Hello Planner Friends! I am so, so excited to share with you how I created this layout with you. Masking is a great way to combine creative with function in our planners. We can use bigger, decorative stamps in our layouts, without taking up all our planning space. This stamp set I used in my decorating is a space theme, and I wanted to be able to use lots of the planets, but not take up all my room for all our real life stuff that needs to go in there. I also wanted to “paint on” ink using a sponge to get a whimsical outer space look. So let”s jump in!

First I laid the foundation of the layout by choosing a darker purple ink and used a sponge to blot and smear ink the ink around the edges of the pages and in my notes section. There are two main ways I mask in my layouts. The first is to stamp an image on a scrap piece of paper and fussy cut it out. I then stamp then use that to cover up an image I don’t want to get ink on. That’s what i did in the following photo for the rocket ship.

The second is to use post it notes to block off sections that I don’t want to stamp on or ink or to partially stamp an image on the paper.

To really give this layout an outer space look, I used a white gel pen to add stars. Gel pens can be temperamental, so to get the ink flowing I always do small circular motions on my thumb, and then  I don’t have any problems with a good ink flow on the paper, especially when using it on pigment ink. It’s important to vary the size of the dots, otherwise it will end up looking like snow!

I also stamped some images on sticker paper to color and use in my Notes section. Colored pencils are my go to, and the blending pencil is amazing for blending colors together. For example, I colored one planet a light pink color all over, and then went over the pink in sections with a purple pencil using medium pressure. I then took the blending pencil and used soft circular motions to blend the purple out giving the planet a more interesting and dimensional look. The nice thing about stamping decorative images on sticker paper is that I can move them all around before I decide on where to stick them in my layout.

I saved my planner stamping for the end of this layout. Since I went pretty heavy on the decorative stamping this week, I needed to make sure I could still fit my lined boxes. That’s the great thing about stamps! You can see perfectly how they will fit, and you can easily mask off to make a box smaller if you need to! I wanted to keep with the outer space theme, so I used star check boxes and a star header box, and chose an ink that would compliment my stars and sky.

Thank you for stopping by and checking out my blog post. Have fun with your planner, try new things, and I hope that I have made planner stamping a little less intimidating.

Lindsay              IG: @glam2plan_pnw

Hello again planner friends! I often get asked what I do with my month at a glance layout. Do I really use it? Do I decorate? How do I decorate it and still have it be usable? How do you fit everything into those boxes?  For me, the month at a glance is the heart of my planner. I keep the entire year worth of month at a glances in my planner at all times, usually covered in sticky notes. That’s the secret. Sticky notes. Since things change so much, I can make sure I know what is going on months out, and not worry about having to erase, cover up, or move things around, I just put it all on sticky notes and change as needed. About two weeks before the new month starts, I sit down and do my monthly layout for the upcoming month. Monthly layouts are one of my favorite things to do because Limelife always has the same amount of boxes on the month no matter what, meaning, there is usually empty space to get creative or add a little extra decoration. Right now I am slightly obsessed with mermaids. After the winter we have had here, I think I am really ready for warmer weather, so I decided to do an ocean/mermaid spread for this month. March is also be a month of multiple sports for both our boys, so there is a CRAZY amount of information that I need to cram into this layout, that’s why I thought this would be a good month to share with you all  how I do my monthly layouts.

Let's get started! First I wanted to stamp out my decorative background which I will color later. This is not a pretty picture that I am sharing, this is a real life picture. Stamping large stamps can be difficult, so I wanted to show what I use to make it a little easier. I always stamp on a hard surface, and to make sure that when I apply pressure that it disperses evenly, I stamp on a board that a friend cut for me. I use a large block and walk my fingers back and forth on it to try to make sure the entire stamp gets down on the paper. I also use old scraps of paper for any overhang from a stamp so it doesn’t get on my table or board.

Next, it’s washi time. I have some amazing mermaid themed washi that I have been excited to use in a layout. Washi can really be the ‘tie it all together’ element of a layout, so I picked three washi tapes to allow myself some freedom with color choices for ink.

