Can you remember when charm bracelets were all the rage? I remember my mom wearing this absurdly clunky thing back in the day. I think I even had some kind of child’s version. Are they coming back? I’m not convinced.

But Martha is, so this next project is to make your own charm bracelet. And you know what? It’s actually pretty easy. I chose some tiny sterling silver peace signs and hearts for my charms, and I had some leftover sterling chain. The links probably weren’t quite big enough, but it worked out.

There were a few issues that I had to problem solve. Namely:

See that charm 3rd from the left? How it’s all wonky while the rest lay flat? Thank goodness I figured that out at charm 3 and not at charm 9 or something. You need to make sure that you are inserting your jump ring into the same part of the link every time. Otherwise, you get wonkiness. To illustrate:

This was the best I could do with the photo. See how all the charms except for the one with the “wrong” arrow are hanging to the top of the bracelet? They were all attached on that side of the link. The misfit was attached on the bottom side of the link. It’s easier to see when you are working with the chain, but the point is, if you want it to be close to perfect, you need to be careful about not letting your chain twist and being consistent with how you attach.

The Encyclopedia doesn’t give any instructions for making the bracelet beyond “attach the charms with jump rings.” You also need to have a system for spacing them out; I chose to put 6 links in between each charm so that I knew they’d be spaced just right.

I actually really like it. I even wore it to yoga class today. It seemed appropriate.

I might actually keep and wear this one.

TIME INVESTED

About an hour

DIFFICULTY

Easy to Moderate (Opening those jump rings just right and getting everything consistent is a little tricky.)

TOTAL COST

• sterling chain, 6″ @ $8.00 per foot = $4.00
• charms, 5 @ $1.55 ea and 6 @ $0.65 = $11.65
• clasps, $1.99

Total cost = $17.64

WAS IT WORTH IT?

Yeah, I think so. It does seem kinda pricey when you can probably get some charm bracelet for around the same, but this one is sterling. And you can customize it however you want. It would make a great gift.

For Martha, belts count as jewelry since making these chain belts falls in the “jewelry” chapter. I’m more of a belt-as-accessory kind of girl, but I suppose that’s all semantics.

Chains are easy, people. All you do is buy some chain and then add clasps. The biggest problem is finding the chain, which I mentioned before. There’s a good selection at M&J Trimming in NYC, and you can order them online, so that’s a good choice.

First up are the necklaces:

You know, easy breezy, I just used the leftover chain I had. If I had more, I probably would’ve made these a little longer.

And then, the belt:

At first I was all, “meh,” but now I kind of like it. I’m not really much of a belt wearer. But it’s cute. All you need to buy in addition to the chain is a belt buckle. This one I bought is actually a purse clasp thing, but I liked the aesthetic of it better than the other buckles they had at the fabric store. It’s also nice because it’s easily adjustable by hooking into whatever link works best.

TIME INVESTED

Virtually none.

Necklaces: About 10 minutes

Belt: About 5 minutes

I mean, not even. With the belt, I just had them give me exactly the length I wanted at the store, so all I had to do was hook on the buckle.

DIFFICULTY

So easy you cannot even believe it

TOTAL COST

Cheap!

• chain, between $3 – $10 a yard depending on size and material
• belt buckle, $7.95
• clasps, $1.99

Necklace total cost = between $5 – $10

Belt total cost = between $13 – $20

WAS IT WORTH IT?

Definitely. If you are looking for a chain belt, it almost doesn’t make sense to buy one. For example, here’s a simple chain belt from CAbi, which is like Tupperware for clothes (you go to parties to buy their stuff; my SIL just had one and I bought a few things).

Cute, right? It’s $59. And I made mine for $16.

The necklaces can be cute, too; I think they work best layered.

I just got back from walking the dog, and I’m now musing about the rules involved. But first, I must digress.

I’ve been meaning to get off my duff for weeks and months to get myself in shape. It is so hard to overcome inertia, especially when said inertia involves things like chocolate croissants and sangria and mac and cheese and jelly beans. But you know what finally got the ball rolling for me? This post from Suburban Matron. And I signed up for My Fitness Pal, so I have people to talk to about it.

