Add The Butterfly Effect To Your Traveler's Notebook!

It’s Cara here today and I have a confession, I LOVE butterflies! I always have, my signature is my initials manipulated into a butterfly, my wedding dress had butterflies on it. I love how feminine, delicate and colourful they are. So you can imagine my excitement when I first say the Simple Vintage Botanicals collection. Ok, I like the flowers too but OMG these butterflies are sooooo gorgeous! I’m also a fan of fussy cutting so I grabbed my favourite sharp scissors put on some YouTube videos and cut out about a million of those little butterflies.

 I have a couple of tips for fussy cutting for you. Cut out your shape from the paper first but leave enough paper around the edges for you to hold onto as you cut closer and in more detail. It’s a lot easier to cut if you can actually hold on to the paper with a good grip and not trying to hold onto a sliver with your fingernails. 

The second tip is to leave about 1/8 inch of white (or whatever background colour) around the edge of the shape. It’s a lot easier to be accurate at 1/8 inch than it is to be accurate at trimming exactly on the edge of your design and you take less risk of actually cutting into the the design itself.

Ok, so what did I do with all these fussy cut butterflies? Let’s have a look!

I adhered most of them to the covers of my inserts, but only by their bodies. I then curled up their wings to make it look a bit more realistic. Now you may be thinking, ‘yah, but Cara, as soon as I close my planner they are going to get squashed!’ Don’t worry, they really don’t!! Unless you’ve got a huge text book or a big heavy mom purse sitting on top of it, the planner cover alone isn’t enough to squash them flat. Now they will flatten a bit, but a bit of fluffing will get those butterflies right back to where you had them. 

You may have noticed that I stuck some of the larger ones down with staples. I’m hoping that these will stay better, I’ve done this in the past with liquid glue and sometimes the butterflies have popped off, so we’ll see.

The blue striped insert cover mimics a group of butterflies in flight. The middle insert has butterflies and a flower added with foam dots and curled wings on top of images with the same size and shape. I couldn’t go with the same colour butterflies because I couldn’t find the same shape and size in those colours. The flower isn’t a perfect match, but it works. There is a bit of bling but otherwise the only additions to the patterned paper cover are the butterflies and flower.

The pinkish-red one has 2 fussy cut butterflies on each of the 3 butterflies printed on the card, for a more 3D effect. 

Ah pockets! I love planner pockets so much, that I think if planners no longer came with pockets I would quit planning cold turkey… Ok, maybe not, but I’d be pretty upset ;) As usual, my pockets are a mix of the bits and pieces, stickers, chipboard and cards and butterflies cut from the patterned papers. This pocket setup makes me want to go sit in a meadow of wildflowers and plan.

Alright, now that the planner is looking sweet and feminine it’s time to plan, so let’s head to the weekly spread! To maximise the space, I’ve added checklists under the number stickers (from the Numbers tablet) and boxes from the 4x6 stickers as well as the Planner Basics tablet help to highlight important activities. To be able to get the most of the decorative stickers without sacrificing valuable real estate in your planner, layer your favourite butterflies stickers on plain boxes. Washi always looks great along the bottom.

To get more tips on using the weekly inserts check out my latest YouTube video on my channel here: Cara's YouTube. On Monday, I will be sharing my process video for the whole setup, so don’t forget to subscribe so that you won’t miss that. 

Happy planning!