Post No. 1 for The Crafty Project

Today we have the first post for The Crafty Project with Michelle. She will use the A5 Metropol to manage her crafting. Here’s Michelle:

Hi everyone.  I am so excited to be involved with this little project and today I am here to share my first post for The Crafty Project.  The idea of my project is two fold.  The first obviously is focusing on crafts (and craft related things) and the second is on just general life things.  Why not just create a craft binder, you may ask?  Well for me, 2013 has been about rediscovering myself and my interests.  December 2012, I took the plunge and resigned from a job in a company where I was liked and respected – by people that actually counted at least.  It is safe to say I spent most of my 20s working, eating and sleeping. Not any more, I say, I need to find the balance of having those bill paying jobs and still doing things I love, things that make me happy.  This is where the project comes in and the lovely Metropol I received from Janet.

Inside this beauty, were two rulers and two sets of dividers.  One set in black and one set in cream.  

I am colour coding the two sections of my planner with the dividers.  The cream is going to be the craft fun part of the planner with the black the life part, but more on that later.  Last Friday, I received my planner and Monday I woke up with hardly any voice and by the end of Monday it had turned into a monster of something.  Anyway, as such, the monster is still going strong and my setup is probably only ½ way done at the moment.  Not to mention I keep changing my mind with a couple of things.

This is how my little baby looks like now.

The Metropol has two pen loops, which I was beyond excited to see.  I happened to find a cute little three pack of pens – uni-ball Signo Gelstick 0.7  – on the weekend,  one pink, one purple and one blue.  My three favourite pen colours in one little packet, yes please.  After much debate, the pink and blue have taken up their homes in the pen loops.  

The first thing I actually did was getting to work on some paper for the planner.  I love all the Filofax decorated pages you see online so when I picked up some lined A5 paper from Daisio but it already had holes punched which did not match up with the Filofax, I got to work.

I grabbed the packet of paper, some of my washi tape, my super old single whole punch and got to work.   This is an excellent task to do while staring at the idiot box at night after work.  It is however, not the best task to do when you are coughing your head off.  Your washi will probably end up crooked and all over the place.  I have seen lots of people decorate their pages with Washi just like I have and you know what I have never seen.  Washi adds quite a bit of bulk to your pages, and personally I would not look at doing it if I had a small ringed binder.  Take a look at this little comparison picture of 19 sheets of paper.  One being the clean side and the other the washi side.

I know some of the issue is due to my coughing my head off application issues but that is more than double in size. Wow!  Anyway, enough about paper… let’s take a look inside Mr Metropol.

When you open the Metropol you have 8 card holders, one large pocket and two smaller pockets.  The large pocket is the perfect home for something I have struggled with keeping with me for a long time.  A4 sized vouchers, I am not sure why places still insist on paper vouchers.  A world of cards is a much easier world.  So, I have 4 different vouchers living in there now.  Also sitting inside right on top, is a cute little pencil case which I have filled with on the go filofaxing essentials.  What are my on the go essentials, you ask? Just take a little peek.

This pencil case actually has three large roomey pockets, but I am only using two of them at the moment.  The largest pocket (top image), is where I am keeping my pens and highlighters.  My cute little six pack of highlighters that I picked up at Daisio, my purple uni-ball Signo Gelstick 0.7  and finally my Stabilo fine 0.4 pens.  The smaller pocket in front of that has a tiny little white out roller and then the most essential small colour dots which I will be using to colour code my calendars.   Once you remove my pencil case from the equation you will see my home make flyleaf/dashboard.  Lesson number two in setting up a Filofax.  There is such a thing as too many post it notes and paper clips. Case in point…

I have since decided that I, who cannot decide what post it’s or paper clips to remove from the planner, will solve the issue by making a second flyleaf to go with the life part of my planner. 😀

Next week I will show you how I have setup one of the sections in my planner.  If you have a preference – craft or life sections – leave a comment below or if you want to know anything further, just ask and I will see to include it in a future post.

Happy organsing everyone.