My goal is to get my body healthy, really, and to lose some weight along the way and build some muscle. My short term goal is to train for our family camp triathlon in July. We go to family camp every year, and last year I did the triathlon, and I came in LAST. Granted, one person dropped out, but still. The term “triathlon” is even a bit of a misnomer, since it’s only a 100 yard swim, 3 mile bike, and 1 mile run. It barely qualifies. But it is at something like 7000 ft elevation, and the run is practically all uphill, and yadda yadda I wasn’t a total embarrassment but I did come in dead last.

Pre-race. The swim is in the lake. I'm on the far right.

See that lady kind of hiding in the back in the blue bathing suit? That deceptively sexy cut-out bathing suit that reads, “Who me? I just hope I can finish this silly race. Hee hee!” That lady kicked our asses. She won for the women, and while she seemed all non-threatening when it came down to it she was like super athlete.

Post race. I'm 5 from the left.

Now post race, you can see super lady (#508) wearing the HAT OF VICTORY. The men’s and women’s winners each got a hat.

So, my goal this year isn’t even to move up in rankings. I don’t even care if I come in last again, because these are actually some pretty athletic people. I just don’t want to feel like I’m dying doing it. The run nearly killed me; after the swim (I can’t swim properly) and the bike, the run was honestly straight uphill, and I really did feel like I was going to pass out. So this year, I just want to be comfortable without making a completely poor showing.

So I’m starting my training with walking the dog. Gotta start somewhere, right? I leashed Caesar up and headed out.

Basking in the sun.

Along the way we met two different people also walking dogs, and each had very different reactions. The first was a woman who was walking a relatively large dog that looked like some kind of pit bull mix. She was leaving a wide berth between us, so I followed suit. Of course, as we got closer the dogs looked at each other, and Caesar is always curious about other dogs and likes to play with them, so he perked up and wagged his tail, and her dog did the same. But she kind of freaked OUT. She yanked the collar really hard and screamed, “DAISY!” Which I thought was kind of an inappropriate name for a dog that she clearly thinks is so vicious. I quickly tightened up on Caesar and moved forward, and we averted any kind of dog-related disaster. I’m sure she knows her dog and all dogs are different (and go to Heaven, of course), but DAMN.

Later, we passed an Australian shepherd. As we approached, we both slowed a bit and let the dogs smell each other. After a brief encounter, we both walked away. It was totally calm and friendly and normal.

So I wondered. What’s the etiquette here? If you have an aggressive dog, then I suppose it’s clear you stay away and keep a short leash. Literally. But what if your dog is normal and friendly, like Caesar? Do you let him walk up to another dog and sniff? I usually do. Although I suppose it’s also a subtle game of reading the other owner. Clearly I wasn’t letting Caesar approach the crazy lady with her dog, based on her reaction. Do you ask first: “is it ok if my dog smells your dog?”

I leave it to you, dear readers, to enlighten me. What are the politics of dog interaction while out for a neighborhood stroll?

This is either going to be a fascinating analysis of the material sociology of suburbia or the most boring post in the history of the internet.

You get to choose. Can you feel the power?

I spend a lot of time in my car. It’s kind of an LA thing. And I’m not very good about keeping it neat. It reached a point of critical mass probably 10 days ago, but today I finally got around to cleaning it out (and then getting it washed). And, inspired by those posts that show “what’s in my purse?”, I thought I’d try cataloguing for you what was in my car. The little material remnants of daily life in the suburbs of LA.

So, like I said, totally fascinating or totally boring.

I took out everything that didn’t belong there, everything that had accumulated over the previous weeks of living. There’s plenty more in my car right now, but I have decided that it all belongs there, so it stays.

Here’s the visual of what I found in my car when I cleaned it out:

And now I’ll take you on a little journey through this junk.

1. Dirty rag. I think maybe I used this rag to wipe the dog’s feet after taking him to the dog park, before I let him get in my car.

