Author Archives: amysolovay

April Monthly Happy Planner Layout Featuring Graphic 45 Papers from the “Time to Flourish” Collection

Here’s a Low-Tech Idea for Creating Your Own Planner Layout for Discbound Planners Such as the Happy Planner, Maggie Holmes Freestyle Planner, Martha Stewart Planner, Arc Planner, Tul Planner, ETC. No Die Cutter Is Needed for Creating This Page Layout.

April Happy Planner Layout Featuring Graphic 45 Papers From the Time to Flourish Paper Pad

April Happy Planner Layout Featuring Graphic 45 Papers From the Time to Flourish Paper Pad

Hello crafty friends!


I originally made this April planner layout in 2022, but I still think it’s pretty and relevant in April of 2024. You can also feel free to use this idea for any month; it’s a totally versatile design.

I took what was supposed to be a daily planner page layout and hacked it to use for monthly tracking.


If you use a Happy Planner, and you want to make a page similar to this one for your own planning and tracking purposes, the logical spot to place it would be right before the tab for April, beside the April monthly overview page that comes stock with most dated Happy Planners.


I made pages like these for multiple months in 2022 and loved them, but found that they didn’t really work as intended for me. This is actually more a problem with Happy Planner’s overall setup than it is with the page itself. This is because I suffer from “Out of sight, out of mind” syndrome, and having this page before the month’s tab meant I forgot to use it. I would also forget to use them monthly overview page, too.


When I was actively using these pages, I found that they worked better if tracked the things I wanted to using weekly pages and then used this page at the end of the month to summarize. This was time consuming to do but gave me a really clear picture of how I did and what I needed to work on.


Although I love Happy Planner, I haven’t found a way to fix the things about it that aren’t working for me. So I’m trying out some different planners right now to see if I can find an option that will work even better for me than Happy Planner did. But if the Happy Planner layout generally works for you, please feel free to adapt this habit tracker layout for your own planner.

Craft Supplies You’ll Need for Making This Planner Layout

  • Graphic 45 Time to Flourish 8×8 Pad — For this particular planner layout, I used the papers for the month of April. The papers in this pad follow the same basic format, so you can make a similar planner layout for any month of the year using the current month’s patterned papers from the Time to Flourish pad.
  • The tracker stamps are from the P13 Tracker Stamp Set.
  • I stamped “2022” using number stamps by Hampton Arts, but you can use any number stamps you happen to have stashed.
  • Page from the classic sized Papillon undated planner or from the Papillon undated extension pack
  • The round sticker is from a Happy Planner sticker book.
  • I have my planner pages on gold metal expander discs, because I really hate the smaller plastic discs that most Happy Planners come with. I think the gold metal discs are a lot prettier, and they are also much sturdier.
  • You can use the paper-friendly adhesive of your choice to put this planner layout together. I used Cherry Tape adhesive, but there are zillions of possible choices that would work well for this project.
  • You’ll also need scissors and a paper cutter, but not a die cutter; you can easily cut everything you’ll need for this layout using either your scissors or a paper cutter.

Thanks for looking!

Craft Ideas for the Month of March

Hello March! Read on to Find Craft Ideas for the Month of March. Photo Courtesy of Elena Mozhvilo.

Hello March! Read on to Find Craft Ideas for the Month of March. Photo Courtesy of Elena Mozhvilo.

Happy March, crafty friends!


Are interested in finding creative, unique, engaging and useful craft ideas for the month of March? There are SO MANY interesting things you could be creating — and I couldn’t begin to even think of them all, let alone could I mention them all here in this brief blog post. However, I’ve been a craft blogger long enough to know the types of projects my typical readers often like to work on in the month of March. The following suggestions will point you in the direction of the most relevant March craft ideas you might want to look at right now. If you have other suggestions to add to this list, I invite you to post a comment at the end letting me and the other readers here know about them.

March Holiday Crafts

March Is National Craft Month

If you ask me, any month is a good month for doing craft projects. But for whatever reason, March has been designated as “National Craft Month,” so it’s an especially great time to get your crafting on.

St. Patrick’s Day Crafting in the Month of March

You can crochet and wear this pretty green beaded necklace for St. Patrick's Day or any day.

You can crochet and wear this pretty green beaded necklace for St. Patrick’s Day or any day.


I’m neither Catholic nor Irish, so I do not claim to be an expert on this March holiday or how to celebrate it. I shall defer to Wikipedia’s explanation in order to communicate the most important points about it. According to Wikipedia,


Saint Patrick’s Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, lit. ’the Day of the Festival of Patrick’), is a religious and cultural holiday held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (c. 385 – c. 461), the foremost patron saint of Ireland.


This holiday is associated with shamrocks, green ribbon and green accessories.


If you want to make yourself some green accessories to wear for St. Patrick’s Day, I invite you to use any of these crochet accessory patterns. You can see one example of a green necklace pictured above. Most of my project samples aren’t green, but you could certainly use green yarns and other green materials to make your projects if you are so inclined.

March Planner Crafts and DIY Calendars

March Garden Journal Pages

March Garden Journal Pages


March 7 Planner Layout With Lawn Fawn Stamps and Papers

March 7 Planner Layout With Lawn Fawn Stamps and Papers


Student Planner Layout for March. Designed and photographed by Mel Nunn; All rights reserved.

Student Planner Layout for March. Designed and photographed by Mel Nunn; All rights reserved.


If you maintain a physical planner, junk journal, scrapbook, or art journal, you might want to decorate your March calendar pages, journal pages or scrapbooking layouts with seasonal stamped images or embellishments. I invite you to check out the following pages for ideas:

Spring Craft Ideas

Tuesday, March 19, 2024 is the first day of spring this year. Happy spring to you!!


