Guest Designer | Amanda Zampelli

We're thrilled to have the lovely and talented Amanda Zampelli as one of our guest designers this month and are excited to get to know her better today! Be sure to follow Amanda here at Studio Calico to keep up with her and see more of her beautiful work.

Hello, fellow crafters! I’m Amanda Zampelli, and I’m a graphic designer and lifestyle blogger living in my open, airy apartment on Long Island, NY with my boyfriend and our two cat-kids. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this "thing" with paper—pretty paper, useful paper, stickers on paper, viewing, holding, even sometimes smelling...cutting, gluing, manipulating, decorating with, organizing with, gifting with, memory keeping with, problem-solving with…YEAH. Paper has been a big part of my journey. 

Several years back, I stumbled upon the online world of paper-crafting and the phenomenon that is the craft and hobby industry, and like lightning, it hit me that it was the world where I belonged. I was a classroom teacher at the time and decided to leave the profession to make a complete career change over to graphic design. Since that decision, I’ve worked for We R Memory Keepers and Me & My BIG ideas, and am now on my own hoping to pave my own way.

In my many years as a creative "adult’" (haha!), I’ve worked on a myriad of projects including mini books, art journals, collages, scrapbook pages, listing challenges, photo-a-days, day in the life, week in the life, December Daily, pocket scrapbooking, planner decorating, etc. But most recently, memory keeping in my planner (a.k.a memory planning) has been my favorite. I’ve adopted this way of documenting so fully that I was able to create an online class with Big Picture Classes called Memory Keeping in The Happy Planner® to share my take on it.

Homestead Kit Memory-Planned Month - I use the monthly pages of my planner as a highlight reel of memories. As the weeks pass, I place photos into the squares of the day in which they happened. At the end of the month, any square that I didn’t place a photo into now becomes an opportunity for embellishment. For this spread, I cut up the two orange paper designs that came in the Planner Kit and placed them in blank days. I created an orange and teal color scheme by only stamping with my Studio Calico "Emerald City" Color Theory ink.

Homestead Kit Functional Planner Spread - While the planner I use for memory keeping is crafted, clean, and (for lack of a better word) pretty, the planner I use for actual planning IS NOT. It’s messy, it’s full of lists, and I tend to randomly jot things down wherever there's space. However, it’s fully functional and it’s how I get things done.

For this project, I first laid down my Planner Strip designs so the blank daily columns of my Happy Planner® become hourly and lined. Then, right on top of them, I started to embellish and plan. The rose gold alphas and label pieces worked to make certain areas of the page stand out. I also loved the tiny details the am/pm stamp and the "M T W TH F S SU" stamp made. They allowed me circle which day or time of day I completed tasks. 

Homestead Kit Double-Sided Planner Insert - Because I worked on two planner projects for this month’s release, I thought a double-sided planner insert made the most sense for the third. On one side, to go along with my functional planner spread, I created a cool spin on a traditional grocery list. I used one of the grid papers from the 4x4 paper pad and jotted down items in a BINGO-like fashion. I used the solid rectangle stamp to stamp the items I’d get in Stop&Shop and left the items bare that I’d get in BJs.

On the other side, more in line with my memory-planned month, I quickly assembled a scrapbook style insert that included a currently list, photo, and stamped date.

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