2. You might remember this sandpaper crayon tee from this post. The 5 year old took it to school last week because it was his “share” week. In his pre K, they don’t have show-and-tell in a traditional sense. Each kid gets a “share week,” during which he or she can share something every single day. One day he wanted to show that he likes to do “projects,” so I suggested we do the sandpaper crayon tees with the class. I came in and each kid drew on a piece of sandpaper, and then I took these home and ironed them on 18 something shirts I’d bought and brought them back at pickup. It was a pretty fun and well-received share.

3. Dirty socks. From the 5 year old. Actually, these have only been in the car one day. When I picked him up yesterday, he was running around the play yard with no shoes or socks. I soon discovered that this was because his socks and shoes were soaked from some water play. So he walked out to the car barefoot and we tossed the shoes and socks in. Somehow, the shoes made it inside and the socks didn’t.

4. Why yes, that is a half-eaten granola bar. And the empty wrapper from another. These are from the 5 year old, too. Damn, I guess the 5 year old is largely responsible for the disarray in my car! He ate part of that one bar several weeks ago and then decided he didn’t like it. I didn’t get around to actually throwing it out until today.

5. Two random caps from bottles of Honest Tea. I managed to recycle the bottles, but these caps were lingering. I think they were from the half tea, half lemonade. I love that drink.

6. Empty Frappucino bottle and half-empty home coffee cup. I do a lot of drinking in my car. Thankfully, it’s not alcohol. Because I spend so much time in the car, it’s kind of my entertainment. It’s a way that I pass the time while I’m sitting there. Probably this is a bad habit, but I’m not ready to give it up.

7. An “envelope” (piece of white paper folded over and stapled) with various leaves inside, and a book the 5 year old wrote. It’s called, “A Job of Money,” in case you couldn’t tell by the title. The 5 year old is such a collector. They did a project at school where they all collected “signs of spring,” leaves and various things like that. This is what was left over, and he insisted that he bring it all home to do something with. And then it sat in my car for a week.

8. Various and sundry hair accessories.

9. Two tubes of eye drops from when I had my LASIK.

10. Small pouch of lip glosses.

11. Although it’s hard to tell, this is a Ziploc bag of 100 small stones. I know! It doesn’t seem like that’s 100. They are tiny. Here’s what happened: to celebrate the 100th day of school (5 year old again!), the kids had to bring in 100 of something. We were pulling out of the driveway that day when I realized we’d forgotten his 100 things. So I jumped out, got the 5 year old out, and grabbed these pebbles from the gardening stuff. While he counted out 100, I got the bag and we packaged them up. At the end of that day, we got them back. Now, you’re probably wondering why our school year is so off and why 100 days has only just happened. Oh, it didn’t. It’s been 6 weeks or something since those rocks ended up in my car.

12. I don’t know why Photoshop was not cooperating with me, but for some reason the “12″ would not come out in black, only this light gray. Whatevs, Photoshop. This is a kids’ menu and activity sheet from CPK, one of our favorite dinner haunts. The 5 year old ALWAYS insists on bringing it home, even though it never makes it into the house and then always sits in my car.

13. A sweet snail mail letter from my friend Kathy. She is the best about sending snail mail. I got this letter the other day for no reason, just because she’s awesome. Isn’t that nice?

14. A broken glass jar and two random lids. I’m one of the co-chairs of the Planting Committee at the 8 year old’s school (finally, evidence of the 8 year old’s existence!). We have a great edible garden that we keep up with the science teachers, and we have two big events each year: in the fall, it’s Planting Day, and in the spring, it’s the Farmer’s Market. I know, that’s kind of seasonally backwards, right? That’s the way the curriculum falls, though, and it’s southern California anyway, so does the season really matter? We’re approaching Farmer’s Market, and for that we help the science teachers provide projects for the kids in each grade to produce– ideally something related to our garden or gardening in general– and then they sell them at the market, which happens on a Sunday in early May. The 5th graders run the whole thing, pricing products and manning the market and packaging the things that each grade has made. It’s a great project for them to learn planning, economics, scheduling, yadda yadda. Anyhoo, one grade is making terrariums. I’ve been saving jam jars and the like for weeks, and I finally took them in the other day. Sadly, this one jar broke in transit (it was perfect for a terrarium!). And it’s been in my car since.

