Hello, Crafters.

I’m not sure it’s because my business is growing so well, or because I’m getting older,
but I seem to be getting more and more disorganised! 

It concerns me that I might be inadvertantly overlooking some
requests from crafters; I’m sorry if I’ve done this to you! 

In
an attempt to get myself better organised and prevent this from
happening, when the new annual catalogue went live, I bought myself
a Love Today Planner Kit (pages 12-13). 

So far,
it’s been a terrific tool for me, and is working brilliantly. 

At the
beginning of each week, I plan my days
with the jobs I need to do, and on that day, I find I stay focussed on
my list. 

During the day, when I receive requests that I’m not able to deal with
immediately, I
write it in my planner for that day. 

At the end of the day, if there are
any
jobs I didn’t do, I write them in for the next day. 

As I can see what I
have
already planned for the end of the week, I know I can’t allow myself to
keep
moving jobs onto the next day! 

My planner is always open on the current
week,
by my desk, and it acts as my motivator. 

This is just my second week of
using
my planner, and I’m only using it in this very basic way. 

There are
other options with this planner that I haven’t started using,
but it’s doing a great
job in keeping me organised and focussed as it is!

Another big THANK YOU to
Stampin’ Up! for another fantastic product!

Today’s
card isn’t one of my favourites because the colour choice is less than
ideal. 

This happened because the card design is different from what I’d
initially planned! 

I’m still sharing the card because it’s a technique you may
like to try.

My
original idea was to have the script sitting partially in the negative
which I’d thought would be half a layer of plain cardstock with a
patterned Designer Series Paper (DSP), or vice versa. 

Then my plan was
to decide what cardstock or DSP to use for the upper part of the layer.

The
first thing I did was to die cut one Happy Birthday in Pool Party
Cardstock and one in a design from the Whole Lot of Lovely DSP.

I
adhered some Stampin’ Up! Sizzix Multipurpose Adhesive Sheet at the back
of the Pool Party negative and then adhered all the DSP cut outs in
place. 
 
Then I did the same to the DSP negative piece!

Then
I had to decide what to do with the the sentiments. 

I concentrated on
the Pool Party negative sentiment, and layered it on a layer of the same
DSP design. 

As the colours are so similar and virtually disappear into
each other, I needed something to give te card a lift! 

I made a three
layer daisy using the Daisy Punch and made a black centre, so it
followed the design on the DSP! 

This helped but it still needed more so I
stamped three of the “half” daisies from the Daisy Delight Stamp Set
and fussy cut them out.

I used the pen end of my Basic Black Marker Pen
to highlight the centres of the flowers. 

As yet I haven’t created
anything with the other sentiment, but I will do…………one day!!

That’s about it for today. Until tomorrow, happy crafting.

JanB.