Brimbles, brimbles sticker club, planners, sticker kit

Brimbles Sticker Club March: Hop to It – Planner Spreads

This post was originally posted on http://mrsbrimbles.blogspot.co.uk/

Hello everyone! Happy March! It didn’t exactly feel very spring like at the beginning of the month did it? (particularly for those of us in the UK). But Spring is starting to show itself now, which makes me very happy 😀 

For this month’s stickers I decided to do two planner spreads, both are for this current week (12-18 March). The first is my usual in my personal size planner, with Mini Happy Planner inserts.
7

There is a Plan With Me video for this spread if you’d like to see it. I didn’t do anything too fancy for this layout either, the stickers did the work for me. The pink washi up the inner sides of each page is from the Brimbles shop, and you can buy it/have a closer look by clicking here.

Here are some close ups of this personal size spread:

25

1

Then for my second planner spread I decorated inserts in my A5 planner. In this planner I have the 2018 Daphne’s Diary planner punched in, and because each week is different and all pages have pretty pictures and patterns, I don’t often bother to decorate, or if I do it’s very minimal. However, I noticed the theme for this week would match the Hop to It Sticker Kit almost perfectly, as it’s both Spring-y and also a bit reminiscent of a pretty pond filled with lily pads.

I don’t have a video for this one, so I’ve taken a few pictures for you to get a good look. I’ve done the picture’s ‘before the pen’, as I often put a lot of health related things in this planner.

12

These inserts/planner come with a mini tear out insert each week with a space for a shopping and a to-do list, so of course I decorated that too:

10

The little frog sat on a rock, pondering away, is my favourite sticker from this month’s kit. He just looks so happy and lost in thought. I wonder what he’s thinking about!

111316

As always, thank you so much for reading; I hope you enjoyed my Planner Pages for this month. Here are some links to where you can get March’s sticker kit:

‘Hop to It’ March Sticker Club

‘Hop to It’ Bumper Sticker Bundle

‘Hop to It’ March Brimbles Box

cropped-lets-see-if-this-works.png

Grace @ms.paperlover ❤

Brimbles, brimbles sticker club, sticker kit

February Brimbles Sticker Kit: We Go Together Like…

URGH. I dread February. And I worry a lot about any subscriptions I have going or any design teams I’m on… because they might send me Valentine’s things… ew.

I despise Valentine’s day, I’ve always been quite vocal about this. Whether I’m in a relationship or not, I want nothing to do with the romantic, the soppy, the lovey dovey, etc., (I must have inherited that attitude as my Mum hates it too and she’s been married for 30 years!)

Thankfully, however, saying all of that, this month’s sticker kit from Mrs Brimbles is not Valentine’s-y at all. Well, sort of. It’s one of those that could be seen as such for those of you who go in for that romantic crap (sorry, not sorry :P), but for those anti-valentine’sers amongst us, it can just be seen as cute little doodles of food and drink and matching functional stickers!

10

The first sheet is the super cute little watercoloured doodles by Anna of things that ‘go together’.

9

This pair is my favourite, the Gin and Tonic. Despite the fact that I rarely drink, and even when I do, I really don’t like gin! But it’s the teeny little smiley face on that ice cube that gets me!

8

Sheet two is the functionals – as ever, the little arrows are my favourite. I love using them to highlight important tasks in my planner. The pink and blue theme is one that works both for the Valentine’s lovers and the Valentine’s haters (or the indifferent among you, but I have found that people tend to go one way or the other on the subject!).

32

Sheet three is the washi strips. The doodles look extra cute when they’re all tiny like that! Is the coffee and doughnut strip making anyone else hungry, or is that just me?

7

The final sheet is the boxes and headers.

5 I think the brush script of the XO looks particularly fab on that full box.

4

I think I’ll be going with a coffee and doughnuts and tea and biscuits theme when I do a planner spread with these stickers, because like the last box says, “It’s the little things in life”, and those are some little things that I really like. In fact I will end this blog post here so I can go and make a cuppa 😀

1

Thanks so much for reading! If you like the look of these stickers then you can purchase them here, or go here to look at the entire collection that features these cute designs. Look out for my blog post where I share what creative projects I get up to with these stickers both here and on The Brimbles Blog.

Grace ❤ @ms.paperlover

card making, flipbook, how to, papercrafts, trimcraft, tutorial

Wander-Bee Flipbook

Ok, ok, I have been somewhat remiss in my blogging… whoops! The end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 have been a little ‘aaargh!’ (in both good and bad ways). Now that things are starting to settle down I’m hoping to get back to blogging… and be better than before too.

So enough waffle, on with today’s post. I owed my lovely penpal Julie (instagram: @plannerprettiesandpaper) a snail-mail flipbook. And as I was little behind on my mail to her, I wanted to make something extra special.

The gorgeous Trimcraft collections, Dovecraft’s Bee Happy, and First Edition’s Wanderlust are not necessarily similar, but they have some elements that work together really well. So, the ‘Wander-Bee’ collection was born, and it’s first project, this flipbook:

 

I didn’t do a process video, or take process photos (otherwise there’d be hundreds!). But I thought I’d go through each ‘page’ of the flipbook with you to tell you how it was made.

The cover is this shaker card. All the hexagons (and all that you’ll see throughout the flipbook) I cut on my silhoutte machine. Due to how busy the shaker element is I only added light embellishments: the bee puffy sticker and gold buttons from Bee Happy, and the ‘hello’, which was from my stash. The only Wanderlust element here is the paper I used to die cut the ‘Bee Happy’. In the shaker itself is a mix of gold sequins and stars, gold glitter, coarse yellow glitter, and copper coloured  micro beads.

12

Next was this simple ‘pocket’ page. To make this I cut one of my (many) pre cut hexagons in half (well, just over), and adhered it to the base with a thin layer of double sided tape around the edges. I embellished it with Bee Happy ribbon and a button, as well as both fussy and die cut elements from both Bee Happy and Wanderlust. You can just see the goodies I put in that pocket slightly out of shot to the top right.

8

This page probably took me the longest to make, as I had to figure out how to make a hexagon-shaped envelope. I tried following an origami tutorial on YouTube but it was WAY too complex. So I just made it up instead. I used brads and twine to keep it shut (it’s full of various die cut shapes and stickers), and decorated around the edge with that slim leaf washi (from my stash). I finished with the sentiment topper from Bee Happy and a Wanderlust fussy cut butterfly.

6

Next was another page with a simple pocket, made in the same way as last time. But this one is more Wanderlust-y. The bow is made with the bow-sewing technique (let me know if you’d like a blog post on that – I have shown it in a video but I can’t remember which one!). In this pocket I put a load of project life/journal cards.

This is one of the back pages, with added envelope flip-out. This one is a real mix of Bee Happy and Wanderlust, and possibly my favourite page. The small envelope (smallest size on the WE R Memory Keepers’ 1-2-3 Punch Board) is mounted on a 4×2.5″ piece of card, which is then attached with washi tape on both sides. The tape isn’t actually from the Wanderlust collection, believe it or not! It’s a Dovecraft tape from last year. The envelope is filled with little stickers.

5

The page at the very back I kept simple, with the three Bee Happy Hexagons and wood veneer piece, and a couple of Wanderlust fussy cut butterflies.

And here’s the finished product:

41

Thanks so much for reading. Check out Trimcraft’s The Craft Blog for more ideas and inspiration with these collections.

Grace ❤ @ms.paperlover

 

Brimbles, brimbles sticker club, Christmas, planners, sticker kit

Brimbles Sticker Club December – My Dear You Sparkle

 HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Well… almost!
I love this month’s sparkly and wintery sticker kit. In the unlikely event that you haven’t seen this month’s Sticker Club, I have a video showing the sheets which you can watch here.

1

With this month’s stickers I decided to create a double page spread in my planner that was all about the New Year. Something I can fill in with goals for the year, and something I can refer back to throughout 2018.

7

The pages are just plain A4 paper, cut in half and then punched into my planner. On the left page I’ve used some of the full box stickers, and the big gold sparkly ‘This Year’ sticker, as well as used the ‘New Year, New Beginnings’, ‘Page 1 of 365’, and ‘Hello 2018’ phrase stickers. Then I measured out twelve lines and wrote in the months.

9

At the end of each month I’m going to go back to this page and write in something I achieved that month, or something new that I’ve tried. To encourage me to focus on positive things and keep track of achievements, no matter how small they may seem.

The page on the right is for my goals. I layered washi tape and the washi strips from the kit, and added the ‘2018’ box sticker (which I trimmed down), and the large ‘goals’ sticker at the bottom. Then another box and a phrase sticker – I love to see positive quotes and sentiments all over the place!

2

I then put in all the gorgeous decorative woodland creatures, and around them doodled four different ‘boxes’. In each of these I will write a goal for the year. I also added some arrows and circles from the functional sticker sheet. I may add some ‘small’ goals in the two large circle stickers too.

4

 The washi tape I used you can find in the Brimbles store;  black washi with gold triangles, and the gold glitter washi.
After creating that main project I had plenty of stickers left, so I decorated the first week of the year in my personal size planner.

10

I’ve changed my personal inserts for 2018, so it was the first time in over a year I’ve decorated Week on Two Pages inserts! I’ve decided I don’t like Filofax’s blue text for the days of the week, so I used the blank header stickers to cover those up and wrote the day and date underneath instead! Here are some close ups:

cropped-lets-see-if-this-works.png

 

Grace ❤ @ms.paperlover

card making, Christmas, how to, papercrafts, tutorial

Super Simple Christmas Crafts 2: Wreath Card (Templates)

5

Woop! Another installment of my Super Simple Christmas Crafts! This time making this attractive circle wreath card. You can watch the video tutorial for instructions here;

And here are the templates:

PDFs (for fussy cutting)

CIRCLE CARD BLANK PDF

HOLLY AND IVY LEAVES 1 PDF

HOLLY AND IVY LEAVES 2 PDF

Cut Files (for Silhouette Users):

Circle Card Blank

Holly and Ivy Leaves 1

Holly and Ivy Leaves 2

2

Happy Crafting!

cropped-lets-see-if-this-works.png

Grace ❤ @ms.paperlover

Christmas, how to, papercrafts, trimcraft, tutorial

Super Simple Christmas Crafts 1 – Gift Box With Paper Poinsettia (with Templates)

6

Aren’t these gift boxes cute? I love a Poinsettia, though I generally avoid having them in the house as they’re midly toxic to cats and mine has a tendency to chew on house plants.

So instead – I made some paper ones to decorate these gift boxes! I have a few people this year who are getting multiple small presents from me, rather than one big one. So I needed some lovely boxes to put all those little gifts in – though even the people who get one thing might be getting a box as well, I just love making them!

For the more traditional box on the right I used the First Edition Gift of Christmas Paper Pad, and for the one on the left I used the First Edition Merry Little Christmas.

The instructions on how to make these can be found in my corresponding video tutorial – it is a little long and rambly, sorry about that, I’m out of practice with video tutorials!

Here are the templates for the Poinsettia leaves, I used the first file for the ‘petal’ leaves, and the second for the larger leaves on the bottom.

For Silhouette Users:

Poinsettia Leaves 1

Poinsettia Leaves 2 

To print and cut as a template:

Poinsettia Leaves 1 PDF

Poinsettia Leaves 2 PDF

Of course if you have some leaf dies you can use those too, my templates really are very simple shapes. It would however be a good idea to have a few different sizes of leaf for the full effect.

3

Right then, happy crafting everyone! Do tag me in anything you make and share – I’d love to see!

cropped-logo-crimbo.png

Grace ❤ @ms.paperlover

Christmas, planners, printables

Christmas Planner Printables

Ok, it’s November, we can officially talk about Christmas now.

23158232_10212147856345350_1005563399_o

Whether you’re excited for Christmas or not, you have to admit, there is a lot of stuff to get done for the season. Gifts, cards, food, decoration, events, etc.,

So a Christmas planner is a fairly important tool, and after designing all my inserts and setting it up, I decided I would share the inserts in case they would be useful for anyone else.

23192307_10212147856385351_1716059227_o

If you haven’t seen it and you are interested, you can watch my Christmas planner set up video here. You can see the Christmas inserts in more depth and I explain why I made them that way.

So, onto the printables! They are all PDF files, if you have any trouble with that, pop me an email and I might be able to send you another format.

As I said in the video, they are all made for a personal size planner, but if you have the technical know-how, I’m quite happy for you to resize them if you use a different planner. Just please don’t ask me to do this for you!

They’re made to print onto A4 paper, so once printed you need to do a little bit of cutting/trimming. There are very faint grey lines around the inserts themselves so you know where to cut. To print them double sided, you need to choose the ‘flip on the short edge’ setting. It should be pretty obvious which edge of each insert is the one to punch holes into, but if in doubt, refer to the pictures I’ve provided.

If you have any problems with printing, feel free to email me, but I am by no means an technical expert, so I may not be able to help!

Right, let’s get to it!

November and December Calendar Pages:

DATED MONTH ON TWO PAGES

This is a three page document, the first two pages should be the ones printed double sided. The first page of November and last of December will be single sided.

2017 CALENDAR PAGES NOV DEC

‘Busy Days’ Pages:

RENAME

For the days in December when you just have a LOT to do! There are two files for this one, one is for double sided, and one is a single page for the ‘end’ inserts, so that they don’t start and end on the wrong sides!

2017 CHRISTMAS BUSY DAY

2017 BUSY DAY END PAGES

Busy Day Pages with named days:

BUSY DAY NAMED

Not a necessity, but within my ‘busy days’ section I wanted specific inserts that said Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day.

2017 CHRISTMAS BUSY DAY – XMAS DAY+eVE

2017 CHRISTMAS BUSY DAY – BOXING + NEW YEAR’S

Notes and To Do:

TO DO & NOTES

The ‘To Do’ insert may well be my favourite; it’s the Christmas Pudding checklist, I just love it!

2017 NOTE AND TO DO

Christmas Card Tracker:

CARDS

There’s two options here, one (pictured) is for those who make their own cards, the other is for those who prefer to buy their own (it says ‘written’ in place of ‘made’). The first PDF is the ‘made’ inserts, the second is the ‘written’ ones.

2017 CARDS

2017 CARDS2

Gift Tracker:

GIFT TRACKER

Possibly the most important insert! Especially when it comes to wrapping time and you’ve got a huge pile of gifts and are thinking to yourself ‘which of these is for which person?!’ And to keep an eye on how much you’re spending!

Also, in case it’s not clear, the person’s name goes on the red line!

2017 GIFT TRACKER

Food/Shopping Inserts:

FOOD & SHOPPING

I’ve designed these so you can write a recipe or menu on one side, and a shopping list on the other. Very simple but that’s how I like it!

2017 FOOD

For those that haven’t watched the video, all my other Christmas planning related things this year, budgeting, shopping, that kind of thing, are all being done on notepaper. My set up last year had all that kind of thing but I found it a little rigid and didn’t end up using it properly. I’m the type of person that just likes to spill ink all over a blank page.

Just a couple of boring things to finish (a.k.a..=, covering my backside)…

  • These free printable downloads are solely intended for personal use, and are not to be copied, redistributed, or sold in any way.
  • The images in the inserts are all my own artwork, so please do not copy, or distribute them. Additionally do not remove them from the original files. Changing the inserts to suit your size planner is fine but using the images for any other purpose is not.
  • I take no responsibility for anything that may happen to your computer, tablet, printer, printer paper, scissors, paper trimmer, any other object, item, or living creature, or life in general, after downloading and printing these inserts.
  • If you do use the inserts and share them on any form of social media, please either tag me or link back to this blog. Even if you resize them, they are still my original work. Plus I’d love to see what you do with them!

Ok that’s enough serious stuff. Sorry about that, you know how it is these days!