15. Roll of packing tape. I had to mail some packages the other day, and I brought this with me.

16. Various garbage, mostly straw wrappers. I get kind of a lot of drive-thru drinks. Not food, just the drinks. See #6 above.

17. Gum and Tic Tacs that were in a purse at one point and never made it back there.

18. “Treasures.” I’m lucky there weren’t more “treasures” in my car. The teachers at preschool have, for years, tossed various beads and acrylic gems into the enormous sandbox at school. It’s a favorite past time of some of the kids, i.e., the 5 year old, to dig through and find them. And of course, he wants to keep everything. So usually he gets in the car at carpool and hands me a handful of plastic beads. Which I promptly deposit in the cup holder. The other place I find them is in the washer and dryer.

19. This little brown bow was on a crazy hat I bought at Ross Dress for Less the other day. I bought it, not because I needed it, but because the 8 year old needed it for a costume for his biography report. He did his project on Louis Armstrong, and I had to dress him up as Louis. This was not an easy task. The good news is that the 8 year old plays the trumpet, so he brought that along as a prop. The bad news is that Louis Armstrong isn’t a particularly memorable dresser. So I kind of put him in an approximation of a 30s suit and tie and added the hat. With the trumpet, it was passable. The hat had this goofy bow on it that was literally glue-gunned on, so I just pulled it off and it looked a bit more like a hat from the 30s.

20. Receipt from my recent night out to see Cabin in the Woods with my friend Eva. It was a mid-week night out! Very unusual. RD Husband didn’t care about the movie, and Eva and I were super excited to see it. We had some scrambling to make it happen during the week, so I ordered the tickets online. I noticed when I did that the showing we were going to was “21+.” That is, you had to be at least 21 to go to this particular viewing. And I thought, “What the hell is going to happen at this movie?!” When we arrived, though, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the 21+ theater is through the bar (yes, this movie theater has a restaurant and a bar), and you can take drinks into the movie! So we ordered up two Pinot Grigios and proceeded to have a fantastic time at the movie.

So that’s what was in my car. It drives RD Husband crazy that my car is such a wreck. It’s a nice, relatively new car, so the fact that I turn it into some kind of rathole absolutely drives him berserk. He’s the kind of person who cleans out the things in his car everytime he gets out. Usually, when questioned about it, I claim that I don’t have time to clean it out. But you know what? I have time. We all have the same amount of time. The fact is, it just isn’t a priority. I’d rather get out and get in the house and deal with it later. It doesn’t bother me enough to put in the effort every time I get out. I’ll do it all at once, eventually. Is your car untidy? Or are you one of those clean-it-as-it-comes people?

I’ve been reading this book called 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think recently, and this idea of time and priority comes from there. It’s really a fascinating book. It’s main goal is to help you get more out of the time you have, but a sub-point that reappears frequently is that we all have plenty of time, and we make choices about how to spend it. The author recommends eliminating “I don’t have time” as an excuse and replacing it with “It’s not a priority.” Which makes a good kind of sense. She cites interesting stats on the reality of how we spend our time in the U.S. and critiques the cultural discourse of busyness. The fact is, most of us don’t know what we do with a lot of our time; we vastly overestimate things like how much we work and underestimate things like how much we sleep.

It’s a fascinating book, actually, so if you’re looking for something to read…

I’m thinking about doing this post every time I get the car washed. Yea or nay?

My favorite kind of post to write is one whose title is a cliché. Don’t you agree?

As far as I understand, it’s spring! We’ve been having some bipolar weather around here in L.A.; last week it was really cold (well, for April in the Southland, 60º is cold) and then on Friday it was like the deluge, with thunder and lightning and everything. And today, it’s 85º. Woot!

It’s time to start admiring the garden again. When I actually take time out to go look at actual living plants in the real world, I’m always wonderstruck. It’s probably a sign that I don’t spend enough time outdoors, but I also love being fascinated by simple things. It makes it easy to entertain yourself.

While I was in the garden yesterday, I noticed a pattern of plants defying the odds. I found some plants in unusual places, and I thought, “how on earth did you grow there? Against all odds?” (Cue Phil Collins song.) Plants seem so delicate and vulnerable, and since you can’t actually see them growing, they appear static. And then all of a sudden, the ivy has completely disassembled my wooden fence. How can it do that? How can this little plant take apart a well-constructed barrier?

