I was inspired by Ali Brown recently in her post here about making mini zines with one sheet of paper. I have actually heard of this before, but sort of rediscovered the joy!
I decided to create my own version that is printable and fillable. My thought was to create a positivity zine, so you can add gratitude and journal within it. Also makes a great gift or addition to happy mail that you are sending out. Here’s a quick video showing how you would construct this zine, plus close ups of my design.
You can definitely make your own mini zine and there are a million themes and topics you can touch upon. It’s great for anything you want to duplicate since making copies would be super easy. Try it out and have some zine fun! If you want to print my zine design, you can find it on my patreon here.
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We all need time to decompress every now and again, but especially after stressful events. Sitting down for a bit of quiet time, just coloring patterned designs can be very relaxing for you.
In any given day, we all go through so many different emotions, both negative and positive. I was walking my dog the other day and thinking about how one could make sense of such a mix of emotions in a day, week or especially difficult time period in life. It can be very challenging to dig deep and explore how we are truly feeling and face those emotions at times.
Design ideas often come to me during everyday moments and while meandering the streets with my dog, the image of bottles came to me as a coloring page design. Why not color our emotions out and metaphorically put them into bottles? My kids actually have a book similar to this idea, about sorting our their emotions and putting them in their place.
I decided to create this coloring page with essential oil bottles, because I was thinking about how aromatherapy can help us deal with our emotions. You know how a scent can bring back a memory and sensation so vividly in your mind? That means that using certain scents, we can invoke good memories and good feelings as well.
For this coloring page idea, I thought it would be a relaxing and playful activity, to identify our emotions, color them out and label them in these bottles. Sorting them out on paper can help us understand how we are feeling and spend some quality time in self-reflection.
You can even host a coloring party, inviting friends over for some decompression time together.
I regularly use essential oils and supplements to help support my well-being, as well as balance my emotions, improve focus and kickstart my motivation. From improving my immune system to alleviating sleeping and digestive issues, I’m all for natural solutions that make my life better. If you are ready for a change, learn more about how I use essential oils here.
When you don’t feel well, it’s a total drag and negatively impacts not only your well-being, but your work and the people around you. We often treat our symptoms, but forget that many ailments can be traced back to bad habits and a not so ideal lifestyle.
I’ve always been generally healthy and luck to have no major ailments (knock on wood). But I go through the seasons of sickness and more so now, with age, have noticed how much harder it is to plow through difficult times and to bounce back from sickness. There’s also the years and years of wear and tear on my body (and mind) and so I really need to help myself and make a change.
I’ve realized how important is is to build a strong foundation for a healthy lifestyle with good habits, because then it’s not a struggle to “do the right thing.” As a mom, I’m also realizing how important good habits are and how they make life so much easier! When we have a good habit, it all works automatically and it isn’t a struggle. This is especially important for my kids, they just do certain things because it’s become habit. But if I haven’t helped them develop those habits, it’s a constant struggle!
If we are what we eat and do… then it’s supremely important that we know what we are eating and doing and how all of it makes us feel in the end. I think that is the missing component sometimes. From the data collected, we have to realize if it’s making us feel good or not.
I decided to created a daily health log where I would write down my food intake, but also how I feel throughout the day. It’s so helpful to have this all in one place, so that you can easily see patterns and connections.
Use this log for at least two weeks and truly understand what you are doing and how it makes you feel. I recommend starting with logging your food intake, but you can also add in water intake, exercise and even bowel movements. Whatever you want to track, just make a quick note and log how you are feeling. You’ll start seeing connections of when you haven’t eaten well and feel hungry earlier in the day or when you eat something un-agreeable and feel bloated or digestive issues.
Just download the printable log in your preferred paper size from the links above and even photocopy so you have a bunch ready. Stick it in a binder and keep it open with a pen ready, in a location, such as the kitchen. This will ensure you remember to log everything down.
If you want to get to a healthier place, then you need to know where you stand right now. That’s why a daily log is so important… because we never remember all the details – you’ve got to write it down.
