April Lilli Design Team: Poser

Here is my next layout that I made for April Lilli. I don't really know what made me go this direction with the layout but for me, the whimsical feel of the papers and embellishments made me think of Shimelle Laine and her style of scrapbooking. I love her Glitter Girl videos and watched them all in the beginning stages of my scrapbooking. She is such a great teacher of basic concepts and I definitely learned a lot from her. I had just watched Glitter Girl episode #146 when I pulled the papers and photos and maybe it was the red paper in both layouts that made me want to scraplift her design. So that is what I did.

I took a screenshot of the layout and then drew a rough sketch on paper marking where the patterned papers would go and where her embellishment clusters went. And then I started myself. I can't say much more about the layout except that her style doesn't come naturally to me. But having the sketch really helped a lot. I never thought I could make that fox paper as a background work so nicely. I love how this turned out!

There is a full process video on my youtube channel, where I tell you more about my thought process. Don't forget to get your share of the Dear Lizzy Lovely Day collection for 20% off in the April Lilli shop during March 2017.

Cocoa Daisy Saturday Seminar: Functional Sticker Sheet.

In the Cocoa Daisy Planner Fans group on facebook we are starting a new series: the Saturday Seminars. In these we are trying to show ways on how we use the product that come in the Cocoa Daisy Planner kits and add-ons. This week we are concentrating on the functional sticker sheet. Lindsey from the planner team has actually listed all the different stickers on her blog, there are 110 stickers on this sheet. I have taken some pictures on how I use them in my planner.

Let's start with a sticker that I had neglected previously: the skinny arrows. There are 8 arrows on the sticker sheet in two color ways. This month I have been using them as arrows to point at important things throughout the day. When I had a list of things I used it to highlight the most important task by highlighting it. I really love that it is so skinny - it doesn't take up too much space which means that the line spacing stays the same. And line spacing is important to this nerdy person.

Moving on to the bullet flags. Four of them are included on every sheet. I use them to make lists, they fit perfectly on the grid section in the inserts and each bullet lines up nicely. Most days my to do list includes more items than four, so I use it on days where I know I can only handle four tasks because the rest of the day is so busy. Or I might divide my tasks into different topics and then use one for chores or video making or kids. This particular day even a sticker didn't help me to get things done, I had to move all four tasks to the next day. Ooops.
Here you can also see how I used the arrow (or as I call them house) stickers. For the afternoon, I marked the two most important things with them. They helped me to space the activities out nicely on the paper. I really am a sucker for a well designed layout - right now, I am using my DaisyDori insert as a daily planner, so each page is one day. The days do not have to be cohesive in their layout but each day's layout needs to be "pleasing to my eye" to work for me. I will do a whole blogpost on how this new setup is working for me, if you are interested, just leave a comment below!

This is another one of the arrows, they differ slightly from the ones above and are included in two sizes on the sticker sheet. You get eight narrow and four wide arrows. I use them very similarly to the arrows above. They would also work well with some writing on them. What I didn't know about them, until just recently, is the fact that they were specifically designed to fit into the date flag stickers. You could mark work days (and hours) or days off or a vacation or other special days like that.

Here is an example on how I used the circle stickers from the sticker sheet. They come in three different sizes, the middle and large circles are two colored. There are six large, six middle and sixteen circles in total. I often use the smallest size to mark out different activities or appointments that I have to remember. But I haven't really used the other two sizes, so I tried to use them and here are two examples. In the photo above I used the circle sticker to highlight a stamp. I partially stamped onto the circle. This way the stamp was more visible and prominent on the page. I also used it to note my stats and fit the word "STATS" into the circle.

I mostly struggle with the word stickers, there are thirteen on the sheet and they all have different words on them. I have only used two of them this month. One can be found in the picture above: I used it to mark the start of the weekend and simply added "Yay, it's the" in my handwriting. The other one was used to mark grocery shopping - one picture above this one. I guess, I need to be a little more creative next week to get them used up by the end of the month!