Here are a few of the “how in the world…” moments I experienced yesterday.

This is an empty pot. At least, last time I looked at it, it was empty. Over the season, some leaves apparently fell in it. And then, a succulent fell in it? This succulent is flourishing in about 1/4″ of decomposing leaves. When I saw it, I couldn’t even believe it. This guy really wanted to grow here!

I like to use this half whiskey barrel to plant vegetables. When I put it in the garden, I kind of had to set it almost on top of this alstroemeria. No worries. It grew to the side, and just to annoy me, decided to grow up and through the barrel. See it inside? How did it do that? There is a bottom to this container; I guess it just somehow found an opening and then grew up through a good 12″ of soil. Good on ya, flower.

This is our front yard. It’s at the entrance to the play space, where we’ve installed artificial grass. Not to be thwarted, though, the ground cover in the garden beds has decided to move on in. You can see where the whitish-silver plant is growing onto the turf. It just grew right over that pesky fake grass. There’s no soil underneath, either, at least for a good 4″; they take out the soil and put decomposed granite underneath the fake grass for drainage or something. The photo should show all artificial turf; that’s how much the ground cover has encroached. I think it looks kind of nice, though, so I don’t begrudge it its space.

See that calla lily? Yeah, I’ve never planted a calla lily. There’s never been a calla lily in my garden. I literally just noticed it yesterday. How did you get there, lily friend? Maybe the bulb was buried and couldn’t quite get up the energy to blossom in past years. But we’ve been here for 7 years now, so that’s a pretty long hibernation. Anyway, welcome, calla!

What’s growing in your garden these days?

Hi there! What’ve you been up to? I’ve been making chain bracelets with Martha. Kinda.

I will say that these are not my favorite of the jewelry projects. The good news is that they are easy to do. The bad news is that they are kind of “meh.”

The hardest part of this project, actually, is finding the chains. I went to the garment district in LA; it’s not really something that you can find in a Jo Anns, it seems. Although everything’s available on the web these days, I suppose.

Two versions, here: chain with ribbon and chain alone. Here’s a fancy photo of me wearing all four I made:

I’m wondering if you noticed how sassy I am, with my hand sitting jauntily on my hip?

To make these, you either take some chain and thread it through some ribbon and tie it on, or you take some chain and add a clasp. Like I said, really easy.

The only problem I encountered was with the ribbon ones. It’s quite difficult to get the chain to sit flat as you want it without securing it in place. I ended up using a little jewelry cement to secure the ends of the chain to the back of the ribbon. I tried sewing, but that didn’t really work well. Once I had glued the chain at the ends, it laid a little better. Another bonus was that it didn’t slide along the ribbon, either.

Practically, the ribbon bracelets pose a problem, too, which is that you will pretty much always need someone to put them on for you. I had RD husband put mine on, but I had him tie a knot instead of a bow (he was an Eagle Scout, so he’s well-versed in knot-tying). I hate being beholden to people, though. I want a bracelet I can put on myself.

So, cute idea in theory, not so much in practice, I think.

TIME INVESTED

Ribbon bracelets: About 15 minutes each

Chain bracelets: About 10 minutes each

DIFFICULTY

Easy

TOTAL COST

Ribbon bracelets:

• ribbon, $1.99 a roll
• chain, $4.00/yd
• Jewelry Cement, $6.91/tube

Total cost = $12.90

Chain necklace:

• chain $4.00/yd
• clasps, $1.99

Total cost = $5.99

WAS IT WORTH IT?

Well, I don’t necessarily love them, but that might just be a taste thing. The chain-only ones I think are cuter, but depending on the chain you use they can look really cheap, like Claire’s Accessories-cheap. So I’m going to vote no on this one.

You can buy these Kate Spade neon toe shoes for $225, or you can make your own with this tutorial from Green Wedding Shoes.

Enjoy!

Since I’ve been reorganizing my kitchen, I decided to do something about the myriad cooking magazines that I have. But I didn’t want to buy a ton of those magazine files that I like, because they are expensive!

