Hey all you crafty gals, how are you all doing? Today I have a great and quick craft to add some storage to your planner. I walk you through happy planner version here but you can easily make it for your Erin Condren or binder.

Items needed:

• 1 sheet of paper (works best with double sided paper)
• Paper punch
• Tape runner
• Additional Embellishments.

If you are doing this for a happy planner then you need to fold the paper in half (short sides together) and very carefully punch the paper before folding the pockets up. 

Once you have folded the paper in half you want to  open in back up and fold up the bottom edge of paper about two inches from the bottom this will create the second and third pocket. all you have to do is fold it back in half with the "pockets" facing outward. Using Tombow's tape runner I sealed the bottom of the pock making the big fold creating a large main pocket.

Next we get to decorate! Now I wanted to use the gorgeous camera washi that came in the in the August Add - On Kit, the problem though was that it's a bit transparent so I used my patented cheapo trick! I laid down a foundation plain masking to help well mask the background from overwhelming the washi.

At the last minute I decided to punch an half a circle in the front half of the main folder pocket for a little interest. All I have left now is the final decorations for the a of visual interest and because I can't leave anything alone! 

I added a few cute phrases from the summer phrases kit that came also in the August add on. To top the look off I added a cute camera border that I zipped off on my Silhouette to tie in the camera theme and then some orange enamel dot and that's all she wrote. I hope this tutorial was useful and I'd love to see your projects. 

I just love everything about the newly formatted weekly kits. They bring me so much delight and excitement when I get a new one!

There was only one thing that stumped me when I was looking through them. The bottom "washi" designed for the Erin Condren is too wide for my Happy planner. I could cut it down but honestly, that seemed too much trouble. I was looking at it then it hit me It would be perfect for the sidebar!

Now if you have a Happy Planner, how I do this is I line the "washi" sticker with to bottom and the right hand edge of the note lines. As you can see this leaves some of the lines showing and bits of the word Notes. If this bothers you well then all you need is a bit of thin washi. 

I chose this smooth glitter effect washi in gold by Amy Tangerine and ran it down both sides. Gold goes so well with this kit in particular... If you don't have a washi thin enough you can always cut some down with a paper trimmer. 

Now there is that seam but it's easy to fix, you can either put decorations over that or, one of your functional stickers like a check list. I use one of the weekly checklist boxes for Mac's menu for the week. Now I have to do the rest of the planning before I can decorate. 

I don't use my side bar for anything most of the time so besides adding a habit tracker down in the bottom for my violin practice, I just decorate it. The cool thing about the decorative hearts in this kit as they can function as two stickers in one.. Here I used the inside to create opaque heart also. I'd love to see how you use the bottom "washi" stickers in your non EC planner!

I have a confession to make, I hate to do lists! I loathe making them and loathe seeing things not get ticked off. More importantly I generally don't have many things to write on a to do list. So it used to frustrate me to have these gorgeous check boxes left over from our weekly kits. 

Then I had an ta-da moment! I do have regular tasks (designing stickers for example) that have three steps that each need to be done. These check boxes would be a good way of checking where I am on each design I'm working on for that week. Especially since I tend to do say all the drawing at once I occasionally get lost. 

I find  it easiest to do all my other planning first, this both lets me see how busy my week is and thus how much I can actually expect to finish but also what days to avoid. I just love this gorgeous rainbow kit and really wish I had bought more of it!

Next on all my free days I put my little 3 check boxes. This isn't the task for that day but more a place throughout the week where I will track my progress, achieving anymore in one week tends to difficult.

And really all there is left to do is write down the sticker design and the steps digitalize and silhouette process. These are the three important steps I need to track, and this way I can go through and tick off what I have drawn and what I have digitalized. No more duplicated work and no more wasted stickers. I hope this was helpful to you and please let me know what creative use you have for our stickers?

Today I'm sharing with you my new passion Project Life. Back in the day I used to scrapbook but I found it a bit of a todo for me. and the pages were big and the papers were expensive, and eventually I just stopped. When I first started seeing project life popping up it piqued my interest, but I pushed it aside as something not for me. Sure enough those around me started doing it and well I just fell into it and decided to start (I blame Serena Bee and Diana). Anyway I only do 6 x 8 pages for now which is small and easy for me to manage I'm sure soon enough I'll do a larger size but for now I'm enjoying this size. 

First things I did was gather up my supplies. I know I'm doing a 3 card lay out using one 4 x 6 and two 3 x 4's. I wasn't sure which picture I was going to use but I started with the 4 x 6.

I had this 4 x 6 picture of my dog Mac, and I was looking at that and I thought wouldn't it look great is back was sleeping in the galaxy. So with a little fussy cutting I was able to get him laying there snoozing in the big galaxy land. I outlined him a little in black and then embellished away. I especially like the skinny appointment box as a date box idea. 

The next pocket I kept simple cause it was going to be a shaker pocket of sorts, so just some silver glitter washi, and a wood chip heart. I'm using this glitter that came as a bonus in the April kit. 

The final pocket I wanted to feature some of the stunning star paper so I used it to make a little pocket for a tag. I kept the tag really simple with just "BEST DOG" written out in glitter alphas, I added another wood chip that says "Yep, this" and a few more of the enamel stars that also came with the kit. 

Finally I put everything in the page protector. As I don't have a Fuse tool I just used clear tap along the top to seal the shaker pocket shut. I really love how this page went together and especially love how simple and easy it was to do. Best news is I used only a fraction of the gorgeous galaxy papers so I have plenty more for future spreads. I hope you enjoyed this Project Life spread and I would love to see what you made on your project tag me and popfizzpaper in anything you do.

Today I bring you a fun Journal page that I put together using the Journal prompts and the April kit. I'm cannot even tell you how excited I am to be able to finally show you some things using the April kit, for the last two weeks I've had it on my desk dying to show you just a quick SOMETHING. This kit is gorgeous. 

I realised I haven't really showing you some of my journaling in a while so I sat down today to do some journaling and recorded it a bit for you. I didn't go into much detail of the process as it's my usual style. 

As always I picked out some colours from my various ephemera that I thought went well together, and using my inktense blocks watercoloured the background to give the overall page some colour. I do this to immediately conquer that blank page!

I wanted to really make that journal prompt stand out and be framed in a nice way. I decided to use one of the half boxes and cut it in half(not actually in perfect halves but you know what I mean) and lay that down like a header. Next a sticker from my stash which I believe is left over from a MAMBI set and two of our star stickers to tie it all together. 

Waste not want not and all I used the other half of the half box to be part of the date. I really like how the stamped year with the date circle look combined like this. It's an interesting way to use half boxes or even the washi strips. I decided I wanted a quote up in this corner too and loved this one from the galaxy set. all it needed now was this gold star die cut which appeared in my stash (I think it was in a pocket letter).

Along the bottom I tore a strip off one of the papers that came in the kit and glued it down. We changed paper companies with these papers and I love them. I loved the February papers but these lighter weight ones are so much more versatile. And these stickers... I just cannot even! They are far too pretty to capture on camera, they are gold, black and white with gold glitter in the center! I HAD to use some of them along the bottom. and the finishing touch was another stash die cut. 

I did do the journaling on this but it ended up rather personal so please understand why I chose not to share it. 

Today I'm bringing you a simple little DIY/hack using half box stickers. My particular decorating style often leaves me with spares, so I have been looking for ideas on how to use them.

As I was sitting down doing my journaling in the journal I made a few blog back for my recent vacation. That's when my brain wave hit I could use half boxes as tabs marking when the individual days start. 

I decided to stick with the donut theme of the journal and grabbed my donut half boxes. It was really simple then to just put the edge of the half box on the edge of the first page I was marking and then folding it carefully in half. 

I used my ultra fine Sharpie to mark the day and date of the month. Simple enough and repeated it for the final three days. And it was all sweet.

I love the tabs and the way they look and how the coordinated together. I think it would also look cute to use the flag stickers to make tabs with also.

 What ideas do you have with your left over half boxes.

Yes another Journaling post from me! I love my journals but not all the time do you need words. Sometimes just pictures are enough. With all these flip books floating around it reminded me of mini albums that used to be popular a few years back. I loved making those and using them as journals.

First I gathered my supplies around and decided to finally use the January kit which I've been hoarding.

The hardest part was deciding what to use with these cards. I have sooo many embellishments and constantly am gaining more, so in my typical fashion I decided to just wing it and use things as I remembered them or was inspired to. 

I started out by measuring the information card from each side so that I could fold it and fit the journaling cards inside. I did this so the extra space was in the middle of the card creating a spine allowing for bulk. Once that was achieved I cut down some coordinating paper and glued in inside and laid down some silver washi along the spine.

Next was to decide what cards I wanted to use and what order I wanted them in. This was actually one of the trickier parts as I can be a perfectionist - in fact I changed out a few of the cards after I took this photo. I also decided what journal prompts I was going to use off the February list. 

Once I had my finalized prompts and cards I taped them all into place with some washi. I decided to go ahead and decorate the front of the cards at this point and get them looking how I want them before scouring my photos for ones that answered the prompts I chose. 

After I had the photos all in place I decorated around them and added some more fun embellishments (I especially like the metal pyramid stickers). That back part looked a bit bare so I grabbed a smash book journaling spot pad and added a wee bit of journaling before decorating the inside and outside cover. 

I used the most recent photo of me on the cover and I just love it and the way it looks. This Instagram style frame I just love and was gifted to me by the wonderful Serena Bee. I'm overall really happy with how this turned out and is a perfect capsule of my life at this moment in photos. 

This project was so much fun to do and was put together in a few moments. I think it would be fun to do and send to a friend without the photos as a mail tag. You could also do one with photos of your self and answering their questions in response to their mail tag. I also think it would make a super cute baby book for when your tot is all grown.

I'd love to see your projects and ideas for the Journal prompts - please comment below and tell me what you use them for. 

Dani's Official Reveal

Brooklynne's Unboxing

Vanessa's Unboxing

Naomi Unboxing

Soon as Dani showed me the papers for February's kit I knew I needed some Midori style inserts made from them. I love My traveler's notebook so much and carry it everywhere and go through a lot of inserts. So today I have show you in a few basic steps how to make your own notebook.

Starting out I chose the paper I'd like to work with and so inside paper. I want to make a sketchbook of sorts for doodling PFP ideas when I'm out and about so I just grabbed one of my sketchbooks, a ruler, my paper trimmer and some sewing supplies as I prefer thread bound notebooks over staple bound.

Next I cut both the donut paper and the sketch book paper to 22cm x 21cm. 21cm is the height of the notebook. Midori notebooks are not quite square but close, I think if I were to do this again I would just make the notebook 22cm square and have the notebook a bit wider.

Making sure the papers are in the right orientation I simply folded them in half, and was ready for the next part of the binding. 

This is where it gets tricky, time to make a binding template. A binding template ensures that you are punching the holes in the same place everytime. So you need a thin strip of paper the height of your notebook and fold it in half like you did the pages so it's still tall but thinner, then unfold it and fold it in half the other way and then in half again. In the end you should have a piece of paper that has three intersecting points evenly placed, mark those intersections with a dot.

Using a awl or a sewing pin you want to pre punch all of your papers and your cover. The easiest way to do this is going 2 or three papers at a time and putting their fold in the spine of an old book (phone books work great for this). putting your template in the fold just punch each of those three marked spots on all your papers and cover.

Next I used a basic pamphlet stitch which can be found in countless youtube videos, making sure to end with my threads on the outside and tied them very tightly. Now you could leave it like that OR I like to make it a bit more secure and run some washi down the spine. I added some simple decorations and then this note book was done!

I hope you enjoyed this sort of tutorial, and let us know what you did with your papers from the February kit!

I have had so much fun this last month working here at PopFizzPaper helping Dani not go insane and creating new designs for you all to be sticking in your planners. It's been great seeing you all oh and aw over my babies, and hearing more ideas of what you all want. So I thought it would be interesting showing you how I design all of the new stickers I've been working on.

I'm old fashioned, and while I know they have drawing tablets and such and even my laptop has a touch screen I still use good old pen and paper. I think every artist has their own specific tools they prefer and mine for illustration are Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens in black and I have all the sizes available, I know there are so many brands out there but this is my brand ya know. My next MUST have for this type of work is a Prismacolor Col-Erase in No Copy Blue. As for erasers and pencil sharpeners I get what ever is on sale, my only requirement for sharpners is that it has to have a container to catch the shavings as I sharpen my pencil CONSTANTLY.

So I start out any sticker (in this case my dog care stickers) with a rough sketch and erase only major and distracting mistakes. This is loose and light at first but as I start to get an idea of the shape and look I want I darken the lines I want to keep. It's really important to keep the lead nice and sharp for my personal style, so my sharpener is always nearby. 

Once I am pretty satisfied with what I want, out comes the Pitt Artist Pens. These just glide on so nicely and are permanent and waterproof (although not dog proof so luckily non toxic). This is where I finally decide which lines I'm going to keep and which are history. Here's where the magic happens I don't have to worry at all with those messy blue lines they can stay for prosperity because when I scan this final image they won't show up.

Next I email Dani the finished images and she comes back with any critiques or feedback and either one of us will finish it off. I work right in Silhouette Studio from here as it is usually the easiest. I will also tweak any lines here sometimes evening out a dodgy line or fixing where a dog nudged my hand, etc. Finally I choose colours for that sticker and the rest of the set and put them in place.

Off to Dani the finished file goes and then the most exciting part, she mails me the finished sheet. The most important part of the process is me fawning over the real thing in my hand that I designed and pondering how lucky I am to have a job I love! Oh and stick them in my planner and enjoy them.