New Year, New Blog Post – 2023

Posted on by Reema

Happy New Year 2023 Image

As the bell of 2023 rings across the country, I find myself entering the new year and a sense of hope fills me. I’m not one to believe that the new year will drastically change anything for me, nor will I become a brand new person. However, I do believe in trying and the 1st of January is always a good time to forgive yourself for any mistakes made, start over and try again. Today, I am forgiving myself for the past times when I failed to do my resolutions or complete a project. Today, I am making a vow to simply try again in the hope that the coming year will be better.

Resolutions are being made by many today and whilst I am awful at sticking to them, there’s a sense of community that comes with making resolutions and actively working on bettering yourself in some capacity. They don’t work for me personally but I appreciate the concept of them. This year, instead of making specific resolutions, I am going to focus on having a Word of the Year. For the last few years, I have been focusing on surviving, coping with life and healing. This year, I want to focus on changing it from surviving to thriving. There are many ways in which I need to improve and how this could be incorporated into life. For starters, I want to actually get organised once more, working towards flourishing. As such, my Word of the Year is Flourish.

For me, that means a few things. It means to improve what I already do in a positive way, grow wherever I can and do actually succeed in places. I know there are some specific things that I need for this to happen, such as being more organised again.

How do I plan to Flourish?

1. Coming up with a few specific goals for the year (SMART goals!) or having a vision board to work towards
2. Having a planner again (something I’ve neglected recently)
3. Making time for self-care and working on forming better habits
4. Regularly being creative

5. And in addition to the above, maybe even finishing a few creative projects

To start, I wanted to create a short blog post to help keep myself accountable. After all, end and start the year as you mean to go on – right? This is how I mean to go on. I will be making these goals and getting more specific in my planner. I also want to share some exciting things that I have been working on in the coming weeks. Perhaps 2023 can be the year I flourish in blogging once more.

What about you? Do you have any Resolutions or a Word of the Year that you will be focusing on in 2023?

Scrapbook Essentials – My Tips for Beginners

Posted on by Reema

Creating a scrapbook is something I have always loved and appreciated. I consider myself a beginner to it as I have not quite mastered the habit of doing it regularly – or even remotely quickly. I would love to do it more but I find myself, sometimes, just unsure where to start or what I need. So, I’ve put together a list of a few tips and essentials. These help me to get into the right frame of mind and actually scrapbook. They reduce the distractions, which helps.

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World Stationery Day

Posted on by Reema

It’s World Stationery Day! I cannot believe it’s already come by, this month has zoomed past here. I have spent the entire day playing with a bunch of my stationery, writing some letters for some friends and scrapbooking too!

World Stationery Day banner

This week, I have been rooting through boxes of stationery that was in my storage. Going through it was so nice. Unfortunately, as I am in the process of moving, I no longer have a little craft room. Rather, I live out of boxes whilst I’m at my old home and am slowly taking things over to my new place. Since it is a temporary move (apparently), we haven’t taken too much so we’re trying to be minimal and put a lot of things into storage. It was nice to see what I had and organise it a little.

However, I am even happier to be able to use what I have. So, this morning, I spent some time using a few of the things I found in my efforts. I am hoping I can find myself a permanent place soon – and a craft room! So I can get back to making more crafts. I found a bunch of items that I had made or letters I have written for loved ones that were just not sent/completed. Next time I come down to the storage, I hope that I can actually work on completing some and get them sent to their recipients.

Just getting to use my stationery has been a huge bonus though. I have a few exciting posts planned that will be coming soon. For now, I just wanted to say Happy World Stationery to you all!

If you haven’t heard of National Stationery Week already – check out this post. Alternatively, visit the official website here.

National Stationery Week 2022 – 7 Days of Stationery

Posted on by Reema

It is almost time for every stationery addict’s and stationery company’s favourite week – the return of the annual National Stationery Week! Starting 16th May, we’re a few weeks out from everything kicking off.

With National Stationery Week coming and the country finally opening up, moving on from the pandemic, now is a perfect time for stationery companies to consider partnering up and sponsoring the event. It also happens to be the best time for me to return to actively blogging once more. Every year, the week has “7 Days of Stationery” with each day sponsored by a different company. A few of these days have already been sponsored. However, there are still plenty of choices. For stationery companies looking to sponsor the week, now is the time to act. For stationery addicts like myself, this is a great year to find new companies or products, meet like-minded people or just go shopping. Any excuse to buy new stationery, after all, is one that I appreciate!

National Stationery Week 2022's 7 Days of StationeryNational Stationery Week

As the name suggests, the purpose of the week is to celebrate stationery and the act of using it. In particular, writing by hand – which in turn gives you the opportunity to send people more handwritten letters or cards. 

This year, National Stationery Week runs from 16th May to 22nd May 2022. As always, there are seven days of stationery – a theme for each day of the week. These tend to be similar each year but with different sponsors taking up the mantle, it’s nice to see what they do differently each time.

7 Days of Stationery

  • Monday 16th May – #makeanoteday [Sponsored by Ryman]
  • Tuesday 17th May – #penandpencil
  • Wednesday 18th May – #worldstationeryday [Sponsored by Silvine]
  • Thursday 19th May – #workhappy [Sponsored by Snopake]
  • Friday 20th May – #fountainpenfriday
  • Saturday 21st May – #stationeryshopsaturday
  • Sunday 22nd May – #sendaletterdaysunday

I am particularly looking forward to seeing what the plans are for ‘Work Happy’, as I think that’s a really important theme – especially in the past couple of years. A lot of us have spent the majority of our time indoors and isolated. Self-care and creating a happy working environment – especially if you’re working from home has become even more important to people. I’m very keen to see what Snopake have planned for this theme.

Ryman has always been one of my favourite stationery stores since I was young. It has a good range of stationery that is both high in quality and affordable. And Silvine is a perfect sponsor for this national week with its British made products. So far, the sponsors have been incredible and I cannot wait to see who the remaining sponsors end up being.

If you’re a stationery addict, there will likely be a bunch of competitions and activities throughout the week for you. There is always something to be involved in! I hope you enjoy the week too.

Check out www.nationalstationeryweek.com to find out more. Throughout the week, be sure to follow #NatStatWeek over on social media. You can also check out my previous posts if you are interested to see what I got up to in years past.

The 100 Day Project 2022 Starts Now

Posted on by Reema

#The100DayProject Starts NowWow, so it’s been way too long since I have posted here. However, planning a wedding, studying and all of the other ridiculous things that happened during the pandemic did not help. But I figured I would come back to share an art project that I wanted to get involved in. The 100 Day Project – also known as #The100DayProject – is an online international art project. This year, it is back for the 9th time. Starting today – on 13th February 2022 – artists all around the world are joining to participate in this project.

The project is very simple. Create something every day for 100 days. That’s pretty much it! Of course, a lot easier said than done! If you see this late or want to join, it’s is never “too late”. Just start whenever you want, using that date as the first date. Hell, if you want, join in for the remainder of the challenge and just do what is left. Alternatively, you can even start now but take longer than one hundred days to complete it.

The challenge is to encourage people to work on their creativity regularly. Whether that is to complete one hundred pieces of art or to simple work on something for one hundred days straight is up to you. The whole point of the challenge is simply to get creative.

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