I bought two of these at The Container Store for my bedroom, and they were $11 each. If I bought the number I needed for the kitchen, I’m out nearly $50. Crazy!

I happened to be at IKEA and I saw this:

That’s the FLYT white magazine file. Wait for it… $1.99 for FIVE. Bargain!

Although these files are self-assembly (hello, IKEA!) and they are simply made from corrugated cardboard. I thought I could gussy them up and make them a little sturdier with contact paper. Especially when I saw this:

It’s contact paper that looks like metal. Awesome.

Here’s how I covered it so it looked like it was a magazine file made from metal.

First, I cut the contact paper to a length that would cover all 4 sides of the file. Then, I laid out the assembled file, leaving about 1″ on the left side and about 2-3″ from the bottom, and traced the top of the first side.

I also traced the short edge, and then the opposite side, and cut out the pattern for the top.

This is all pretty straightforward. It gets tricky when you actually go to put the contact paper on. The easiest way to do it is in parts.

First, peel off about half of the first large side, like so:

Then, holding your contact paper as taut as possible, you will lay the side of the magazine file on the paper. Note that you want to move it down an inch or two from the edge you cut so you will have enough of a margin to fold the top over. Once you’ve laid down the box onto the paper, flip it over.

You’ll notice that it’s pretty lumpy. Here’s where you need to smooth out all the wrinkles before you peel off any more. You can use your hand and fingernails or, if you are fancy like me, a bone folder.

Here’s what it looks like once you’ve smoothed it out. Then, you can fold back the top and start peeling off the rest of the backing for this first side.

You can peel a bit at a time, sticking down as you go. It makes it much easier than peeling everything off at once and trying not to let the paper stick to itself.

Once you’ve peeled that whole side off, placed it down and smoothed it over, it looks like this (above). Now you will go back to that original 1″ flap that sits on the back edge and fold that over and smooth it.

Once you’ve got that little flap secured, it’s time to deal with the bottom. You will cut a small triangle out of the bottom at the corner, and then you can fold the flaps under the bottom of the file. Like so:

Once you’ve folded this one flap down, it’s time to move onto the front, short side. You will follow the same procedure, peeling a small amount of backing off and smoothing it down as you go. Then you can continue on to the second long, curved side.

You will then continue around the back so that all the sides are covered. At this point, you will continue cutting the triangles at each corner and folding flaps under.

Once the sides and bottom are done, you’ll have this:

Now it’s time to fold the top flaps in. Start with the front, short side, using the triangle technique from the bottom.

You’ll fold that front flap down and then move onto the first curved side. In order to fold it down, you will need to cut vertical slits at intervals so the paper can fold down smoothly, from the outside view. Note that while it looks like I cut triangles, I really just cut a slit; the way the paper folds down at different angles because of the curve makes it look like there’s more cut out than there is.

Once you get to the back flap, you can repeat the procedure from the front, then repeat the curved side procedure down the second side.

Put your magazines in and you are done!

Here’s what mine looks like in my new kitchen:

Sitting up there above my cookbooks. I still have three more of these to make, but first things first.

Hope you enjoyed!

I’ve been searching high and low for a way to get myself and my blog planning organized. I don’t know that I’ve hit on a totally acceptable solution yet, but I’m getting closer.

You may remember that I made the Post It calendar as an editorial calendar, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with that. It was so enormous. Then, I found this great post from Beckie at Infarrantly Creative with a custom blog planner that she developed and offers as a free download on her site. Brilliant! She even has a video about how to use it. And, since she’s a creative blogger, her planner is tailored to those of us who do projects and then blog them.

To be honest, I didn’t even really understand how she put hers all together– it’s brilliant and spiral-bound and has tear-out sheets and everything. (Things are also complicated by the fact that she’s left-handed, so she made everything custom for that element.) But I loved the main idea, which was to have a monthly editorial calendar on one side and a weekly plan on the other side. That I could work with.

The weekly plan was essentially what was missing from my Post It calendar; seeing an overview is great, but when you are doing projects and blogging them, you need to know what needs to be created and what needs to be written up. And often, these aren’t the same things at the same time.

