Tutorial: Using Your Hello Forever Planner for Memory Keeping with Lisa Truesdell

Hello all! I'm back with another week in my Hello Forever planner. For this tutorial, I wanted to tackle something I'm sure we've all faced from time to time - a week with no photos!

Last week was a bit of a perfect storm - we had just gotten back from a 10 day trip, were dealing with the time change, the kids headed back to school after spring break and I celebrated a milestone birthday. With all of the craziness of catching up with work and laundry and trying to get back into the groove of real life, I ended the week with a couple of unremarkable photos snapped while we were downtown for my birthday dinner.

I started with an oh so subtle birthday card that I'd received from my mom. I layered the "Yeah" transparency from the Documenter kit over the top - the card was shedding a lot of glitter, and this will help to contain it.

Next, I arranged the movie tickets and restaurant coaster on the facing page. I used washi to hold the tickets in place and add a little color to the right side - let's be honest, it needs it to stand up against that neon card!

I had a few events from the week that I wanted to note, and the dude sticky note pad was a great way to do it. I realized afterwards that I'd missed a few things (oops!), so I'll likely go ahead and layer a second sticky note over the top. I also added a label from the Homespun Documenter kit to give our movie review, and then added a whole lot of date stamps to the birthday page since i'd covered all of the dates!

I grabbed the stamp from the Arendal Scrapbook kit to add a bit more journaling (I LOVE this stamp - it keeps finding its way onto my projects!), as well as a rubber banner that says "you got this" (I'm not sure it's right.... but I went with it anyway ;))

At that point, I thought I was done.... but the right page was really bugging me. It seemed rather dull against the (very very very) bright elements on the left page of the spread. I found this rainbow striped card in the Homespun Documenter kit, and it was just what the spread needed. I edited down to just one of the movie tickets, but the design still stayed much the same.

As I was picking up my desk, I fell in love with this silver foiled card. To add it to the spread, I just punched holes in it and added it between the pages. I love adding elements like this to mini books, so it's fun to be able to incorporate the look into my planner!

I think the back side of it would be a great place to add another story or more journaling for the week, but I'm leaving it as is for now.

With this week done, I have to admit that I MUCH prefer having a few photos in the mix... but I'm glad to know there are ways to make it work without them!