My Other Creations: Dreamer Girl Scrap Binder

"Homegrown Summer" is this week's theme at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog and since my yarn and fabric stash has been growing over the past couple of months, I made a storage binder to house some of my favorite scrap color combinations.  When I get stuck for inspiration or a suitable palette, I flip through this and it gets the creative juices flowing again.

I could alternately call this my Tim Holtz binder because almost everything came from him, as you can see in my supply list.  I like how you can punch up the color with his products or keep it subtle; always incredibly versatile.  I made the splotches and splatters of color by slamming down bottles of Distress Stains through the piece of cardstock I'd cut with the picture wheel die.  Then to give it more visual variety, I turned the picture wheel before adhering it to cardstock and gluing it down so the colors behind it are different from the colors on the wheel.

Here's a peek at the inside, where I wrapped various yarns and fibers and fabric strips around different sizes of tags:

Here are the supplies that I used that you can find at Simon Says Stamp:

Tim Holtz Worn Diary Cover	Tim Holtz Large Ring Binders	Tim Holtz Binder Punch	Sizzix Alterations Picture Wheel Die	Sizzix Big Shot Machine	Tim Holtz Sizzix Tag Collection	Mama Elephant Tags A Lot Die Set
Tim Holtz 12x12 French Industrial Paper Pack	Tim Holtz 12 x 12 Correspondence Paper Pack	Idea-ology - Found Relatives	Tim Holtz Elementary Flash Cards	Tim Holtz Big Chat Stickers	Distress stains	Tim Holtz Latticework Stencil
Stamper′s Anonymous Tim Holtz Numeric Stamp Set	Fiskars Acrylic Blocks	Black Sharpie Fine Point Pen	Simon Says Stamp Mint Candy Ink	Memento Luxe Bahama Blue	Memento Luxe Rose Bud	Memento Luxe Morocco
Memento Luxe Blue Danube	Walnut Stain - Distress Ink	Timber Brown StazOn	Ranger Archival Jet Black Ink Pad	Peacock Feathers - Distress Ink	Squeezed Lemonade - Distress Ink	Picked Raspberry - Distress Ink
Tim Holtz Distress Twisted Citron Ink Pad	Ripe Persimmon - Distress Ink	Worn Lipstick Distress Ink Pad

"Homegrown Summer" has so many potential directions you could go, so I can't wait to see what you come up with!  Upload your creations to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog so that you can inspire us and have a chance at winning the always-generous $50 Simon Says Stamp voucher!

My Other Creations: Generic Planner Re-do

I'm lovin' this week's Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog theme, which is, "Make A Plan."  I have to admit that I am not the type of person who carries a planner around (where would it fit with all the library books and snacks I keep in my purse?) but thoroughly enjoy seeing all of those clever planner pages out there!  Since I didn't have a fancy planner, I decided to give a generic planner a makeover.

I picked up a cheapy planner at Walmart, which started out like this:

I wanted to give it a new cover and some dividers, then re-bind it with my Cinch machine.  So the first step was to cut off the binding, which I did with some needle-nose pliers and some wire cutters.

Maybe I had some inner stress that I didn't know about, but it was actually kind of therapeutic to destroy the wire binding.

I took the unbound pages to my paper cutter and cut off all the holes.

With the pages ready to be re-bound, I started making the cover.  I chose a piece of Prima Garden Fable paper and stamped some images on it using Ranger Black Archival ink.

I whipped out the watercolors and painted inside the shapes, then drizzled more watercolors around the shapes.

I punched out some colored dots, outlined them with Sharpie, and curled some Prima Wire Thread into circles.  I added a piece of yarn here and there, too.  I glued them on and added some week days that I cut out of a piece of patterned paper. 

I drew a girl and fussy-cut her out and glued her on, then added the "Go and Do" sentiment which was cut with Tim Holtz's Block Talk lowercase alphabet.  I stamped on some dates and glued the whole picture to a piece of chipboard that was the size of my planner cover.

The last step was to use the Cinch machine and a Cinch coiled wire to bind the whole thing back together again.  I made tabs out of patterned paper, a Prima flower and Project Life cards.

I plan on leaving this planner in my craft room and using it not only to write what I need to do, but also to record what I have done.  I try to embrace the mantra of "Go and Do" because I have a tendency to sit and dream instead.  Dreaming is so important, but action is a critical part of the formula, too, and one that I can improve on. 

I had a lot of fun creating my planner and these are the fabulous supplies I used from Simon Says Stamp to make it:

Simon Says Clear Stamps SCRIBBLE FLOWERS	Simon Says Stamp One With Nature Clear Stamps	Waffle Flower stamps: Flower Circles	Prima A4 Garden Fable Paper	Echo Park I Love Sunshine 12x12 Paper	October Afternoon Summertime 12x12 Paper	Spectrum Noir Markers: Pale Hues
Spectrum Noir Markers: Yellow	Spectrum Noir Markers: Pink	Pebbles Chalk	Tim Holtz Sizzix Dies, Block Talk alphabet lowercase	Sizzix Big Shot Machine	American Crafts Dear Lizzy Neapolitan Roller Date Stamp	Project Life Odds and Ends Kit
Black Sharpie Fine Point Pen	Fiskars Acrylic Blocks	Ranger Archival Jet Black Ink Pad	Hero Arts Basic Alphabet Stamps	Loew Cornell WATERCOLOR CAKES 24 Paints	Peacock Feathers - Distress Ink	Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad MERMAID LAGOON
Cinch - We R Memory Keepers

I'm excited to see what you come up with for this week's, "Make a Plan" theme.  Upload your creation to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog for your chance to win a $50 voucher to the Simon Says Stamp store.