My main trouble with getting organized is juggling these different aspects of running a crafty blog. There really are at least three parts to making these posts: 1) doing the project, 2) photographing the project (and touching up these photos, which sometimes takes longer than shooting them), and 3) writing up the post. What, ideally, I’d like to be doing during any given week is writing up posts for projects I completed last week and doing the projects I will post the following week. So, it takes some juggling, and I haven’t mastered it yet.

So, I made a few changes to her pages; mostly changing font and some of the categories she has on her pages, and then I printed them out. I’ve discovered that I need to make more changes, and I’m planning on doing a screencast tutorial for how to create your own weekly planner page template in a free, online editor, if you all would be interested in that.

But, in the meantime, the other thing I found I needed was a bookmark. Or a binder mark, to be precise. I put all my stuff in a binder instead of spiral-binding (?) it. But what you end up with are half your pages facing one direction and half of them facing another, so that when you open to your current page you have a spread of two pages, one with a monthly calendar and one with the weekly planner.

So, I needed a marker so that I could open right to this double-spread. But you don’t want a simple divider, since you want to be able to see both pages simultaneously. So you need one of those see through bookmark kinda things that clip in, or something similar. And what I realized was that a ribbon would work great. And so I got to work.

Here’s what you’ll need if you want to make this project:

• 1/2″ ribbon
• fabric stiffener
• brush
• hole punch

The project is so simple I hesitate to even call it a “project.” Here’s what you do:

1. Cut your ribbon to several inches longer than the height of your binder (for a standard size binder, I cut the ribbon to 14″).

2. Paint it thoroughly with fabric stiffener.

3. Let the stiffener dry for several hours.

4. Line your ribbon up under a piece of 3 hole-punch paper (or whatever kind of paper goes in your binder). Align the left edges and the bottom edges. Then, punch holes in the ribbon where the holes on the paper align.

5. Cut the top of the ribbon so that it falls an inch or two above the binder when it is inserted in the rings. You may also need to cut it on a diagonal, as I did, so that it doesn’t hit the rings tabs at the top.

And that’s it! So simple. If you have a small binder organizer or calendar, you could make one of these as well.

So, let me know if you’d be interested in learning how to make your own planning pages for free!

Since you all know I love my 80s ribbon barrettes, I thought I’d share this new technique I developed with you. You can make your own personalized ombre or striped ribbon barrettes… with Sharpies.

Some of you may have seen some tutorials online about dying with Sharpies. I saw one I can no longer find about making pillowcases by coloring the edges with Sharpies. And it inspired me to try coloring the edges of my satin ribbons for barrettes.

All you need are:

• Sharpies in desired color (I bought a pack of 12 for $9.99)
• light-colored satin ribbon, 1/8″ wide
• Goody double bar Samantha barrettes

The pack of Sharpies I got at Staples was great:

I devised two different techniques that produced slightly different results. There are really unlimited combinations and ways you can do this, though.

I used several different colors of ribbon and markers. You really need light-colored ribbons, since the pens don’t really show up on dark ones.

For the first three ribbon designs above, I simply ran the Sharpie relatively lightly on the edges of the ribbons, from the side. This is a little tricky as the edges are wafer-thin, but if you hold the ribbon taut between two fingers, it’s easier.

Run the Sharpie all the way up and down your ribbon, either on both sides or only one. With this technique, you get a thinner, more subtle line, so it looks better, I think, with both sides dyed.

The other option you see in the fourth and fifth designs above is to color the edges from the top, instead of the side.

This will give you a bolder, thicker line. In the “orange on side” design above, you can see it bleeds more and can almost give you a single ombre kind of look. The blues on sides design created a similar ombre effect between two colors.

The last design above is on grosgrain instead of satin ribbon. The grosgrain doesn’t bleed as much, so you get an even more subtle line.

Once you have your ribbons dyed (I pre-cut them to 1 yard each for the barrettes), you can braid them. If you don’t know how to do that, check out my tutorial here.

And here’s what you get:

This is yellow with orange Sharpie on the edges (the thinner way).

A fun and easy way to change up your braided barrettes and make them special.

Hope you enjoy!