I’ve put together a list of spring crafts that are seasonally appropriate for March crafting in many regions of the Western hemisphere. Of course, if the weather in your neighborhood is still wintery, please feel free to continue using this list of winter craft ideas instead.


I hope these ideas are useful to you as you start on your March crafting. Thanks so much for your interest!


By Amy Solovay


This page was last updated on 3-11-2024.

March Garden Journal Pages for Discbound Planners Like Happy Planner, Martha Stewart or Tul

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March Garden Journal Pages for Discbound Planners Like the Happy Planner, Martha Stewart Planner, Arc or Tul

March Garden Journal Pages for Discbound Planners Like the Happy Planner, Martha Stewart Planner, Arc or Tul


By Amy Solovay

Happy March, Creative Friends!


Are you planting a garden this spring? If so, what are you planning to plant, and how are you preparing your property for the growing season? Are you starting your own seeds or relying on a nursery to supply starts?


To those of you who are busy gardening this spring, I wish you much success this growing season with whatever it is you have planned. I’m hoping to join in the gardening fun with a modest container garden this year.


Do you plan to maintain a garden journal for recording your gardening successes and failures? If you haven’t created a garden journal, now is the ideal time to get one started. You might want to map out any garden beds you’re building, make a note of the seeds you’re starting, and keep records of what you’re planting, when you’re planting it, and all the other details you want to keep on top of.


I’m gardening in a new-to-me location this year. However, this location’s weather and climate are similar to a place where I’ve gardened before. I kept a garden journal in those days. So, instead of spending hours plotting out companion plants for my planters, I’m simply going to re-use the ideas I worked out last time I was container gardening in that similar locale. That way, I feel as if I already have a head start on what I need to do.

I also have bunches of notes about what NOT to do, because I already tried things that ended up not working. Mind you, I don’t remember any of them because it has been a few years since I did any gardening of any kind. But I don’t need to remember; I took such careful notes that I can just follow them and pick up right where I left off.


If garden journaling is of interest to you, I invite you to check out more of my garden journal pages and read more about my process for making them.


If you maintain a garden journal, I’d love to know more about what you record in it and how it has helped you achieve your gardening goals. What do your garden journal pages look like? The floor is open for comments, so please feel free to ask questions or share insights in the comments area below.


Thanks so much for visiting! I truly appreciate your presence here.


By Amy Solovay


About the Author: Amy Solovay is a longtime paper journaler who started recording her thoughts on paper on a daily basis sometime when she was in middle school. She was born into a family of “green thumb” gardeners; her mom worked for the US Department of Agriculture, and her grandparents grew most of their own food on their expansive farm. Despite those experiences, Amy still has a lot to learn about gardening. She invites your comments on any topics related to gardening, journaling, garden journaling, knitting, crochet or crafts.

This page was last updated on 3-12-2024.

February Monthly Planner Layout or BUJO Layout With Habit Trackers

Featuring Patterned Papers by Graphic 45 From the “Time to Flourish” Collection

February Planner Layout Made Using Graphic 45 Patterend Papers from the Time to Flourish Collection

February Planner Layout Made Using Graphic 45 Patterend Papers from the Time to Flourish Collection

Need to track a bunch of things like exercises you do, supplements or meds you take, projects you have in progress, etc? One possible way to track all these things is to use a habit tracker that gives you space to track a whole bunch of different things in the same place. I’ve been doing this using a pack of tracker stamps by P13 that offer a whole bunch of different tracker designs to try.


Last February, I made a planner layout using a couple of these stamped images, along with February themed papers. There’s a new and up-to-date paper collection that includes February papers similar to the ones pictured; it’s called “Flower Market” by Graphic 45. I made the project pictured here using last year’s version, which was called “Time to Flourish”. This collection is sold out at all the places I routinely shop, but you might be able to still find some of the papers from it on the secondary market or at a local craft store if you happen to have one.


I stamped the tracker images using the Black Soot colorway of Distress Oxide ink onto white cardstock. I fussy-cut them out and taped them onto the background paper using Cherry Tape.


For the background paper, I also used a page from the classic sized Happy Planner “Papillon” Calendar Extension Pack by Me and My Big Ideas (They also make a Big version of this extension pack, although the spacing on this planner layout would be a little different if you were to try to recreate this design in a big planner). This is supposed to be used as a daily planner, but I think it works beautifully for monthly planning if you do it this way.


Graphic 45’s “Flower Market” collection is simply stunning. It features themed papers for every month of the year. One of the themed papers has cut-aparts featuring the name of the month and graphics that go with that month. So it’s a no-brainer to use the February papers to create your February-themed planner layout and pages.


I’m using this page in my classic-sized Happy Planner, but if you are into bullet journaling, you could make a similar page for your bullet journal.


I hope you found this planner layout idea inspiring. Happy planning!


Best wishes,


Amy

More Craft Project Ideas Featuring Supplies by Graphic 45:

More Planner Layout Ideas You Need to Know About

Planner Supplies You Might Want to Try

Planner FAQs:

This page was last updated on 1-15-2024.


Posted by: Amy Solovay

A Crocheted Flower and Heart Design for Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day to You! Here’s wishing you a lovely, romantic day filled with friends, fun, flowers, candy and beautiful moments.

Abstract Crocheted Flower Motif Embellished With a Heart Pin

Abstract Crocheted Flower Motif Embellished With a Heart Pin

If you’re hoping to welcome more flowers into your life this Valentine’s Day, you can crochet this pretty flower and then embellish it with a heart pinback. The pinback is a quick way to add detail and visual interest to a flower or other crochet project without going to a lot of additional effort.

I’ve shared several more ideas for decorating crocheted flowers with pinbacks. I hope they’ll inspire you! Be sure to grab the free flower pattern too.

Check Out More Valentine-Friendly Crochet Patterns: