Watercolor Divider for Personal Sized Planner

Hello! It's Jes, back again with another fun craft.  I woke up with a nasty headache, that has lingered all day. I needed a simple craft that I could do on the couch and didn't have to think about too hard.  Sure, I could have pushed this post off till tomorrow, but I've been working hard to meet my posting goals, and I wasn't going to let a headache ruin my solid streak.  I decided to make a simple but fun dashboard for my new personal sized planner.  Here is a look at one a did a few days ago, just for fun.

I used Count Down and College Plans from Sweet Stamp Shop to create that divider.  I just stamped, colored, cut, and glued. Then added the sentiments from Count Down. The tab is from the Labels and Tabs set from Studio L2E.

For today's project I decided to do a simple watercolor dashboard and spruce it up with a single sunflower.

Supplies needed:
Watercolor Paper
Markers or watercolor paints (I used Tombows)
A hole punch
Water Brushes (or a brush and cup of water)
Stamps and ink

I have this Canson Mixed Media notebook, that I used to pre-stamp all of my favorite stamps. I can toss it in a bag with a few markers or colored pencils and color on the go, or while watching TV.  So, I just tore the sunflower page out to work with today.  The sunflower stamp is from the Our Friendship Grows set by Lawn Fawn.

I absolutely hate to measure. I don't know why, but I do. So I just traced the last divider I made, and slid it down the page a bit to put the tab where I wanted it.

 Next, I laid down a solid foundation of color in an ombre pattern. Then, I spritzed it well with a little mini mister bottle I picked up from Walmart ages ago. I wanted it good and wet. Using an old dry rag, I soaked up all the excess water, and lifted a bit of the color off, because it was too dark for what I wanted.
While my divider was sitting to the side drying, I colored in my sunflower and pot.

I wasn't thrilled with the way the pot turned out, and ended up coloring over it again with my tombows before I attached it to my divider. I cut these out using my amazing Gyro-Cut tool (seriously if you don't have one GET IT! Then come back and tell me I was right and you adore it :D ). I love that I can fussy cut detailed images in such a short time, and get such clean lines. 

 

See? It's awesome, right? When you're finished admiring how neatly that cuts, we'll move on. I'll wait. 

.

.

.

Ready? Next up, I attached the flowers and flowerpot to my divider.  I ended up sketching in a stem and leaves, because I wanted smaller leaves and a smaller stem than what are provided in the set. 

So, glue them down nice and snug, and you're ready to hole punch.  This was actually a bit flimsy for my tastes, so I went ahead and traced it on a piece of heavy card stock and then adhered it to the thicker piece to give it the sturdy feel I prefer.  Finally, I grabbed an insert from my planner to line up the holes (my six hole punch doesn't work and I need a new one) and punched out my holes.  Then, I just popped it in my planner and I was ready to go.  From start to finish, including drying time this took about 35 minutes.

Do you love this? Hate it? Do you have any questions, or thoughts, or tips? Leave me a comment below and let me know what you think.  I love comments, and will respond to all of them!

Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @jes_planning. 

Wedding Card Featuring Lawn Fawn

Hello everyone. It's Jes again, here today with a fun wedding card I put together for a friend. I leave early Saturday morning to take my first train trip across country for a wedding. I wanted a fun card that reminded me of my friend, but that was fairly simple, since most of my craft supplies are packed in my bag.

My supplies include:

      Bake Me A Cake from Lawn Fawn
      Home Sweet Home also from Lawn Fawn
      Pray For Us (the small boy and girl) from Sweet Stamp Shop
      Black Licorice Ink from Lawn Fawn
      Papers from one of the Let's Polka collection from Lawn Fawn, (the ones I used are retired now)
      A Gyro-Cut from Amazon
      And some Tombow markers.

The first thing I did, was stamp out the cake bits from Bake Me A Cake on different patterned papers. I made sure to alternate the sizes on the papers so that my final project would be turquoise/yellow/turquoise/yellow which are the wedding colors. I pulled in a bit of pink paper as an accent color. This will be the stand, and later a little Congrats banner on the cake.

I didn't want to leave my background plain white, so I used my tombows and some watercolor paper to add a fun smooshed background. (Here is the link to my Ink Smooshing tutorial.)

Next up, I had to cut out all my cake layers. I love my little gyro tool for cutting out stamped images.  It's the next best thing to having a die cut machine. Kristine has a great little example clip of the gyro in action on her IG, @teachplancraft. Once my paper was dry, I adhered it to my card base, then added my cake pieces. 

I thought it looked a little plan still, so I pulled out the mini boy and girl from the Sweet Stamp Shop Pray For Us set and turned them into a bride and groom. Those itty bitty things were HARD to cut out! But definitely worth it in the end. They tied the whole card together.  

Thanks for reading! I'll be back on May 2nd with a post about my DIY travel journal, and how I used it to plan my upcoming trip, and document my first train trip.  :) 

15 Minutes Crafts With Jes - Bookmarks

Howdy Friends! Jes here, back with another 15 minute craft.  Today, my husband took our four year old out to the park, and I had a chance to sit down and read for a blissful, uninterrupted hour. I pulled out my kindle, and set the kettle on to boil for tea.  I could not find a single bookmark. I'm one of those people who doesn't really like to use scrap paper, because I like my bookmarks to be pretty.  I had a few minutes before my tea was ready, so I sat down and put together a few super cute bookmarks using the new Book Club stamp set from Sweet Stamp Shop. I also used their Big Flags set.  I've been hoarding my Let's Polka paper from Lawn Fawn (this set seems to be retired, but here is a link to more of their awesome paper collections), and I pulled some out tonight to make my bookmarks. I love striped patterns!

Here is the final project. And if you pop over to our YouTube channel, you can see the video of how I made them.  I'd love to hear what you think of them. If there are any other fifteen minute projects you'd like to see me try, leave a comment and I'll give them a go. :)  Thanks for stopping by!

Hey everyone, it's Jes today, back with a fun watercolored set of cards! Happy first day of spring! Here in Indiana it's a lovely (read: freezing) sunny day, with a high of 43 degrees.  A perfect day to stay inside and craft.  Today, I'm going to show you a set of cards that I made to keep in my bag.  I've often wished I had a pretty, blank card for various occasions, but never seemed to have one on hand. That inspired me to make this set of cards to have on hand.

This is what my final four looked like. There were five, but I really messed up on one, badly! I gave that one to my daughter.  For this project you'll need watercolor paper (cut to size), a pretty stamp set, card bases of your choice, embossing powder and ink, a heat tool, and your favorite watercolor medium (I like to use tombow markers and water brushes). 

(see below for links to everything I used.)

I chose to use the Flutterby stamp set from Lawn Fawn for my decorations.  The cards are from Michaels. When I got this stamp set I knew it would be perfect for embossing and watercoloring. I loved all the detail.   

Step one: Emboss a pretty design in the bottom corner of each pre-cut piece of water color paper. I used a silver embossing powder from the Michael's Recollection collection.  Stamp the image with the embossing ink of your choice, sprinkle the powder on, and heat set. I love the shimmery look of this powder. I like to work in sections when I'm doing multiple cards.  Here are all the cards after embossing.  (See the blue one? That's the one that became a major fail. Maybe someday I'll do a #fail blog post just for kicks.) 

My next step was to add a water colored background on each card.  I found a technique on Youtube (link below) called ink smooshing and I couldn't wait to try it.  I used my fiskars stamp press as a base. I scribbled on it with my Tombow markers. Make sure to leave the corner where your design is blank. Then, sprinkle some water on the stamp press just to wet the colors and make it easy to transfer. 

Lay your paper over the ink and press down. Leave it a few seconds to really soak up the water.  Then, peal it off very carefully. There will be some water pooling on the edges.  Just dab it off with a paper towel.  

I like to let my cards dry a bit before I tape them down to my work surface. That way, the color on the corners doesn't come up or pool when I take the tape off later.  It is much easier to color the designs if your project is taped down. 

Next, I used my tombow markers and water brushes to add color to each of the flowers and butterflies on the cards.  

This part was kind of time consuming, but it was my favorite part.  I got braver and experimented more with color as I moved from card to card.  Here is a close up of each of the final four cards. 

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you liked this project. If you try it out, leave me a comment and let me see your final designs!  

Supplies: 

    Stamps-  Flutterby from Lawn Fawn

    Paper - Canson Watercolor Paper

    Ink -  Versamark

    Embossing Powder - Recollections Sparkle Powder

    Card Bases - Craft Smith: Textured Cards

    Stamp Press - Fiskars

    Markers - Tombows

    Water Brushes - Pentel Arts

Good morning from Kristine, and happy Sunday!  Today is the day we "sprung forward," and while I'm happy that it means spring is practically here, I'm always a bit unsettled to lose an hour out of the day.  Who would think that a measly hour would have such an impact??

Well, Sunday means we've got more planner layouts for you.  Below is a link to my second-ever Plan With Me video.  I streamlined the process a little, so it's a little shorter than last time, and there aren't as many cuts and jumps.  I also tried a new camera set-up, which resulted in a little unintended camera shake - I hope that doesn't bother you guys too much, and I'll figure something different out for next time.  Always a process, lol!

Anyhoo, here it is.  Please feel free to comment and let us know what you think - the good, the bad, and the ugly.  We want to get better!  Have a great week, everyone!

Hi everyone! Jes here, with a quick little birthday card tutorial. I used the Super Boy, and the Happy Birthday stamps sets from Sweet Stamp Shop to create this cute little card for my husband's birthday.

I knew when I started that I wanted to have the little super hero on a background of stars or clouds.  While flipping through my rather embarrassingly large collection of paper I found this lovely starry paper from Lawn Fawn. It was perfect.  

I used a blank card from Michaels that I've had in my stash for a while. I measured an inch from the top and two inches from each side and used my paper trimmer to cut out my rectangle fairly quickly. After a few practice runs with a blank sheet of paper it was pretty easy to cut out my shape. 

I then cut a matching piece from my star paper, but just a bit bigger so that it could be glued to the inside of my card. 

After attaching the starry background to the inside of my card, I used the Happy Birthday stamp set and some white card stock to create the little banner sentiment, and glued that in place as well. 

After stamping out my little super hero with Lawn Fawn Black Licorice Ink, I fussy cut him out and used my Tombow Dual Brush Markers to color him in.  

My final step was securing him in place with a few foam dots to add a pop of dimension. 

All in all, discounting time to take photos the card took about twenty minutes start to finish.


Supplies Used.

Paper- Lawn Fawn Beachside Collection and a card base from Michaels
Ink - Lawn Fawn Black Licorice 

Markers - Tombow Dual Brush Pens
Stamps - Happy Birthday and Super Boy from Sweet Stamp Shop
Acrylic Block - Sweet Stamp Shop Round Block

Paper Trimmer - Fiskars 12 IN Paper Trimmer (Not the one I have, but this one is better)

Adhesive - Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue