Journal weeks and a reminder

The last two weeks of journaling. :)





And a little reminder that tomorrow is the last day of my spring snail mail give-away.



The weather's awesome these days! :D We're enjoying it so much! :D

Journal weeks and a bracelet

Before I'm heading out to a long weekend a little post to wish you all a relaxing and joyful weekend! :)

April week IV



May week I



Working on a purple-colored snail mail, soon to be sent out. A little bracelet I made for it.



Hopefully the weather will be good the next days! Don't forget saying thanks on Sunday, by the way! ♥

April We ♥ Mail - Easter swap

Due to unfortunate changes in our project, I had to send out the April snail mail later as planned and to another person than originally decided. So my April mail with the theme "easter" - not a surprise - was sent to Sharon living in UK. :)

I decided to weave an easter basket to hold all the little things I've prepared with brown craft paper. I made the basket flat and the handle movable, so it would fit into a parcel. :)



Again I carved a theme-related stamp: An easter egg I've already shown you on my journal page. I used it for cards and tags.



To fold some origami bunnies, I picked this lovely video tutorial to make super cute bunny bags. Perfect to hold tasty treats! :)



I always like to add stickers embellished with self-carved stamps, as well as some journaling cards and bunny stickers. :)



A little easter cookie recipe for Sharon to bake her own tasty treats and some crocheted egg ornaments.



Even it's a little belated, I still hope you'll enjoy the mail, Sharon! :)

---

I also received my April mail from Kim from the Netherlands.
She's sent me such a cute package! I loved the decoration of the parcel so much! :D

A cute letter, a Dutch recipe...



...tasty sweets, ribbons in the typical Dutch colors, ink for dyeing eggs...



...and beautiful stationary: A card, pretty journaling cards, lovely tags and cute selfmade stickers for snail mailing!



Thank you, Kim! ♥ I enjoyed opening and exploring your cute snail mail so much! :)

Journaling weeks

I'm having so much fun decorating my journal pages lately. :) :)

April week II.



An easter egg stamp I carved for the easter season.



April week III.



Hope you all had great easter holidays. :) I'm still enjoying my last day of vacation.

April week I + Hema order

This is how the first week of April turned out.



As I love to doodle mandalas lately, I carved two mandala stamps. It was not that easy, but I'm sure with a little practice I will get better. :)



And a little tip for my German readers. A German Hema online shop opened up and till May 11th they don't charge you for shipping if your order value exceeds 15 EUR. :)



Wish you all a lovely and sunny weekend! ♥

March week III + random things

This was week III of March with a pink design.



Some kitchen/cooking stamps I carved for a recent swap which I'm going to show you soon.



Mandala doodling during the flight. :)



My current washi tape collection, stored in a teabox (idea by a friend of mine).



A last minute birthday card I made with the Tinkerbell stamp. :)



Wish you all a lovely week! :)

Journal pages: March Week I + II

I liked the idea of using one color scheme for each week, so I continued doing that. :)

March Week I: Green/Purple



A big washi tape order arrived! :D



March Week II: Grey/Blue



A new stamp design I used for making a color-matching card for this week.



I tried out Zen/Mandala Doodling! So much fun! :D



Wish you all a lovely start into the week! ♥

Journal weeks

At the end of this month's project I would like to show the journal weeks I created during the month.

In comparison to the years before I embellished the pages more using washi tape, different colors, the journal stamps I carved, stickers and snippets. For a better blog organization I started to mark the post days with color points. For my week away I created an additional page between two pages for all the visiting cards and snippets I collected.



In the current week, inspired by different filofax videos, I started to embellish a week with a color scheme (yellow and black). Of course I still used other colors too, but I tried to chose mainly yellow/black accessoires. I think it looks nice for a change. :)

By the way, I LOVE the Muji pens I got during my trip! They're gorgeous to write with and they don't shine through the pages!! Just perfect for my journal. :D



I'm really happy with my current system and I have so much fun recording our life. :D
Do you like journaling? I would love to read about the way you do your memory keeping. ♥

I ♥ my RoterFaden! - The extras

I showed you the main parts in the last post and this time I would like to show you the extras I especially arranged for my RoterFaden. As all the clips where occupied by the three notebooks, I used two elastic bands from my former X17 to add extras.

The extras



The first elastic band includes a dashboard for my current todos categorized into urgent and general todos, as well as a current shopping list for the next time I'm in the city, ...



... an overview of the We ♥ Mail project (including all the themes and monthly pen pals), as well as all of my current correspondences.



The second one holds all the things I like to use for embellishing my calendar, like sticky notes, photo corners,...



...stickers, clips...



...and washi tape samples.



And last but not least, stamps for all the letters I'm sending out and some sheets for notes.



For my blog organization/project idea notebook I made clips with a tab to create an easy access to the different categories.



As you can imagine, my RoterFaden is quite heavy, but I love to carry it around with me every day. :D

I ♥ my RoterFaden! - The main parts

I've always been a lover of filofax. I used them for years during school and university.
What I didn't like about them were the metal thing in the middle, as I always had troubles, when writing on the left page. I also never really knew how to keep the used pages, so it's always been kind of a mess.

Fortunatelly I found the RoterFaden, 100% made in Germany! It's quite pricy and I struggled with myself for quite a long time, but at the end I bought one. :) More than 2 years ago and I still love it! :)

The idea is just genius! The great click system allows you to use whatever notebook, calendar, journal or paper you want for your individual setup.



So this is how I use my RoterFaden currently....



The main parts
First clip - My journal calendar I've already shown you in the last post.




Second clip - My blog and project organization.
Every month I make an overview of the monthly project theme, write down a list of the todos and register when I publish a post via sticky notes.



On this page I organize my posts. I got this great idea from this youtube filofax organization video. On the upper section I write down post ideas on sticky notes. If I'm in the middle of doing the post ((f) I took pictures for the post, (t) I wrote the text for the post), I move the sticky note to the lower section. If I'm done with everything, (f) and (t), I can move the sticky note to the weekly overview to decide on which day to publish the post.



You think that' too organized? ;) I would love to do my posts more freely, but I have a fulltime job and in the winter I only can take pictures on the weekend. So the organization helps me to keep blogging. ;)

In this notebook I also like to write down project ideas, like new stamp designs or things I want to crochet, knit or sew (see the other tabs).

Third clip - A notebook for personal stuff, like general and longterm todos, list of easy-to-make (low carb) recipes, gift ideas for family and friends, my ultimate wishlist, book recommendations, blogs and shops I love, a general packing list etc..




So this was part 1 of my RoterFaden! I would love to hear about how you oganize your calendars, journals or blog posts. :)

How I keep my journal

I like to keep the memories of our daily life, how we spend our days and the experiences we made. I love to browse through an old journal and read about our life and things I already forgot. :)



As I don't like to keep a journal with white pages, I used calendars as journals the last years.





In addition to merely write down facts, I often embellished the pages with stickers, washi tape, drawings and snippets like receipts or tickets.



This system worked for me the last years, so I decided to continue using a calendar for journaling in 2014 too. :) These are some pages from this year.





The last years I mainly wrote down plain text for journaling. But when looking at the pages later on, sometimes I find it quite confusing and hard to find special events. So this year I would like to modify my journaling with more sketches and "structure". This means highlighting special occasions or activities by using a different color, stamps etc..

So this is going to be this year's challenge and I'm looking forward to doing it. :)