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15 Minute Summer Activity Sticks

Hi everyone, it's Jes again. I'm back with another 15 minute (ish) craft. Have you ever heard "I'm bored! There's nothing to do around here!" from your kids over the summers? I remember annoying my mom with it constantly. My daughter is getting to that age, and I decided to head off the boredom with some pre-determined activities we can do together. I considered just writing it in my planner and choosing something for each day, but that wouldn't be much fun for her.  Then, at a recent wedding, the couple put popsicle sticks out on the tables and asked people to write down date ideas.  It was perfect for what I needed, and I stopped by the craft store on the way home to grab some sticks for myself.

What you'll need:

     Popsicle sticks (tip: get the colored ones, they're more fun)
     Markers (tip: sharpies bleed really bad, so test your makers before using them)

     VersaCraft Ink 

     Stamps that go with what you want to write. 

          I used - Just Icons, Plan Craft, Little Cooler, Plan Summer, Game Night, Bacon Break, Plan To Eat, Plan Television, and Plan Everyday

The next part is super simple.  Write your activity on the stick, choose a coordinating stamp, and stamp it on the top of your stick. You will want to let the ink from your stamping dry for a few minutes before coloring or it will smear.  I had the most success with the ones that sat about five minutes.  

As always, at the end of the project, there are a few things I wish I would have done differently.  I think it would have looked really pretty to write a bit bigger, and fill the stick, maybe even add a bit of fancy lettering. I definitely wish I would have found a marker that didn't bleed.  I also wish I would have tried my spectrum noir markers out on it for the coloring. Using the colored sticks instead of the plain ones would be more fun, but then coloring might not look right.

I've included a short how-to video below.  If you like it, be sure to hit like and subscribe.  If you do this craft, be sure to tag me on Instagram @jes_planning and let me know. :)

Blending Colored Pencils with Gamsol

Hey, everyone!  It's Kristine with you again today, and I've got a video for you on how to blend your colored pencils with gamsol.  We all want to color our stamped images and make them look smooth and seamless, but colored pencils can be fickle to shade and blend just right.  Enter gamsol, a magical substance that will give your colored pencils a beautifully smooth blended look every time, with barely any effort!  I hope the video is helpful - enjoy, and happy coloring!

(A quick note about paper and ink - I used Versafine ink in Onyx Black for these images.  It works well with the gamsol and doesn't smear.  Most inks I've tried work fine, but you should do a test if you're planning to use something other than Versafine, just to make sure it works okay.  As for paper, the smoother the paper, the better the blending.  I have found that papers with more "tooth" don't allow the blending to be as seamless and smooth.  I used plain white smooth cardstock in the video; I've also used gamsol on sticker paper with great results.)

My New Bullet Journal

Hey, everyone!  It's Kristine with you today, with another post in my long quest to find planner peace.  You guys - I think I may have found it!  I am using something now called a bullet journal, and I absolutely LOVE it.  For anyone who hasn't heard of it before, there's a short, very informative video on www.bulletjournal.com to introduce you to what bullet journaling is and how to get started.  If you're at all curious about it, take a look at the video, then keep reading.

So to start my foray into bullet journaling, I picked up the Leuchtturm 1917 notebook at JB Welly (note - I am not compensated for providing any of these links; they're just here for your information).  They can also be found at Amazon and some brick-and-mortar stores.  This journal is A5 size and has dot grid pages, which I love to pieces (you can also get it with grid pages).  The paper is a lot thinner than I'm used to, which I'm not a fan of.  I get a lot of shadowing with the pens I'm using, but no bleeding, so that's something.  Speaking of pens, I'm using a black Faber Castell artist pen and Stabilo fineliners.  Also in my pencil case are a pencil and an eraser.

Now, it's not necessary to have any of this to start a bullet journal - bullet journaling is really about the process, not the "stuff."  But I like to have pretty stuff, so there you go.

