New Product Highlights and a bit of a Journal Challenge

Jane Davenport's

The Butterfly Effect System

Jane's Display at the American Crafts booth 

at CHA2017 in Phoenix

I happened upon Jane Davenports new line of traveler type notebooks and accessories while perusing Michael's the other day. I've followed Jane Davenport over the years, so this immediately caught my attention. While at CHA2017 I made sure to get by the American Crafts Booth to review all that was available in her line. I see a lot of potential here for items for The Traveler's Box.

I chose the Mermaid Cover  

The TN (Traveler's Notebook) or Butterfly Effect Book as Jane calls it, comes in four varieties: There is a blank (ready for you to design) and three Jane designed options available. They are made out of a canvas like fabric that seems higher in polyester. The book is 5" x 8 11/16" and comes with one insert that is 4" x 8" in size. So these are slightly smaller than a personal sized insert. There are two bands available in the notebook. The insert has no cover and is made out of thicker smooth cardstock. It has the weight of a mixed media paper but not the tooth. It is made out of 4 sheets so there are 8 double sided pages. The pockets are plastic and come in a set of four. The outside is a Jane design and the inside is a matching color and is transparent. Each pocket folder has a pocket on the front and a pocket on the back.

This is one of the pocket designs slid over a personal size insert so you can see the difference in size.

I had recently signed up for the Planner Squad's Journal Challenge and thought this was a great excuse to try out her new line. The first step of the challenge was to pick out what type of journal you'd be using. Whether it would be an art journal, junk journal etc. So moving forward through this challenge my plan is to share with you how I used Jane's Butterfly Effect Book to accomplish my challenge and how the different products in her line hold up to the challenge.

I created a cover for my BE (Butterfly Effect) insert using the Planner Squad Challenge image and a little personalization. 

To Do or not To Do...List that is!

...and, YES another resource. I tell you I'm full of them! Its one thing to go without any ideas and yet another to have an abundance....because there is no such thing as to many resources. 

Now I know I'm dating myself when I say this but back in the late 80's when I was in college I was a list composer. Yes, I made list's upon list's. List's to get things done in my day. List of books I wanted to read. List of media I wanted to learn to use. I listed anything and everything, any topic even anything I thought about. I was also a brain dumper...but my brain dumps looked more like outlines or....like lists. A list with a purpose. 

I was told by a counselor during that period in my life, that I needed to stop making lists. That lists were a set up to negative self talk when you did't get things on the list done and that there was more to life than crossing things of my to do list. At the time I though "She's the professional what do I know anyway"? Well that counselor had no idea what she was talking about. 

1.) I didn't just list what I needed to get done. 
2.) I listed for the sake of seeing things more completely. For the complete satisfaction I felt when I looked at the list(s) afterwards.
3.) For a compartmentalized individual a list is total nirvana....and I don't mean the Buddist version of nirvana. I mean it is a perfect state of happiness.

Well I had completely given up on lists except maybe a grocery list (not very satisfying I might add) Then last year I discovered The Reset Girl, Cori Spieker. I read her About Me page and was pulled in by the those things I felt I had in common with her. The biggest thing about Cori that caught my attention was her Listers Gotta List or LGL. She puts out a list of prompts, one for each day of the month to get you reflecting on your life. Its not about being perfect and making sure you get them each done all though the month. Its about self discover and it is completely what this repressed lister needed.  I was in nirvana because here was an opportunity to take my list making smash it into my artistic-ness coupled with my need to tell my story for my kids and make scrapertunities. It was the "real deal" and of course another resource providing lots of scrapertunities to reflect on when needed was yet another opportunity to share with you all. Actually the LGL is nearly a scrapbook in itself depending on how you construct yours.

Some people use those refrigerator grocery list pads to compile their LGL each month, some use planners and yet others might paint theirs in watercolor or hand letter them. I use my Travelers Notebook for my LGL. 

Left to Right: Pocket Sized I use for my journaling and Bible studies. Center is a Personal Sized I use for my listing. I do a Journaling prompt insert and my LGL in it. Finally this is my Christmas TN, it is a Cashier Size and I use it to plan and track all things Christmas. *Not shown here is my Mixed Media Journal which is also a Cashier Size.

Here is a sample of Cori's LGL Prompt Download Sheet for November 2016. She creates these and posts them monthly as a FREE download.

I simply cut out the Prompt List and adhere it into my TN Insert (TN=Travelers Notebook) as shown below.

This is the Front cover of my October LGL TN Insert

This is the back of the cover page and the first page in my Oct LGL TN Insert

As you can see in this close up I like to layer my Prompt number and have printed out the Prompts on clear labels so they all look relatively the same. Generally I do mine two up on a page so I have room and those I know I have lots to write about or a photo I want to include I save the whole page.

Cori, The Reset Girl also sells LGL Kits. She offers an Essentials Kit as well as a Deluxe Kit. I purchased the Essentials kit for November in the Grateful Heart. 

Here are some of my pages using this kit. I also pre-ordered the December Essentials kit in A Very Classy Christmas. 

This is the cover page in my Nov LGL TN Insert

This is the back of the cover page and the first page in my Nov LGL TN Insert

These list generate a lot of ideas that can be turned into Scrapertunities. For example the #2 prompt for November was "Words to describe this season of my life". I can see a few ways to turn this into a scrapbook page using both photo's of myself in the roles I listed above or using textural words (via embellishments etc.) running through the page. What a way to leave a legacy for your family about how you see yourself at this stage in life. It might be nice to add the date and age to the journaling block as well. (food for thought)

Another thing Cori has recently started is her Self Care Photo Challenges. She started this for October with the following prompt list.

So all during the month of October I posted a photo to my Instagram account based on the appropriate prompt. It was very much a challenge and I was not completely successful at it but it was super fun. Guess what else it did? ....... it created a Scrapertunity! 😲 Go Figure! So Here is an example of one of my posts.

and here are the final scrapbook pages I did of this process. They are 10, 9" x 9" pages and were super simple in the layout. I even just followed the same color scheme that Cori used in her Challenge image. I did them in the 9" x 9" because my Book of Me I've been working on for my kids is already in that size. I barely used any journaling because in my Instagram posts I had already done "mostly" a journaling block already.