Thanks so much for reading. Again, any issues you have with downloading or printing please feel free to email me, and I’ll do my best to help.

cropped-lets-see-if-this-works.png

Grace ❤

@ms.paperlover

Brimbles, brimbles sticker club, Christmas, papercrafts, sticker kit

Brimbles Sticker Club Projects: November

It’s Christmaaaaaas!

Well… almost. As I write this it actually isn’t even Halloween yet, but I’m trying to be super prepared this year. My birthday is in mid December and my goal is to get everything Christmas card and gift related completey sorted by then so I can really enjoy the season. And some Christmassy Brimbles stickers have helped me on my way to that goal!

I started out doing something a bit different, as I fancied trying something new with the stickers. And so I made some gift tags!

23023249_10212126495011330_887415980_o

I made the tags on my silhouette machine with some standard Christmas cardstock, but they’re very simple shapes it would be very easy to draw and cut them or use a die cut machine. The cardstock needed to be something simple so the pattern wouldn’t take attention away from the stickers. I cut up the washi strips, as well as some red and green glittery washi I had in my stash, and layered them at the bottom or sides of the tags, then added the cute mice from the decorative sheet as the main elements.
Then looped either some Christmas ribbon or washi through the top of the tag and they were done! A really simple craft but I think quite effective. The tags are super cute and will look great either on gifts or in the pockets of my Christmas planner. I could also use them in happy mail, as bookmarks, and even as decorations.
22908691_10212126494971329_453848499_o
Next was my usual sticker project, which was to decorate a week in my personal size planner.
23023162_10212126495411340_521630375_o
There was quite a lot of layering and sticker clustering involved in this spread – one of my favourite things to do! Here are some close ups:
22908486_10212126495051331_457878419_o22851511_10212126495131333_67706854_o22908320_10212126495291337_1054559285_o
With some of the remaining stickers I decorated some pages in my Christmas planner, just to add a bit of fun to some otherwise plain pages.
23113631_10212126494891327_1662311293_n23140190_10212126494731323_1765911826_n22901513_10212126494771324_834155636_n
With the remaining checklist and other functional stickers, I’ll be using them in my Christmas planner as and when needed to make to do lists, shopping lists, or highlight important things.

22768064_10212084028349690_1993007266_o

Oh, and speaking of my Christmas planner. The set up video and corresponding blog post will be published within the next few days, and the blog post may involve some free printables 😉

This month’s kit has certainly made me feel way more Christmassy than I usually do two months before the event, I hope my projects have given you some ideas and inspiration. Thanks so much for reading!

P.S. If you haven’t got yours yet you can buy the November Sticker club here, or get next month’s here!

cropped-lets-see-if-this-works.png

Grace ❤ @ms.paperlover

Brimbles, brimbles sticker club, hauls, sticker kit

November Brimbles Sticker Club: ‘Not a Creature Was Stirring’

22810284_10212084028629697_261281104_o

It’s Brimbles Sticker Club Time! (and check out the cute new postcard!)

This month’s Club is called ‘Not a Creature was Stirring’, and is a Christmas themed kit featuring lots of cute little Christmas mice.

22833514_10212084027989681_1666634054_o

Let’s look at the each sheet in detail…

First is the decorative sheet, featuring the mice themselves. As always, the sticker club is created with Anna’s original artwork, and the decorative sheet often showcases her talent the best.

22810120_10212084028309689_216350445_o

The mice are called Winston, Cecil, Frankie, Gordon & Horatio. I’ll admit I don’t know yet which one is which, but I can tell you that Cecil is the one with the wrapped gift in his paws, and Winston is the one with the candy cane.

I think my favourite is the little guy who is wrapped up all snug and warm – I feel you little guy, I’m feeling the cold already and it’s still October! I’m also fond of the mouse with his Christmas lights all in a tangle, as I sympathise strongly with  his plight. Every year you wrap up the lights nicely before they go into storage, and then every year when you bring them out again they are in impossible knots – how does this happen? It’s like headphone/ear bud wires but 100x times worse! As such, I very much appreciate his worried little face!