The backbone of a bullet journal is the index.  The nice thing about the Leuchtturm 1917 journal is that it has an index already printed in the front that takes up 3 pages.  The pages of the journal itself are also pre-numbered, which helps tremendously.  Each time you add something to your journal, you add an entry to the index.  Here's my index so far:

Now I'll run through rest of the pages I have so far, in order (except for the title page with my name and phone number on it in case I ever lose my journal):

First up: bill tracker and birthdays pages.  Each month when I pay bills, I'll record the amount here.  The birthday tracker will help me keep up with cards and gifts I need to buy and send through the rest of the year.

Next, my future log (this is where you can record future events that you don't have calendar pages for yet).  I have to say, I don't love this.  I've seen several ways to lay them out, and I think if I do a future log in my next book, I won't do it like this.  I just don't like how it looks, and there's not enough room to write stuff.  I may just spread it out over a couple more pages.

I couldn't think of any other tracker or collections pages I was dying to have, so I went ahead next and created my monthly calendar for May.  Because of the way May started on a Sunday, I ended up with a lot of wasted space at the top row, and the May header is way too big.  For June, I will definitely change this up.

So far, the bullet journal is a lot like a regular planner - the monthly layout, the extra pages for tracking bills or birthdays or books you read or what have you.  Here, though, is where it gets drastically different - the daily pages.  Now, lots of people like to do a weekly spread over two pages, with evenly spaced areas for each day drawn out in advance.  But to me, that defeats the whole purpose of doing this journal instead of using a regular planner - by planning daily, I am free to make each day's section as long or as short as it needs to be.  Here are my first four daily entries for May:

As you can see, I'm able to experiment with different header styles and handwriting, which is fun.  Each evening, I set up the coming day in my journal.  It takes only a few minutes to write in a heading and list out the items I know are coming the next day (or even items coming in a few days that I just don't want to forget).  I create this list based on the items on my monthly spread, and add to it as the day goes on.  Each item starts out with a dot next to it, unless it's an appointment that has a certain time (small circles) or important things that must get done right away (squares) .  As an item on the list is completed, I draw an x through the dot, circle, or square.  Anything that didn't get done and needs to be moved to another day, called migrating, gets an arrow.  A horizontal line through the signifier means that the task no longer needs to be done.

After these four days were over, I discovered a doodling challenge on Instagram that I wanted to do for May.  In the spirit of bullet journaling, I set up the challenge on the next available page, even though I was only four days into the May pages.  That means that my May daily layouts will be split up, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest.  The challenge I'm doing for May is for doodling flowers:

I love this spread - all the colors are making me happy.

On the next set of pages, I'm continuing my May daily entries.

As I think of more collections that I want, I'll add them (I've already added a page for the alumni band newsletter I'm putting together this summer), and continue adding monthly and daily pages as needed.  And the book will continue on thusly, until it's full and time to move into another one.

The great thing about the bullet journal, for me, is that it can contain everything - calendars, events, work items, home items, birthday lists, travel planning, lists of books read, weight trackers, doodles, diary entries, home improvement projects - the sky is the limit.  It is a page-by-page record of my life as it happens.  And I love that I don't need 16 different planners or books to keep it all.

If you're intrigued, I encourage you to spend some time on the bulletjournal.com website, then peruse online to see how people have set up their journals.  A word of caution - there are some real works of art out there.  But don't be intimidated!  The journal is primarily meant to be functional - if it works for you, that's all that matters!

Thanks for hanging out with me today and reading along.  If you have any questions about bullet journaling, leave me a message down below and I'll be happy to answer as best I can.  Happy Sunday!

Not All Crafts Are Wins

Hey everyone. It's Jes again. I'm here today with a set of fail cards.  Have you ever sat down to craft and ended up messing up every single project? That was me today. I forgot about Mother's Day this weekend, and have spent the day trying to come up with two cards to send to my mother and mother in law. After several failed attempts I realized that it just wasn't going to happen today.

The first several attempts were crumpled up and thrown away. The last few that I'll show here were ones that I thought I might be able to salvage.

 This one here isn't terrible, my biggest fail here, was using the wrong paper.  I used regular cardstock, which worked well with the embossing, but didn't like my watercolor attempt at all. What you see here is after several minutes of trying to flatten it out after it completely crumpled in on itself. I might cut it down and paste it on another piece of card stock.

Tip #1: Know your materials. In crafting (at least for me) last minute additions don't often work out.  If you're using plain cardstock, watercoloring will not work.

This one actually looks fairly pretty. A few things about it bother me though. For one, black background and Mother's Day don't really go together. I thought I'd try something out of the box and ended up really disliking the final effect.  This black cardstock was extremely flimsy too, which made the card feel very cheap. The final thing about it that caused it to end up in the fail pile is the fact that it is off centered. The bottom part can be salvaged for a congratulations card down the road. 

Tips #2 and 3: Invest in good quality card stock. The cheaper stuff just doesn't hold up well, and flimsy cards feel like the folded printer paper cards we used to make as kids.  Using little pencil marks to mark the center of the paper is helpful and you don't end up (usually) with images that are not lined up. 

In this last one, the mistakes were just flukes. I'll be redoing this card tomorrow and using more caution.  The first mistake was the two different colors for the vine and the leaves. It just throws it off a bit.  Second, I smudged it really bad by pulling up my stencil before the leaves were completely dry. The final mistake, was when I pulled up the tape holding it to my table. It ripped the top part of my card.  If it had just been any one of the mistakes, I probably would have finished the card and sent it anyway, but all three was just too sloppy for me to use. Bonus win: I finally used the right paper!

Tip #4: Be patient.  If you try to pull up your stencils or tape too soon, your watercolors will smudge or run together giving you a muddy look. 

My final tip is: Don't get discouraged. Sometimes craft projects just don't work the way you pictured. Take a break and try again later.

Thanks for reading. If I end up with a set of cards that turns out tomorrow, I'll add a new post. 

Doctor Who Plan With Me

Hi everyone, and happy Monday! It's Jes today with a Plan with me video.

You know how you plan a week out and then stare at it wondering what that nagging thing you forgot was? Yeah, that would be Mother's Day this week. I even wrote down that I needed to make and send cards, but totally forgot to put it down on Sunday. So I'll have to fix that when I get back out to my desk.  Anyway, this week is a Doctor Who week, in honor of the all-night marathon my best friend and I have planned for Friday.  We're 3000 miles apart, but we make movie night work with texting, and messaging.  It's not ideal, but we'll take what we can get. What do you do on movie night? What are your favorite snacks? We love chips and dip, and gelato. Let me know in the comments! I hope you enjoy my video.

Sweet Candy Straws

Happy Hump Day!  It's Kristine with you again, and today I have a super cute, super EASY craft that kids of all ages will love!  Take a look at these adorable candy straws:

Aren't these cute?  Who wouldn't love to get one of these?  Let me show how incredibly easy they are to make!

The first thing you need to do is get some of these cellophane bags.  I got mine from GT Bag - these are the 1"x8" lip and tape bags.  They're only $4 for 100 bags - you can't beat that deal!  Here's the product number, in case you can't find them on the site:

The next thing to do is decide what you want your topper image to be.  I'm a teacher and my students take their big state exams next month, so I thought a little encouragement in the form of superheroes would be appropriate - enter Sweet Stamp Shop's Girl Power and Super Boy stamp sets!  I stamped the hero figures on white cardstock and cut them out with a 2" circle punch.

Next, I colored the figures and attached them to colored cardstock cut with a 2-1/4" scalloped circle punch:

And then it was time to assemble!  I filled each bag with Skittles to the top (any candy about the same size as Skittles will work; I've also used plain m&m's), then peeled off the tab and folded down the top to seal them.

Then I added a little adhesive to the back of the toppers (I used glue dots) and stuck them on the top of the bags.  Voila! SUPER awesome candy treats that I know my students will enjoy.

The amazing thing about this project is that the applications are truly almost limitless - they can be made as any kind of party favor (retirement, birthday, baby shower, you name it!); and grouped together in a mason jar or other cute container, they'd make perfect centerpieces, too!

I hope you guys liked this project - if you decide to make your own candy straws, please tag me on Facebook (Kristine Bryant) or on Instagram (@teachplancraft).  I'd love to see what you do with this idea!