Wednesday, October 30, 2013

JetPens Giveaway for your DIY Planner!!

I was really excited to receive a couple of cute items from JetPens that I could review and then in turn to offer to one of you as part of a giveaway, sponsored by the fabulous JetPens!

The items JetPens sent to me are  the multi-color Maurman Loose Leaf Mini Sheets and the cute post-it like Kuretake Echizen Washi Adhesive Memo Notes.

I had a lot of different ideas on how I wanted to use these loose leaf sheets and I want to share two different ideas.  

First, I took seven individual sheets and lightly glued each of them together, using the Kuretake Craft Glue Pen.  Then I glued just the very edge of the loose leaf sheets to the page in my planner.  

This picture shows a good representation of the color of each note.  They are a muted blue, pink and yellow without being too pastel. 
This design hinges having a quality paper, due to the fact that I have to be able to fold the pages back and any bleed through would mar each subsequent day. With that criteria in mind, I wasn't disappointed. 

I didn't experience any bleed through with using everything from sharpie pens, Marvy LePens, Pilot Juice Pens, some scrap-booking pens and Uni-Ball Signos.  Since this planner is built on a Moleskine base, it is easy to compare the paper performance.  The Moleskine paper isn't even a match for the loose leaf paper, since these pens routinely show/bleed through. You can see on these folded back pages, nothing has really shown through and definitely didn't bleed through.  I think that fountain pen users would be happy with these if it wasn't an extremely wet ink, but I didn't test it on this layout.
 
You can also see the Washi Memo Note in action here.  It is definitely a more textured paper and not as smooth or slick as the loose leaf paper.  The sticky part on back is sufficient as well, I just held it down with some washi tape because I have about 50 rolls and I need use it!  Ink performed well on these and the pencil theme is perfect for all of us office supply fanatics.

I also hole punched down the side of the page in a few spots, to make it look like it was held on by the ties rather than the glue.  The ties are just a bit of washi tape folded on itself and tied in a simple knot. The knots have held fine all week, no extra glue was required.

The second way I used the loose leaf paper was truly as a loose leaf sheet.  I had some pockets that I glued into this week's layout and they were the perfect size to hold a few sheets.  I think for next year's planner I will incorporate one or two of these pockets into the planner design so I always have a few extra sheets at my disposal.  I find that there are quite a few times where I need to make a quick note to give to someone else or put in my pocket, and this way I won't hae to rip any pages out of the back of my planner.

I am excited to give you a chance to win both of the items I reviewed directly from JetPens.  All you have to do is visit the official entry page.  Keep in mind you must be a subscriber to the JetPens newsletter and if you aren't, you will have a chance to subscribe on the bottom right of the entry page.  And why wouldn't you want to be a subscriber?  JetPens is awesome and you will find supplies on there that you will absolutely have to have! 

The contest will close at 11:59 PM on Tuesday, November 5th and I'll announce the winner shortly after and your itemswill be sent to you directly from JetPens. 

Don't forget to enter for your chance to win!

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Layout Updates

Here are a few more weeks of layouts!

This week, I used one of the cute stickers I bought at HMart (the little bird).  The cage was a dollar stamp from Michaels.

This photo features my DIY washi tape!  I painted on some regular old masking tape with pink acrylica paint and stamped the design on top of it.  I also bought a pack of those Martha Stewart labels, but I didn't have anything to really use them for, so I made some balloons.

I really like how this week turned out, but I would do it a bit differently in the future, since the page doesn't really lay flat.  The weekly section is a glued in time card on cream card stock.  I found this at a scrapbooking store and I bought a couple, thinking I might be able to make this work in my planner.  I think it was fairly successful!