Planner Stickers with my Cricut Explore

I purchased a Websters Pages planner a few month ago and as I have a lot of recurring appointments, such as hydrotherapy, my husbands guitar lessons, flea treatment for the cats etc I thought I'd look at making some planner stickers. Now there are two main reasons I chose to do this:

1. I didn't want to mess up my diary straight away with a spelling error
2. I thought labels would stand out more and I could colour code them (so I didn't need to carry around a stack of different colour pens)

I started listing all the recurring appointments I thought I might need in my diary:

• pay day (whoohooo)
• guitar
• hydrotherapy (ohhhh the hot water after a busy day at work to soothe my poor muscles!)
• enginner 
• medical appointments
• bank holidays
• my trip to Disney (in Disney font of course!)
• holidays (normal ones... not Disney lol)
• to do (in case I need to remember to do something important of a certain date)
• birthdays (so it stands out, I'll then writing their name next to it)
• vets
• bills due
• annual leave for Lee and I (as we don't always take the same time off) 

Anything else can be written in, or more stickers made up!

I did start making my stickers in Cricut Design Space however I found that it took forever as I was trying to make 52 of the same label at one time (ie for my weekly Hydrotherapy session) and my computer was soooo laggy, so I came up with a new idea..... I made them in Craft Artist 2! I used a flag shape and typed in the events. I then copied these out as many times as needed, and used the distribute function to space them out. I decided to make these on A5 sheets as the labels I wanted to use were A5 labels and I thought it would be easier with my Cricut Explore. In total I made 6 sheets of labels (50 on each sheet!).

 Once I had made my labels I exported them from Craft Artist as a PNG with a see through background so it would make it easier to set them up on my Explore to cut them individually. 

Once saved I uploaded them onto the Cricut Design Space and this took no time at all as all the work had been done in Craft Artist to set them up.

Each set of labels was set to 6 inches wide and 4.5 inches tall but although two sets would fit at a time on my A4 sheet, I had to do the print and cut separately for each sheet as I was using A4 sheets which had 2 labels per page but I did find a way in the end to use my whole sheet.

To do this, I print and cut one 'set' of labels at a time (by using the eye/hide button on Cricut Design space so that only one set of labels was showing at a time), and found that if I print and cut this, there was room to turn my label sheet around in my printer and print another set on the other half of my labels. Now there's probably an easier way (such as buying A4 labels) but this worked for me.

The labels I used were 5 star laser labels, which are comparable to Avery but I found them cheaper on Amazon (I use them for online postage) and on my first try I used the Cricut Sticker Sheet setting, however this cut all the way through, but I found that the paper setting cut it just fine (apart from the odd corner lifting but I just pushed these back onto the sticker paper after).

I'm really happy with how these turned out, and now I will cut them smaller so I'm left with smaller sheets of stickers, and keep them with my planner ready for when they decide to finally make the 2016 Webster Pages inserts available! 

My New Dodo-Pad Diaries

I've brought diaries on and off for the last few years as although I have a calendar on my phone, I don't really check it but I have a diary or A4 printed calendar by my sink displayed in a cookbook holder so I can see what's happening over the next week while doing the washing up or making a cup of tea.

Over the last few years I've brought Organised Mum Life Books which I love, but this year my Dad showed me a Dodo Diary while out shopping in John Lewis. I loved it's quirkiness and that I could doodle on it. I brought it just after Christmas and also brought the pocket version for my handbag.

Both diaries are exactly the same just different sizes (so the smaller one has some text that is really small). I love the fact that the diary is done in grids so you can have a column per person or activity. I've organised my columns like this:
Events for both of us
Sara's events
Lee's events
Birthdays
Reminders (ie remember to send a birthday card for next week)

Rather than write in all the column names I got my Trodat DIY stamp out and was able to label up the columns on each week easily.

I love the pocket diary as it is a nice squarish shape and small size. I always like a ring bound book as I'm left handed I can never usually write right up to the left hand side of the right hand page.

This diary is particually handy for me as each week there is a page for doodling and it's great for crafting ideas rather than writing them on post-it notes then loosing them.

I brought mine in the sale at the Calendar Club and managed to get both books for less than the original price of 1 of them!