January 11, 2018

Guest Designer | Rianne Alonte

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

Hi, paper lovers! I’m Rianne—a graphic designer, social media manager, and crafter based in Manila, Philippines. I’m also in the process of learning marketing tasks, one of which is organizing workshops and events for a notebook brand in Manila. I have an online course over at Big Picture Classes, and I hope you come check it out: Plan It Out | 22!

Arts and crafts have always been a part of my life since I was a kid. One of our family traditions was to create handmade greeting cards during special occasions; I got to explore with different kinds of materials and styles each year. When I was 13, I started making scrapbook layouts using magazine cut-outs, decorative scissors, punchers, and actual scraps (yes, I’m a 90’s kid!). It was in my teen years that I jumped into the planner craze—my money was usually spent on stickers and fillers! It’s amazing how almost 20 years later, I still haven’t outgrown my love for paper crafts. I think I have the Instagram craft community to thank for that; we inspire each other with our projects and latest product finds!

Aside from planning and traditional scrapbooking, the other projects that I love doing are journaling, decorating my room, personalized gifts, stamping, pocket page scrapbooking, photobooks, DIY tags, doodling, digital scrapbooking, Traveler's Notebooks...the list is almost endless! Besides Instagram, I get my inspiration from books, magazines, music, everyday things—everywhere! When I feel like I’m in a creative block, I step outside and take pictures of anything that catches my eye: book covers, packaging designs, dress patterns, restaurant interiors, and a lot more. I upload everything to my Instagram account, @creativity.is.everywhere, for easy viewing. A few of my non-crafting hobbies include listening to music, taking photos, trying out new restaurants, and attending fitness classes. I plan on trying a lot of new activities this year. It really helps to have a planner so I can remember to make time for them!

Summit Planner Kit – The first project that I’ll share with you is a weekly layout from my Moleskine planner. I normally decorate the left page heavily with stickers—this is where I keep track of appointments and special occasions. My favorite item from the Planner Kit is the puffy sticker sheet with encouraging words. The stickers made my page even more inspiring! The Jasmine Jones sticker strips are great for blocking out dates. Since most of the stickers that I used were of the "boxy" shape, I punched out a circle from the A5 paper and adhered star stickers to add variety. The right page is where I write my to-do lists; this page usually gets messy as the week progresses. I kept the design minimal so that I’ll have more space for my notes.

Bullet Journaling – I got so inspired by the bullet journaling workshops that I recently attended that I’ve decided to use the format for task planning in 2018. What I love about the system is that it’s customizable and forgivable. If I feel like my current layout is not working for me, I have the option to change it next time. I’m glad that I had the chance to work with the "Summit" Planner Kit and January product releases. These helped save time in decorating my spread! To make the layout look easy on the eye, I only chose a maximum of three colors: yellow, turquoise, orange. I love that the SC kits come with a 3" x 4” title card every month. I used it as the title for my Monthly Log page. After writing the dates, I used the stamp set by In A Creative Bubble to mark appointments and occasions. To add texture to my spread, I selected patterns from the 4x6 paper pad (January 2018) and adhered them to my pages. Since January is all about starting fresh, I wrote lists of my creative goals and things to focus on this year. I used the stamps as list bullets and fillers for empty spaces. The New Year stamp set by In A Creative Bubble contains inspiring sentiments—perfect for new beginnings! This spread is making me excited to pursue my goals for 2018, thanks to these well-designed January Kits and releases!