Filofax- my new love

I have recently fallen in love with Filofax decorating. A lot of times I have the desire to craft and I definitely have the supplies, I just don't have the time. Enter the Filofax craze. This solves a lot of my problems. I use the planner to keep track of what I have going on and better manage my time. This allows me to see when I have the time to craft. I wish I could say it was this that sucked me into the Filofax craze, but it's not. What did suck me in? When I saw people decorating their Filofax pages, I was hooked. Is this a way to justify buying washi tape, stickers, and adorable Japanese staionery? Why yes, I think it is. I'm not buying this stuff for a hobby, I'm buying it all becuase I need to get organized. (feel free to use this excuse if you need to)
I ordered my first filofax a pocket petal without much research (it's cute and it was on sale). Then, I realized it was probably going to be too small, so I tried to cancel the order and I couldn't. Before the pocket filofax even arrived, I ordered a personal size intending to send the pocket one back, but it's just too cute. I'll find a way to use it. Finally my personal size Domino filofax came and I began decorating it.
Foolishly I thought I would decorate my filofax with the supplies I already have. I mean I have washi tape and stickers I even have some post its hanging around. Every video I watched turned me on to a new product or site I had never heard of before. Not only do I need washi tape and stickers, I need magnetic bookmarks and special pens and really really cute post-its not the square ones from Staples (although Staples does have a lot of cute stuff I've been there 3 or 4 times in the last week and a half.)Here are a few of my fist purchases. I'm still waiting on a bunch of stuff to ship from overseas.

Now that I have most of my supplies, I began decorating my weekly diary inserts (oh which by the way are also new I decided I like the look of these Barnes and Noble pages better than the ones that came with my filofax so I bought another planner just for the pages yep that's 3 planners for me so far)  

Here's this weeks decoration.  Funny how once I started this I realized it doesn't look like I have that much going on. Oh well, I love it and it let's me craft and be creative and that's all that really matters.

Getting organized with scrapbook supplies

While watching a ton of videos about how to organize my scrapbook room, I came across several videos about Filofaxes. I started watching them and decided it would be a good thing for me to try. My purse is always full of notes I write at work and they're always getting lost. I have a calendar in my purse,but it's not big enough to hold everything I need.  A filofax founded like the perfect solution.

In the videos people were decorating their planner pages and they looked adorable.  One of the main things they used to decorate is washi tape.  I just joined the Cutters Creek monthly washi tape club , so the timing was perfect. I used some washi and a few of my other scrapbooking supplies to start personalizing  my filofax.  I just started so it's still pretty lame compared to others I've seen, but I think I'll get there.  

Here is a video showing how I used my supplies in my filofax to help get you started. Now, filofax is just one brand of planner, you can use these techniques with any planner you have, you can even print out some of your own pages to use. For me, gettting organized is a must, but using all the supplies I already have to make getting organized cute and fun is a total bonus.

EEEEEEEK

I have a Halloween card to share with you all.  My copic markers and I have a love hate relationship. I love to color with them and then I hate how what I just colored looks.  I’m trying to just have fun and color, not worry about light sources and shadows and all that.  It worked this time.  I started doubting the image and almost started over, but I made myself stick with it.    I also have a love hate relationship with my scrapbook room.  I love having a room devoted to scrapbooking, but I hate going in there because it’s such a mess I can’t find anything including my desk.   I decided it was time to tame the beast and get it organized.  I’m not all the way done, but it’s 90% better than it was.  Also, since I’ve been so busy organizing and rearranging my supplies, I’ve found all kinds of things I haven’t used in forever.  So enough with all that, let’s get to the project. 

I used the My MInd’s Eye Mischievous paper pack.   I love this paper because it’s Halloween paper, but it’s not too Halloweeny.  I colored my adorable Magnolia image with my copic markers.    I wanted the image to match the distressed look of the paper so I dulled down all the color by going over them with a pale warm grey or light tan color. 

After I finished coloring the image, I went over the entire thing with some old paper distress ink then I edged it with some black soot distress ink.  I went over some parts of the image with my copic spica pens, but it’s too hard to capture in the picture.  For the sentiment I used some black Wow embossing glitter.  The background of this  card is some awesome burlap paper I found by DCWV.  It’s burlap on the front and paper on the back (it’s the paper version of the mullet LOL )  It was great to reconnect with some of my old supplies.  Sometimes you need to deep clean your scrapbook room to remind yourself of what you have (and what you don’t have but you really really need).
One thing I discovered while cleaning was that I had a problem with my 6 x 6 pads.  I have them stored vertically in a little drawer.  When I use a pad, I put all the scraps back inside the pad.  I’ve found when I pull the pad out by the top, the scraps were falling out.  I saw this idea on Youtube and it worked great.  I put the scraps in a clear envelope and attach that to the back of the pad so the scraps and the full pieces are all together.  In this case since the pad was pretty empty, I put the pad and the scraps down in the envelope.  This has been working great. 
  
I hope you have enjoyed my Halloween card and that I have encouraged you to reconnect with some of your older supplies. 
Cutters Creek Shopping List
Distress Ink
Copic Markers
Wow Embossing Glitter
My Mind’s Eye paper
Clear envelopes