Yes, I really do want to use up most of my kits every month, I am trying very hard to use the things I love instead of hoarding them. I am a hoarder by nature, always thinking there might be a better opportunity to use a sticker, paper or embellishment. It might sound strange but this for me is "living in the now". Enjoying pretty (and functional) planner things now and not waiting for the perfect moment. It is a very satisfying feeling when I put these things to good use and I love it!

April Lilli Design Team: Blindfisch

April has teamed up with Victoria Marie to bring sketches to her facebook group and blog. There will be two sketches each month; one of them offered on the first and one on the fifteenth. If you share your take on the sketch in the April Lilly Scrapbook Chat facebook group, you will be eligible to win a Dear Lizzy Lovely Day collection kit. Here is my take on the sketch.

As you can see - the sketch was my jumping off point but I tweaked it to suit my needs and my style. The first thing I did: I turned it upside down. Why? Because I wanted to use the black and white stripe and I wanted it to be the smaller wide stripe. But if I had placed it on top, it wouldn't have worked because it is such a bold and heavy patterned paper. This (in my opinion) is a paper that always needs to be on or near the ground when used in such large quantities.

I moved the title to the bottom of the photo because the word was too long for the top right and the photo needed some shelf to sit on due to the strange photo. I tried to use the same type of embellishment in each of the clusters. I had a strange gap between the small cluster on the left and the stripes behind the photo. So I tuck two more tags in there and it looked much better, so I actually had a great space for my journaling.

Don't forget to head over to the April Lilli shop where you can find this month's featured collection for 20% off.

Cocoa Daisy Planner Team: Introduction

Each member of the Cocoa Daisy Planner Team is introducing themselves in the Cocoa Daisy Planner Fans facebook group this month. Today is my turn to introduce myself but I feel like I have so much to tell. I hope you'll make it to the end. My name is Simone, I am German living in the Bay Area with my husband and three sons. We moved here only 1.5 years ago, but have adjusted pretty well.

I have been crafting ever since I was little because my mom was/is a very talented crafter, there are photos where I am weaving, trying to crochet and sew. I collected stationery items when I was in my preteens and I still have that collection. As a paper nerd I had a list book where I would list my favorite foods, my friends, the boys I had a crush on, animals I wanted to have and so on.

I then forgot about my paper obsession for about 10 years when I moved on to fabric and sewed mostly clothing for my sons and me. I returned to paper crafting when I found Project Life in 2014 and then started to watch youtube videos in bulk. And this is how I came across Doris Sander​'s videos where she shared the DaisyDori. I bought a leftover Dori from a previous month to try and then immediately subscribed.

In August 2016 I actually cancelled my Dori subscription because I felt so guilty not using all the pages and tried different kinds of layouts for planning in a midori insert. Just when I thought I figured it all out, my system started to fall apart and I needed to adjust.

March 2017 is the first month that I am back in a DaisyDori for my planner. I changed to daily pages (so I will definitely use all the pages) which gives me enough room for all my plans, afternoon activities and thoughts. My planning style could be described as functional first, then pretty. I want my planner to work for me first, then I will pretty it up. I am trying to use all the stickers that come in the kit and they help me to visualize more important tasks and create a "layout that is pleasing to the eye."

In January I started to journal/memory keep/scrapbook in a DaisyDori as well. I affectionately call it smashdori (which is a word by Arleigh, the designer of the pretty planner things from Cocoa Daisy) because it reminds me so much of smashbooking. I thought this was something new, but I just pulled out my old journal from 1991 (that is 26 years ago) and it looks less colorful but the tendencies are there. So maybe this is something that is very natural to me.

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See, I told you this was going to be long. But I still want to add three random facts about me:
1. I am the oldest of five children.
2. After I became obsessed with sewing, my mom got back into this hobby as well and actually opened a fabric store several years ago at age 58.
3. My husband and I are high school sweethearts and have been together for 21 years.
****

My social media:
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/seemownay
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seemownay/

April Lilli Design Team: You are braver than you believe.

I have put off writing about this layout until the very last minute because I really don't know where to start and what to tell. Maybe if I start this way:

For my April Lilli projects I have been going back to the very first photos that are on my computer (yes, all other digital photos have been lost). They are sorted by year and month and for my March projects I look through March of 2010 to 2013 and mark all photos as favorites that spark some kind of story or resonate with me. From these photos I then choose the ones that go with the color scheme of this month's collection and which stories feel most important to me. Most of the times I end up with 5 stories. This gives me a good start. I can play with five different options and showcase two of them as my monthly design team projects. If I have time, energy and motivation left, I can still work on the others, if I don't, I'll at least have two older stories more in the books. I chose the photo of this mirror selfie because then I took them almost daily.

I had planned to make a page about the many mirror selfies I took during that time to share my outfit of the day on instagram. But when I had the photo in my hand it was too big, there was too much background noise on the photo and having one photo as a representation of the many mirror selfies I took just didn't feel right as well. I would rather prefer having a collage of many for that story.

So I looked at the papers again and the die cuts that came in the kit and then these thoughts ran through my mind: "I really should challenge myself to use that paper as a background!" - "Yes, what is the point of saving things you love rather than using them?" - "I wonder if I can fussy cut these houses as a strip and use them at the bottom of a layout." - "But what story would you tell? And where would the photo go?" - "Ok, this really does look good, it needs grounding but other than that ..." - "What if I cut myself out of that photo and then tuck it behind the houses? Then nobody would notice that I don't have feet in that picture. Haha, this looks just like a giant in a tiny world."

"Ok, this is complete nonsense, what is the story here?" - "Do I always need a story?" - "Well, you usually do!" (Muffles the sound of this other inner voice. It's just so much fun!) "Let's look at the die cuts, maybe I can ... oh! Those circles have affirmations on them ... maybe I can add them to embellishment clusters close to the photo. And then look for a quote that reinforces these affirmations. That is it! It is an image of growing out of your black and white world, growing taller than you ever believed you could. Perfect!"

Then everything came together quite easily: I decided to stamp the quote to the background using an elle's studio alpha stamp set and add even more embellishments in a vertical strip to balance the horizontal strip of the houses and give the quote an nice frame. And there's that! I am absolutely in love with this layout!

The Lovely Day collection by Dear Lizzy is 20% off for the whole month of March 2017 in the April Lilli shop!

Planning in a Traveler's Notebook: Planner Struggle & March Setup.

If you follow me closely on my other social media like instagram or youtube, the things I am going to tell you now, might be old news to you. But if not, here it goes.

For the past several weeks I have been struggling to use my planner, I didn't have enough room to actually make it work as a functional planner, add some pretty embellishments and at the same time be still pleasing to the eye. I also used to carry my planner everywhere but had started to leave it at home because it was too bulky and heavy. Add to that the fact that some of my additional traveler's notebook covers didn't work as planned. It was time to face the inevitable: the way I had sought out to plan in 2017 in the beginning of January needs to be changed. I filmed a lengthy video about my planner struggles, please check it out here.



My idea is to switch things up completely by using a personal size traveler's notebook starting in April, this should help with the weight and bulkyness. For the month of March, I decided to go back to my Cocoa Daisy insert, the DaisyDori in standard size and try to use one whole page for daily planning. This should address the issue of roominess. Again, I filmed a process and setup for my March DaisyDori, what I didn't expect was that I was completely stumped when it came to the layout of the daily pages. So I decided to take it one step at a time and only prepare the first couple of days and then move forward from there.

And finally, the last thing I wanted to share is by far the most exciting: I have been chosen to be on the Cocoa Daisy Day Planner Team for 2017. Alongside other lovely ladies I will be sharing my planning and memory keeping process with their products and hope to be inspiring to you all!

April Lilli Design Team: Geschwisterplüsch.

For my April Lilli Design Team projects, I have been digging deep into my stash of photos that are on my computer but have never been printed. This photo was taken by a preschool photographer and I loved it ever since I got it. The hurdle: it was only given to me in digital format and somehow I never ended up printing it. When I saw that photo with the flowers in the foreground I knew I had found the perfect match for the "Adore you" paper by Crate Paper.



I fussy cut the flowers but needed something for the background. I didn't want to go the same route, however, of using gesso and the packaging technique as I did with the XOXO Layout. I know now, I can do that kind of mixed media and I will definitely do more in the future but not this time. So I tried to enlarge one of the flowers on a scrap piece of paper and then used this as a template for piercing holes and embroidered the outline of the flower. I then dug out my oil pastels from Faber-Castell and lightly shaded the flower to easily distinguish the flower from the white background.



When it came to putting the layout together, I felt the boxed shape of the photo to be very disturbing, none of the other shapes were linear and so I bravely cut into the photo and cut their silhouettes. To further embellish I used the flowers that were cut from the paper, some pieces from the ephemera pack and the floral shape that was on the chipboard sheet. The title literally translates to "sibling plush" and perfectly nestles in between the flowers underneath the photo. I added in tile stickers from Studio Calico for the first part of the title.

Lastly, I added splatters. Well, I shouldn't have done that because they went all wrong, I wanted them to be big and they were only resembling tiny, misty drops. And worst of all, one of them landed on a strand of embroidery floss and dyed it black. After some mourning, I decided to add the heart embellishment clusters and I really like the way they finish off the layout. So the accident wasn't that bad after all.

If you read all the way up to here: thank you! Go check out the Crate Paper "Heart Day" collection in April Lilli's shop which is still 20% off until the end of February 2017.

Journaling in a Traveler's Notebook: January Journal

Just in case you haven't seen me sharing photos and videos of this project, I wanted to collect them all here, so that it is easy to check them out. I stopped doing Project Life in the traditional style in a 12x12 album for 2017. Instead I am now journaling in a Traveler's Notebook insert, specifically a DaisyDori from Cocoa Daisy in the standard size. I didn't know where I was going with this in the beginning of January and just started with what was on my mind at that time.

The first part of the journal is reflecting on goals and things I want to achieve in 2017 and then went on to journal about all the events and moments, big and small that I wanted to remember. I specifically made sure to journal from my point of view and only talk about things that are important to me.

This journal is stuffed full with stickers, cards, washi tape and stamps. I still try to balance the page but I enjoy the messy look, it reminds me of the way people used to fill their smashbooks when they were still popular. I love the way this complements my scrapbooking layouts, which are so different but no less fun to make.

Here are all the videos for my January Daisy Dori.

• Introduction: flip through first part
• Journal with me #01
• Journal with me #02
• Journal with me #03
• Complete Journal flip through - January 2017

I am already working on my journal for February and can't wait to share the videos and process with you!

April Lilli Design Team: XOXO.

Here is my second project with the Crate Paper Heart Day collection which is still 20% off in the April Lilli Shop. This layout is another mixed media layout. I really enjoy exploring all of these new options and simply play. I try not to go out and buy new products, but instead use what I already have and try to incorporate it into my scrapbooking. There is a process video on my youtube channel for this layout, so go and check it out!

I primed my background with gesso, then used Neocolor II and the heart stamps that are from the Heart Day stamp set to create the background for my photos. I used the chipboard XOXO for my title and added a couple of die cuts from the ephemera pack.

The enamel dots are just the interior parts of the wood buttons from the dimensional embellishments, I love this little trick. Because my title ended up being very close to the left edge I decided to add a patterned paper strip to the left so that the title would move more towards the center. The grey cardstock helped to distinguish between the two pattern papers, this way I was able to use them side by side.

