to switch up my setup without having to change my inserts.

Now, everything goes back in my travelers notebook. I can’t help but take a moment and admire all of the delicious, decorative goodies in my pockets and on my travelers notebook covers. This set-up is gives me all the heart eyes, and motivates me to open my planner and get things done!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed my walking through how I plan my week in my travelers notebook. Do you have a process for planning out your week? Leave a comment here on my instagram and tell me about it!

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11.16.18

Happy fall, y’all Planner Babes! It’s Rachel, back on the on the blog to share my Cream Dot Traveler’s Notebook set up for November. With so many beautiful travelers notebooks, it was tough to choose which one to use. Spoiler alert: I’ll end up using two this month. The Cream Dot Notebook will be used this month as my catch all “get things done” planner and my Floral Typewriter Notebook will be used to for my journal and creative lists. I’ll be posting more about both on my instagram so make sure to check it out!

Fall is my hands down favorite season and this Forever Fall Collection does such a great job capturing the feel of this season. I used paper scraps from my notebook covers as a place to secure the pocket decorations. I like to choose my favorite chipboards pieces and die cuts to decorate my pockets, adhered to the paper with a little bit of removable adhesive.

For this setup I decided to use just three inserts for monthly (combined with a blank insert), weekly and daily plans. Making notebook covers for my inserts is so easy with the papers from the Forever Fall Collection.

I trim the height first, fold the paper around the insert, and measure the width with the insert closed.

To decorate the covers, I trimmed out the element card papers and add the combo stickers and a few bits and pieces.

To keep the bulk down, I removed several pages of a the weekly insert. I have been using this horizontal layout since September and I have a few weeks left of the insert now, but the rest of the pages are all regular lined pages. I decided to make a vertical layout for my weekly pages. With pencil, I measured out the vertical columns (roughly 1.5 in ) drew the vertical lines, stamps the days of the week, added clear date stickers and then stamped the month along the bottom. 

I decorated with washi, stickers from the 4x6 sticker pack and a few stamps.

I love the layered decoration on this page. Don’t be afraid to trim your stickers to make them work for you!

Here is one of my pages in the daily insert. Daily pages are a great place to “plan all the things”. I love these pages, because they have room for your schedule, your lists and even some memory keeping. And since the insert is undated, you can jump in and out of this insert as needed.

I can’t get enough of the adorable collection, so I decided to try out the digital version of this collection to make my own stickers and embellishments. Anyone can do this! I just downloaded the files, and re-shaped them in a Word document to the size and shape I wanted, printed the sheet on full sheet label paper, and fussy cut them out!

My favorite stickers I made with the printables were scaled down versions of the 4x6 and 3x4 element cards and functional boxes with a light shading in the middle. Check back on my instagram to see how I use them in my weekly spreads later this month!

I hope you enjoyed a look inside my fall setup in my Cream Dot Travelers Notebook. Be sure to check out the https://carpediemplanners.com to purchase this notebook, inserts and stamps and more!

Supplies
10.23.18

Hey Planner Friends! It’s Rachel again, and I’m here to share my Persimmon A5 Planner setup for the month of October using the Simple Vintage Halloween Collection. This collection has me feeling nostalgic with its vintage, storybook feel. I love all the illustrations, especially the cheeky pumpkin characters and mischievous little cats! The cats peaking out of pumpkins remind me of our own little rascal cat!

As always, let’s start with the pockets! I have a mix of the chipboard pieces and the bits and pieces from the collection tucked into my pockets. Those pieces on the outside of the pockets are adhered on with some removable roller adhesive. Because of the materials of the planners, I never have to worry about ruining them - sticky adhesive rubs right off (when you want it to!). I backed the large vertical pocket with some patterned paper from the collection and use this pocket to store the 4x6 collection stickers for easy access. How cute it the dressed-up girl peaking out of the pocket!

With such a cute washi set for this collection, I wanted to try and make a washi dashboard. I love how it turned out and it was super easy to make! I laid the washi down on a piece of white card stock, trimmed it out, and adhered the back of the card stock to a paper from the collection. This is a great project to get some extra mileage with your washi, and be able to display it in an eye catching way! I did add a few other washi’s from other collections, but you could easily make this dashboard with just the three in this collections.

Next up was the divider for October. I am a big fan of this plaid paper, and couldn’t wait to make a divider out of it. To measure out my divider, I traced around the A5 Divider template. I used a paper trimmer, but you could also use the template like the photo crops and cut right around the template! Once I had the divider trimmed, I used the planner punch to make the punch the holes.

I then pulled some stickers from the combo stickers sheet. This collection has stickers that come already layered into adorable clusters! If you are like me and are somewhat new to planner decorating, these clustered stickers and images are a life saver! See that sticker at the top? Yep, it came like that! All I had to do was peel it off the sheet and place in on the page! Same with the October tab! This is is great for people who love the look of layers, but maybe don’t have the time or experience to expertly craft an embellishment cluster.

I decided to put a little decoration on the page that appears before the monthly layout. I plan to document some great past costumes that my husband from years past. Spoiler alert - he is much more creative than I am when it comes to costumes!

Here is a look at the monthly spread. I started by dating the pages using the It’s a date stamp set. After the pages were dated, I filled in the major events using some icons from the Get It Done Stamp set and stickers from the 4x6 set.

I added a strip of washi to the top of the page and layered some more stickers on top. The little word strips are always so clever!

I love the monthly layout because I can plan around with the decoration, while still leaving room for the important details of the month.

It wouldn’t be a project from me with out a little planner hack! For the weekly pages, I wanted to create a little bookmark with pieces from the collection. I decided to trim down a 2x2 insta pocket page to add chip board stickers, paper from the collection using the 2x2 photo crop, and the bits and pieces. To the top, I added a monthly tab from the Tabs sticker tablet and a washi paper clip banner.

On to the weekly layout! Because Carpe Diem Inserts are undated, you can play around with all the different layouts! This month, I wanted to use the fitness layout. To make it work for me, I simply covered the far left column where each of the boxes are labeled and placed stickers along the bottom where the hydration tracker was. I dated the pages using the numbers A5 Sticker Tablet, a must for undated planner inserts! I even made a ho-hum task list playful by adding bats as bullet points!

Here is a look at the pocket page place marker in action. This is a great way to liven up a planner page, especially if you don’t have time to decorate the planner page itself.

For the second half of the week, I tried to keep some white space for those events and to do’s that come up as the week progresses.

I hope you enjoyed a look inside my October planner setup! Even if I don’t dress up for Halloween this year, at least my planner looks the part! Until next time, I hope you have a BOOtiful October and a Happy Halloween!

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