How I Decorated My Planner for August 2018

Hello fellow Alchemists,

Today I am sharing how I decorated my planner for the whole month of August. It was a bit of a marathon! Keep reading to see what I used.

The Reject Shops amazing paper pads and ephemera packs are mostly what I used to decorate, though I did throw in a Kaisercraft at the end. Unfortunately I don’t own many matching Kaisercraft pads and ephemera.

I started with my favourite pad and ephemera from The Reject Shop, the Fanciful collection. Mermaids, unicorns and fairies, swoon! All in pretty pinks and purples. I used one of each along with some other ephemera to accent the papers.

Next I used my Here & Now journal cards and ephemera as I don’t have the paper pad that matched this collection. I trimmed two journal cards down and used pieces as matting, borders and an accent piece. I also used one of the larger pieces as a replacement for paper. The ephemera pack for this collection was huge. 180 pieces! It was hard to choose what to put on the page!

Then I used the Twig & Twine Collection. Opting for the more pale orange pieces instead of the stronger peach colour. This collection even has butterflies, which is another of my favourite things! This collection has a lot of vintagey goodness 🙂 I also stamped some plain washi to match.

This next one I think is my favourite layout for the month. I used the gorgeous Carpe Diem collection.  Beautiful purples, mauves, pinks and blues. Again I cut up a journalling card in place of washi as well as some glitter tape. I had to add the gorgeous rose even though it didn’t leave me much space to write lol.

Lastly I used Golden Grove by Kaisercraft with it’s lovely golden yellows to indicate coming into spring. There was a paper with lot’s of strips I utilised as washi. I used some of the bigger pieces of ephemera for this week so did not need to use many.

Hopefully you enjoyed my month long planning lay outs. Go do some arty crafty alchemy yourselves. Catch you all later.

The Arty Crafty Alchemist

Spotlight and Reject Shop Hauls March 2018

Hello Fellow Alchemists,

Today I am sharing my Spotlight and Reject Shop Hauls for this month. Spotlight surprised me by having some things I actually wanted for a change but not what I was actually after. The Reject Shop, while their selection is small,  it is dangerous!

Spotlight has been ho hum for me for a while, prices have become very high and their paper craft  range seems to have shrunk. When I was in there they had no KaiserCraft 6.5″ stacks at all and barely any other Kaiser products. On a side note some of their pricing is out of line with other KaiserCraft retailers. Ranging from a dollar or two more to five or six dollars more for a 12″x12″ paper kit. That being said I still managed to snag a couple of bargains with the Heidi Swapp products and the Zing Embossing powder.

The Reject Shop has also shrunk their art and craft sections but what they do have has been packing a mighty punch. The fanciful collection is divine, all those mermaids fairies and unicorns. Twig & Twine is quite nice with a few random pieces of paper in the paper pad that you have to wonder over like the flag signing one. I wish I had seen the Glasshouse paper pad as the die cuts are so pretty.

Having the co-ordinating packs makes crafting with the papers a lot easier as you have ready made embellishments ready to go. My current website header is a pop up box I made using the Fanciful die cuts and some of the stickers as well. I didn’t have the paper stack at the time so had to use other papers from my stash. If you would like to see more photos of the card head over to the Arty Crafty Alchemy page on Facebook.

Hope you enjoyed seeing what I bought, go create some magic!

The Arty Crafty Alchemist