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BTW, I regularly use essential oils and supplements to help support my well-being, as well as balance my emotions, improve focus and kickstart my motivation. From improving my immune system to alleviating sleeping and digestive issues, I always look for natural solutions for betterment and change. If you are ready for a change, learn more about how I use essential oils here.
Lately I’ve been trying to practice my knitting again to actually use some of my yarn stash. I’m very much a beginner and know how to cast on, knit and purl. Yep, that’s the extent of my knowledge! In the past, I’ve only ever made scarfs and this month I decided I would tackle making a pair of socks. I know, it’s a big leap! But I am determined to use the yarns that I have, rather than just hoarding them for their pretty colors!
It made me think about how we often can gift yarn to friends or even make something yarny to gift to them. So I decided to create a rainbow colored yarn notecard that is a super fun printable for all your yarn-related correspondence!
It’s super easy to print out these notecards – 4 on a page – trim and include a little message in all the happy mail you send out. Whether it’s a completed project you are gifting or some yarn stash you want to pass along.
You can download your free printable rainbow notecards using the links above – whether you like LETTER sized paper or A4 for us Europeans. I have not included any watermark or copyright/design credit in the design, so you can use the notecards without any other writing or distraction. But please know these are for personal use and you can certainly share by directing folks to my blog here to download. Thank you and enjoy!
It’s amazing the print quality you can achieve from your home printer these days. Technology has really progressed and although there is no replacement for professional, bulk printers out there (love you guys) – it’s extremely convenient to be able to print from home, whenever you need it – instant gratification!
I love designing and using printables (no surprise) but I understand that most complaints center around the usage of ink. Printers might be affordable these days, but their ink cartridges seem to be the most expensive things in the world! I get it and feel your pain. You can imagine that I go through a lot of ink every year. But whatever solution you have at home, I know that it makes sense to make the most out of our ink cartridges and use it to the max.
So here are a few tips about printing from home and using up those ink cartridges to the max.
Take your time – if you don’t want to waste or misprint, make sure you slow down, take your time and check all the settings and preview. It’s easy to just get trigger happy and press print a zillion times… then you realize the paper setting was wrong or quality was set low – whatever – and you’ve got a huge stack of misprints! It totally pays to double-check before hitting print.
Test print and click cancel – if you are just starting out and not sure on the best papers and settings for your purposes, it’s okay to test a swatch! You can cancel a job and it’ll stop the printing and you save ink! There’s no need to let the whole thing print when you notice something is wrong or if you just wanted a partial print to see the quality!
Greyscale and Fast quality – I find that it saves color ink to print b/w work with greyscale selected… instead of using colors to mix and create black, it uses the straight black cartridge. I also find that it helps to print some items as Fast quality – especially black and white items that you really don’t need that true black. It really does save ink!
Batch printing lower quality prints – My biggest tip is to save things you want to print in a folder, so you can batch print at a later time… namely, when your printer is nearly out of ink. This is for stuff that you maybe don’t need at full quality or wouldn’t mind if it was a bit streaked or light from lack of ink. You know that dreaded warning of low ink and to change the cartridge? Ugh!
The issue is that it’s not totally empty yet and it might only be some colors and not others. So when I get that message, I rock out my “to print” folder and print them all out until there really is no ink left. I printed everything you see in the photo above when my ink was “low.” You can see the last couple prints were streaked and missing some spots of ink, so I knew that I was truly at the end at that point.
However, sometimes it’s only certain colors, so you can still get some other types of printables out before tossing the ink cartridge for good. See above how vintage prints seemed to still work! I think especially if you like shabby chic, vintage looking printables, it’s actually pretty cool to get the ink variations at this point of the ink cartridge life. If you are using your printables for art journaling, all the better as you might not want perfect prints anyway.
So those are my tips for home printing. You can save a lot of ink and money with just these few tips, making your ink stretch to many many printables. I hope you found these tips useful!
Angel policy: All free printables posted are for PERSONAL USE ONLY. Feel free to share as long as you link back to this website. Thank you for spreading the love!
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