Anyhoo, here are some close ups of the mice:

Ok next is the washi sheet, which has four wider strips, and three slim strips in co-coordinating colours.  I’m particularly loving that holly, it’s such a lovely green colour. Also the mini Winstons of course, so cute!

22810513_10212084028469693_615769256_o

22789975_10212084028389691_1982119006_o

Sheet three is the functional sheet, in classic Christmas red and green.

22768064_10212084028349690_1993007266_o

Although I always love and use the functional stickers, my favourite part of this sheet is the little phrase at the bottom:

22789885_10212084028429692_1454295512_o

I just love the way the font makes it look like it’s been made with a label maker!

The last sheet is the one that mixes both decorative and functional planning. There’s four ‘full boxes’ – the ‘making a list’ one is a great idea! There’s three ‘half boxes’, then beautiful holly wreath, which you could use in a purely decorative way, or write something in the middle of it to highlight that task or event.

(there’s also a sneak peek of my Christmas planner  set up in this photo too! A video and corresponding blog post on this is coming soon!)

22790311_10212084028029682_1209450735_o

As ever are the functional headers, with six blank ones that you could add your own heading to, or just use to fill up some space. And last is the handful of Christmas words and phrases – useful for both planning and journalling!

22790122_10212084028109684_1968281111_o

And there we have it! If you haven’t got yours yet you can buy the November Sticker club here, or get next month’s here.

Thanks so much for reading, and remember to keep an eye out for my Design Team blog post either here or on the Brimbles Blog to see what I get up to with these stickers!

cropped-lets-see-if-this-works.png

Grace ❤

@ms.paperlover

card making, how to, papercrafts, tutorial

Creative Process – Pretty Posy Birthday Card

As the title implies, I made this card using the ‘Pretty Posy’ paper pad from Trimcraft’s First Edition range.

21245399_10211696197934172_2138939900_n

(apologies for the price label still on there, but it damages the cover when you try and remove it!).

After choosing which papers I wanted to use, I started on sorting what elements I needed to make the card. First I fussy cut some florals and hearts from two of the papers (which you can see the pile of in the top left of the photo below).

I also tried out a new toy, this rather rudimentary circle cutter I got from The Works for a whopping £2. It isn’t great, but it’ll do for now.

21267453_10211685385183860_178229342_o

You can see here the four main parts of the card: the card blank (a 6×6 one). One 6×6 paper (one of the pearlescent designs), with the centre gutted out to make a frame. Then two papers cut to about 5.5×5.5″ (the green one slightly larger) with circles cut from the middle.

…oh, and the lid that covers the circle cutter’s blade has crept it’s way into the photo too, whoops!

21198504_10211685384983855_164023466_o

Then, assembly! The ‘birthday wishes’ is a cardstock sticker from a Pebbles sticker book – which I now wish I had purchased 2384023 of because I use it all the time for cards and now it’s discontinued, waaaaaah!

It’s also raised up on some foam tape. It was a bit fiddly and took a while to get the fussy cut elements in their right places, and required the combined efforts of foam tape, glue dots, pritt stick, and double sided tape to get the job done.

21175903_10211685384903853_959627399_n

But that’s not the end! I always like to add something to the back and centre of my cards, even if it’s something small, just so you don’t have a beautiful front of a card and then stark white space elsewhere.

So inside I just added some washi tape:

21216221_10211685384623846_1267237523_o

For the back I did a little more, first I cut another paper to 6×6, and punched the corners with a fancy corner punch:

21245439_10211685384743849_709280911_n

Then embossed a ‘handmade with love’ stamp on top of some cut off paper I’d used for the front of the card, stuck a doily behind that, and there we go!

21222496_10211685384703848_1992108225_o

I always find adding something to the back and centre of your card (other than your message, of course), makes a handmade card seem more ‘finished’.

Thanks so much for reading, and look out for some more card posts soon 🙂

21175126_10211685384543844_1467182668_n

Oh I forgot – I added some flat back pearls too!

cropped-lets-see-if-this-works.png

Grace @ms.paperlover ❤