Good morning my crafty friends! This morning I would like to share with you a card I made for the Splitcoast Stampers Ways to use it challenge (WT774). The challenge was to make a shaker card. Now I will be honest and say that I am not very good at these cards. There is a lot of practice to be done on making these cards right, as they do have several steps necessary to complete. But as they say, practice makes perfect, right!

I’d like to hear what cards or paper crafting projects you may struggle with. What cards or paper crafting projects are you good at? Let me know in the comments.

Paper Studio: light blue, dark blue, and white cardstock
Image: CC Designs Skating with Lucy
Sentiment: Close to my Heart Ribbon Warrior
Master’s Touch Watercolors: Payne’s Grey, flesh tint, Yellow Ochre
Master’s Touch Gouache: Crimson Red and Mauve
Tim Holtz Distress Ink: Ripe Raspberry and Peacock Feathers
Heart Punch for inside shaker card
​Other: Adhesive gun, watercolor pen

Today I'm sharing with you a card I made for the Tiddlyinks Challenge #224 - Showcase! The challenge was for everyone to use the same image.

Inspired by a summer color palette, here is the card I made for the challenge.

Tiddlyinks Image: April Challenge Image
Ink: Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Bundled Sage, Mustard Seed, Picked Raspberry, and Peacock Feathers & Archival Ink (Jet Black)
Embossing Folders: The Paper Studio (Intricate Swirl, Anchors)
Dimensional tape
Sentiment Stamp: Card Captions (Close to my Heart Stamp of the Month) 

I went to a scrapbooking retreat in October and one of the girls sitting across the table from me was working on her planner. It was the first time I'd ever seen someone actually create the pages of one. And it made me curious. Would this be something I could use for artistic expression?

I'd been on the fence about whether to start a planner or not, partially because I hoped it would help me unplug from my phone and partly because it looked so pretty.

I am a scrapbooker and card maker at heart, so I was reluctant as to how the planner would work for me. Previously I used graphing notebooks to do daily tasks and trackers, but often found it to be more of a chore than something I liked, so I quit using it. I have a hard time getting what's in my mind down on the page, so I liked the ideas of the predone pages of the planners.

This weekend I thought I would try and start a happy planner. Not knowing a lot of what I was doing, I bought an A5 planner from Hobby Lobby, meal plan inserts, a sticker pack and starter kit.

I've fiddled with it off and on for a few days and now I'm not so sure how I feel about it. I've added one month of daily inserts (I made my own out of white cardstock). i also added the meal planner pages and the planner kit, which had stickers, a 12 month calendar layout and dividers.

So far. I'm frustrated my planner is already getting full enough it's getting hard to turn the pages. So I'm asking myself: How can I make this work? Did I just waste a whole bunch of money? I decided to reach out to other crafters and see what their thoughts were. ​I will continue to try and find a groove that works for me. 

I enjoy making monthly theme pages. Last night I finished my November and December pages. November and December colored stamps are The Greeting Farm images. The stickers on November came from the Create 365 seasonal sticker pack and some die cuts from a fall paper pack. The Grinch stickers on my December page came from a Grinch paper pack I bought a few years back. Lettering stickers on November page came from a Mrs. Grossman's (Scrap Metal) and letter stickers on the December page came from American Crafts (Monograms Sarah Script -set 2).

I'm hoping to figure something out as doing the happy planner stuff can get expensive in a hurry. I will continue to mess with it and see if I can get something to work for me. Do you use a creative planner? What do you think is the best for a layout? Which kind of planner is best for you and why? I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments. If you are shy, head over to my Contact Me page and send me a message.