This next part is what makes the crazy busy life possible to fit in a monthly layout….stamps, small stamps, color coding inks, and minimal handwriting. I have big handwriting, and so if I tried to fit this all into the boxes by just writing, I would miss stuff because of how messy it would end up being. The “barely holding it together mom” would emerge more often than not if my month at a glances weren’t usable and holding life together for us.

With the important information down, all the functional stamping done, it is time to do the creative stuff! Prismacolor soft core colored pencils work amazingly well on Limelife paper! It’s so easy to blend the colors. For example, for the little fish in the photo, I layed yellow down first as the all over base color. I added some blue and blended it out into the tropical green color. I added a little orange next  by outlining the face and blended out to create the sherbert color for the face. Between the pencils, the paper, and the blending pencil, the colors can become so vibrant and look like pens. I also used glitter gel pens to add little accent details. Just by adding little details like that can be a game changer for your layouts and decorations. The fish becomes more interesting, the mermaid jumps off the page more.

Amidsts all the craziness, our planning can keep us grounded and feeling a little less overwhelmed, and more confident in handling life.  I hope I was able to provide some inspiration on how to use your monthly layout and get everything down on those pages that you need!

Thanks for stopping by the blog and see you soon!

~Lindsay

@glam2plan_pnw

I am a self confessed planner stamp & sticker hoarder  addict. But I was finding I was doing more "collecting" than using and I felt like most of that was due to the fact it was so complicated to dig through my drawers and collect all the things I needed plus since my stamps and stickers were just very disorganized in my storage I decided I need to take some time to organize them and have all my goodies in a manageable place and thus I would get to use them more. 

I love Ikea but unfortunately for me I do not live close to one. So anytime we go on vacation the first thing I do is see if one is close by and fortunately I took a vacation in January and was able to get to one close by. I had wanted to purchase the Raskog cart for a long time and finally I was able too. 

Top Shelf holds my most used planners, some pencil cases, Mambi sticker books and then my favorite washi tubes and single washi's in the smaller photo cases. 

 2ND shelf I have larger stamp sets that do not fit in the photo containers and I didn't want to take out of the original packaging. I am weird like that. I also have baby wipes for cleaning my stamps, my levenger punch and some colored pencils on that shelf. 

Prior to leaving on vacation I had purchased some storage items so that I could take some things on my trip and keep everything tidy. I went to Joann's and I purchased the following products:

Photo Keeper that has 5 internal photo boxes in it that hold 5 x 7 photos and fit the planner stamps perfectly. 

As you can see the stamps fit in the large 5 x 7 photo boxes well and I fit several in each.

I also bought a few singles of the photo boxes in a smaller size 4 x 6 to hold some washi tape you can see above. I couldn't find the link online, I purchased at the store itself. They are made by IRIS

I also bought the one shown also above that was an Artbin Essentials and it is great cause I fit at least 36 of the dew drops in it. All of these were found in the store and are not always available online from Joann's but I am sure you could find at other online sources. 

Here are some items to make a quick simple sticker book:

Binding discs or use a ring binder

Paper punch

sheets of cardstock

Adhesive for attaching your sticker sheets to paper

I started out making my sticker book by sorting my stickers by shops. Just put some adhesive on the back on the sticker sheets and lay down on your paper and you are done.  I think it would be great in the future if I set it up with tabs and sorted it as well but this time I just didn't take the time. But now I have a system that all my stickers are right next to me when I plan and I can easily find the right sticker and utilize them now. here are some pics of the sticker books I have made. 

I can't tell you how much more efficient organizing these things can make you. I hope this helps some of you get your planner groove back by getting organized!

Hello Planner Friends! Let’s talk about the note pages in our Limelife Planners! One of the many wonderful things about our beloved Limelife Planners is the amount of note pages we have! We have so many note pages, that we can get crazy creative with them. Today’s blog post was inspired by all the amazing bullet journalers out there and the super creative layouts they do, but using our note pages and incorporating them into our planners. I have learned bullet journaling is not my strength. I am terrible at measuring, drawing straight lines and making sure everything is equal and same sized. I’m sure if I practiced I would get better, but I really appreciate how bullet journalers are able to create their layouts. So this is very loosely inspired by bullet journaling, and I will go as far to say, is in no way even near actual bullet journaling. But I think that this is one of the best parts about using planners and sharing our ideas. We see something that inspires us and catches our eye, and we figure out how to make it work for our lives, we put our twist on it.

For this project I used two note pages to create a chore/cleaning chart with daily, weekly and monthly sections. I wanted to use copic glitter pens to color my cleaning icons, and those will bleed through paper, including cardstock, so that is why I used two note pages here. I started out by choosing mermaid themed washi tapes to decorate my pages and stamped out my headers.You could also hand write your headers in if you don’t have stamps. I love beautiful lettering, but that is still a work in progress for me so I went with stamps.

Next I used pencil to write in my sections and measure and mark off where I wanted to make my lines. I used a stencil from the office supply store as my straight edge and black pen to draw in my lines.

After my boxes were drawn in, I used cute cleaning icon stamps to label my sections and left lots of room for additional notes I might want to write in when needed.

I love to color and typically use soft core colored pencils. I have copic glitter pens that I use to accent and add detail with, but only use them on sticker paper because they bleed through everything! But here I used them to color my icons since I am not worried about what shows up on the back of my pages (I will show you why in a bit). I did use my pencils to color my lettering because I wanted a watery look and needed to be able to blend the colors to make them soft.

After coloring I wrote in labels and days of the week in the boxes and added washi tape to the edges of my pages. Next I put the pages back to back so I could laminate them, which means this project is reusable! This is also why I didn’t care about my pens bleeding through the paper. Using a wet erase marker, I can check things off, write notes in, and a cleaning supply shopping list, and only a damp paper towel is needed to to clean the marker off and it’s like brand new again. That’s why I went all out with making it cute and decorating and coloring it. This will have a permanent home in my planner to keep me on track with what I need to get done around the house and I won’t have to clog up my weekly pages with cleaning lists.

I marked holes in my laminated cleaning schedule with a wet erase marker and hole punched it and then added an adhesive tab to the edge of the page so this will be easy to find in my planner and just flip to quickly. A helpful tip for using wet erase marker in our planners….it can rub off on pages. So if you do plan to use something like this in your planner, find a home for it where a little smudged ink transfer won’t make a huge difference. Mine is going in the back of my planner between a divider for my notes section and old notes pages from a previous planner. I hope that you enjoyed this planner project and I was able to provide you with some ideas about how to use our note pages. I know I have a running list of projects I want to try out with them! Thank you for stopping by and checking out the blog! See you soon!

~Lindsay

IG @glam2plan_pnw

Happy New Year planner friends! I’m back on the Limelife Blog to share how I am using my Layout C in my planner starting this January. Back in July, I ordered my planner for the new year. I ordered two….because I really wanted to try Layout L, but being a creature of habit, I also ordered Layout C which I had been using for a year, just in case I didn’t like Layout L. Well, I love Layout L, and I can’t stand to have an entire planner not get used, especially when it’s so pretty. So, I’m jumping on that whole let’s get healthy band wagon and use my layout C to help me do this. I have a husband and two boys who can eat anything and everything they want and they are not squishy and cuddly like I am. I don’t have an end goal in sight, I just want to feel better, and not be quite as squishy and cuddly. My goal is to move more, eat healthier and have more energy. I am super private about this type of stuff, mostly because I do not want people hounding me to join their weight loss groups, so I was really hesitant to share how I am using this in my planner. One thing that I have learned over the past couple years in the planner community though is how supportive and loving of a community it is. Plus I have gotten better at just saying NOPE. So here we go! This is how I am using layout C in my planner for the next year!

I ordered both 7x9 planners this year uncoiled and Limelife punched it for me to fit A-5 ring planners. The reason I requested this is because I love moving things around, adding sections, taking out sections and using things in a creative way. At the back of my planner, I created a “Loosing It” section to track my health, movement and mood. I started out by taking the weekly pages for January and washi taping them. I dug into my fun washi tape stash, the cutesie ones that I hardly ever use, to make it a bright and fun part of my planner since at times, I’m sure I’m not going to feel so excited about visiting these pages.

Layout C has 6 boxes to use daily, so I wanted to brainstorm how I’m going to organize this before I just jumped right in and started stamping. After I mapped out how to use my boxes, I dug through my stamps and got everything I needed to I could quickly get this layout done.  I decided to stamp an entire month at a time because I know that this will be an easy section to neglect and not set up every week.

The first two boxes I’m using for food/meal tracking. Boxes 3 & 4 will be used for Carb and Sugar tracking (the addiction is real!), and the last two boxes will be to track movement and mood. I will color in what mood I am in every day. When choosing the four mood options, happy, meh, irritated, and stressed were the four most common that I am, as much as I hate to admit. Friday will be my weigh in day.

Lastly I added my menu section so I can plan for the week, and my water jug to make sure I’m drinking enough water. This actually shouldn’t be a problem for me, I love water. I just love coffee so much too, and will often drink coffee well into the afternoon instead of switching over to my water earlier in the day. For the entire month of January, the format will be the same. Come February, I will evaluate and see if I need to change anything, but for now, this is feeling good, and most importantly, feeling doable for me.

I wanted to add something fun to this whole section of my planner. So I made a tracker for pounds lost. I printed out a digi stamp and colored her, cut the section marker on my Cricut, and stamped hearts to color in for each pound lost.

Since I did 4 weeks at once, this project took me about an hour. I kept it simple, usable and plenty of room to write. The great thing about Limelife Layouts, is that they can be used in multiple ways, not just for planning our busy days. It’s fun to figure out how to use what I have and make it work for me, and there are so many wonderful planner girls out there that inspire me to be creative and think outside the box. I hope that I was able to share some of that inspiration with you as well!

As always, thanks so much for taking time to stop by and check out the blog! You can find me on Instagram: glam2plan_pnw

See you soon!

~Lindsay

Hello again planner friends! This week I am showing you how I am using my Limelife Notebook to plan our youngest son, Elliot’s birthday party. Elliot was born 4 weeks early, which means his birthday is 10 days after Christmas, instead of a month after Christmas like we had thought it was going to be. Every year, we have the best intentions to plan ahead more for his birthday, but always end up feeling rushed and guilty about frantically pulling it all together last minute. So maybe this 7th birthday we will do better with the help of actually putting pen to paper and planning it out!

Have I mentioned how much I love this Limelife notebook? These notebooks are customizable too, just like the planners….you can choose your layout option! I chose Layout 1 because it seemed the most versatile to me. I can use it so many different ways for so many different reasons. So lets get started! First, I put my washi tape down.

I love the look of a fat notebook with different colored edges to the paper from lining the edges with washi tape. I don’t do that often in my planner, but I think it’s going to be the norm in this notebook. I used my white gel pen to label my boxes. I find that white gel pens can be temperamental in writing smoothly. I didn’t have my good one handy so I used a cheaper one, and to make the ink write smoother, I  first made little circles on my thumb to ‘warm up the pen and ink’ for a lack of a better term. The ink seems to flow easier and write smoother when I do this. I learned that tip from a super talented planner friend!

Next I stamped. And yes, the paper is as equally amazing in the notebooks as it is in the planners, so this paper is perfect for stamping. I’m terrible at lining up letters correctly to spell at words when stamping, so a quick way I lined up the letters was to put my stamping block over one of the lines on the page. I added checklists for marking off RSVPs and added some dragon stamps to the page since that is the theme of the party. I decided not to color them this time, I like the simplicity of just the stamp for this page.

I know that I will have lots of added notes, reminders and things to keep track of, so I’m going to use the back of this page as well. It will end up being a brain dump for me, so I want to keep it simple with lots of room to write. I used stamps to label my boxes on this page, a section for details, thoughts, gifts, remember this, right now, and highlights in hopes that it will stay organized.

If you haven’t had a chance to head to the Limelife website to check out the notebooks, now is a good time to go take a peek! I hope I was able to provide some ideas on how versatile these notebooks really are!

Thanks for stopping by and visiting the blog!

~Lindsay

Instagram: glam2plan_pnw