If you want to know more about my decisions and why you shouldn't erase pencil on gesso, simply watch the whole Scrapbooking Process: XOXO Layout.

April Lilli Design Team: Easy Valentine Cards for Mass Production

Last year for our first Valentine's Day in the US, we knew little about the significance this day had in the school year and that children exchanged little gifts. So my sons were ill prepared and we ran to Target the day before the class party to get the last cards that were left on the shelf. I really hate buying those little plasticky toys that get thrown away immediately and was so annoyed about the crap my sons brought to school. I love to give things that can be used up, so this year I am better prepared. I reused an idea from a card that one of my sons received last year and made it work for us.

I searched the silhouette design store for cut files with fish and finally settled on this very basic shape. In the software I deleted the heart and resized and multiplied the shapes to fit on a 8.5x11 sheet of paper since I have a Silhouette Portrait. I ended up with eight fish on one paper.

If you do not have a printer like me, this might be interesting for you: it is "print and cut" vintage style. I then took white cardstock, traced one of the outlines where I punched out my fish and typed the sentence into the shapes of the eight fish using my old typewriter. Then I went to Staples and had them copy my text several times on cardstock, which I then also ran through my Silhouette Portrait.

I then glued one patterned fish and one white fish together, added wiggly eyes to both sides using my Glossy Accents and punched a hole into the fishtail to attach a snack size Goldfish package.

Now we are all set for Valentine's Day! If you still need an idea, this is a fun and quick project that you can create with your kids. Have fun! If you still need pretty paper for your cards, head on over to the April Lilli shop, where you can get this collection for 20% off the original price during February 2017. There is also a video on youtube where you can have a closer look at the Crate Paper "Heart Day" collection.

April Lilli Design Team: Crate Paper "Heart Day"

Can you believe it is already February?

For this month April chose the Valentine's line "Heart Day" by crate paper to be the featured collection in her shop. For the whole month of February 2017 it will be 20% off the original price. I have filmed an unboxing for you where I show you the papers and tell you my ideas and thoughts on the collection. I have already been working with the papers and embellishments and can't wait to show you my ideas. Since I am most active on instagram make sure you follow me there so you won't miss any sneaks and closeups of my projects. a talk about my ideas for this wintery collection.

April Lilli Design Team: Winter Wonderland.

This is my last and final layout that I made with the Winter Wonderland collection for the month of January. Even though I only needed two projects, I couldn't stop creating. This photo doesn't really have a story, I just liked the colors and the atmosphere it conveyed. But then I found the perfect journaling which simply reads: "Alright, sometimes even I can see the beauty of Winter."

I fussy cut the title from one of the cutapart sheets and felt that it needed something to sit on top. So I went with the last bits of my favorite paper and added a strip to the bottom of the layout. I nestled one of the die cuts right underneath the title. To frame the layout I added a thinner strip to the top.

For this layout I slapped some acrylic paint on an 8.5x11 piece of cardstock, simply because I didn't know how this would turn out and I didn't want to waste anything. I used a dry, wide flat brush and just put the colors straight onto the cardstock. I love that you can see the brush strokes so well. Then I put my photo on several layers of patterned paper. I used the red paper twice because I loved how the red helps to bring out the colors in the photo.

I added one of the embellishment clusters to the right of the photos and one on the top left corner. I used all of the snowflakes that were included in the collection's cardboard stickers as well as fussy cut some from various patterned papers. To ground the embellishment cluster at the top I used parts of two tags. As on most of the layouts I made with this collection, I added some enamel dots to finish out the layout.

And if you want to see all of these layouts up close and personal, I just posted a layout share on my youtube channel here: Winter Wonderland Layout Share.

April Lilli Design Team: Silvesterwanderung.

This is another layout where I found inspiration in another layout: Wish List by Audrey Yeager. As I said in this post before: there is usually one or two things about a layout that stick out to me and that inspire me. Here it was the stacked photos, the strips of patterned paper and the use of a notebook punch. With this in mind I ventured out on my own and came up with the layout above for the april lilli shop.

I knew I wanted to back my layout with the woodgrain paper and add stitching, emphasizing the corners happened by accident when I didn't pay attention and my stitching line went too far. So I made it a design element by stitching back and forth on all corners and I really love the detail it adds.

If you are wondering about the use of white and cream colored paper on one layout, I regard those as two different colors and have no problem using them together. In order for the notebook paper to pop from the background I used another piece of the dark brown paper. The notebook paper lend itself perfectly as a journaling spot.

The title was so long that I decided to emphasize the vertical lines created by the paper strips even more and placed it on top of the third paper strip. I then added stitching lines to all of the papers after I punched them all with my notebook punch.

I backed the photos with cards from the cutapart sheet and cut them down so that only a very small border was showing. I felt I need to break up the rigid lines of the layout and added some brown Distress Ink using a stencil by Tim Holtz. The only embellishment I added was that brown deer from the sticker sheet.

Here is the story that is on the layout which is titled "Silvesterwanderung" meaning "New Year's Eve hike". We have been going on these hikes since our college years when we went hiking with a group of friends, taking a picnic and bratwurst for a winter BBQ in the snow. We always had such a great time and kept this tradition even after we started a family on our own.

This particular year, we took our bikes and rode to a lake where we made a fire in a fire pit and grilled bratwurst. We underestimated the length of the tour and how cold it got in the evening and the ride back home was freezing. But we made it.

April Lilli Design Team: This View.

I am not going to talk much about this layout because I have a process video for it on my youtube channel. Go check it out here: This View and hear about the story and the design process. Please hop over and take a look! The Winter Wonderland collection by Simple Stories is still 20% off in the april lilli shop. Below you will find a few close ups.

April Lilli Design Team: Mein Held.

This layout was greatly inspired by a layout from Jen Schow who is a guest designer for Cocoa Daisy this month. I loved the idea of making a grid design from journaling cards and having a flair in the middle. It took me a while to finally come up with this 8.5x11 layout and I had to waste a whole sheet of 12x12 paper to finally come to this solution. When I scraplift a layout or take a layout as inspiration I often just take one (or in this case two) ideas from the original and don't go back looking at the inspiration while working on my own layout. I believe that this approach helps me develop my own style.

As I wrote above, I fiddled with this layout for a long time and then when I compared the end result to Jen's layout, I found that I didn't deviate too far from it after all. The story is about another hat - I chuckled when I noticed that two of the five stories were about hats. Especially, considering the fact, that I didn't start wearing hats until I had kids. The title of the layout is "Mein Held" which translates to "my hero" and it talks about the story that my mom started selling this special crochet yarn (myboshi) in her store and made hats for all of her grandchildren for Christmas one year. The response to my question: "And where is my hat?" was a small package for my birthday in February. But the best part about the hat was that not my mom had crochet the hat for me but my dad!

I used four 3x4 journaling cards from the cutapart sheet for the background and then only added the exclusive heart flair to the middle. On the top right I added a little embellishment cluster made from the die cut set and another cutapart from the 6x6 paper pad. Then I sprinkled some enamel dots in groups of three on three places on the layout. I felt the layout needed some kind of border, so I took a brown pen and drew a line all around the edge. I added some zigzag lines in two places to mimic zigzag stitching and I really like how they turned out. Head over to the April Lilli shop to get this collection for 20% off.

Documenting December in a Traveler's Notebook

I have been meaning to share my December Daily video series here on my blog but I somehow never got around to doing so. I have a complete series of videos sharing my process of Documenting December in a Traveler's Notebook. Today I uploaded the last video: a complete walk through my insert for 2016.


I created a playlist where you will find all of the videos including a tutorial on how to sew your own fabric cover, the kit that I used to embellish the pages, a walk through my insert of 2015 as well as several process videos. Here is the link to the playlist: Documenting December in a Traveler's Notebook.