CAPSULE WARDROBE

Putting together a capsule wardrobe is the best thing I've done clothing wise in my whole life. It's amazing! The idea is to have a closet filled with just clothes you need and like for the current season. To open the door and be able to pick anything in there - wow! It takes so much stress out of getting dressed. Everything fits, everything goes together, everything is right for the weather and temperature.

So how do you do this? You start by sorting your clothes in piles. One for worn out or damaged items. Throw them away! One pile to donate and/or sell. Be honest with yourself! Does it fit? WILL it ever fit? Do you actually wear this? The next step is to put away the clothes that doesn't match the season. Pack them in a box and put into storage.

You are supposed to end up with about 37 pieces. This does not include pajamas,workout clothes, underwear or accessories. I decided not to include things I need to wear because of rain or extreme cold and such either. I don't wear those things to look good. (And I don't, believe me!)

Now some of you will have too many items by now, and some of us (me!) will end up with not enough. If you have too many, pair down again. If you don't have enough, look at what you have and write a shopping list. What is missing? 

The reason I ended up with not enough clothing (especially pants) was because I decided to get rid of my "when I become skinny again I will wear this" clothes. I was sad to see some of it go, but I feel so much better now when I don't have to look at those tiny little pants and think about what I need to do to fit into them. Let it go!

To learn more about this I recommend the Unfancy blog. That is where I found the capsule wardrobe planner, which is very helpful. I printed it out on sturdy paper and cut the pages down to 5x7,75". I didn't use all the pages but picked out the ones I felt were useful to me. I stapled them together and glued the last page to a piece of packing for rubons by Crate Paper. It has a punched hole at the top which means I can hang it on a nail in my closet. Perfect!

I used the Stylebook app to keep track of my capsule wardrobe clothes, and I love it. You photograph your clothes and it easily removes the background from your photos. I then used PSE to put together a collage that I taped to the page. So much easier than writing everything down! 

I'm all about comfort and have a tiny budget so it's not a fancy wardobe at all. Just clothes I love and feel comfy in. I'm no fashion blogger so I won't share my wardobe here unless anyone is interested. If you are, put a comment below!

If you put a wardrobe together I would love to hear about it!

/Magdalena

12 IN 14 NOVEMBER

The challenge for November is "Black and White". There were a lot of black and white PL cards in the October PL kit from Studio Calico so I decided to do a PL spread for this challenge. 

Stromsvigt Design is now Paper Nerd Design, and have a lovely new set of PL cards out called the Day Dream Pocket Journaling set. The bottom right card is from that line. I will be using more cards from that set in future spreads for sure! You can find it here.

To take part in the challenge (and win something) visit Nina Christensen on her blog.

/Magdalena

SOMETIMES I MAKE CARDS

Because I like to fill my stash of grab and go birthday cards and such. Whenever I sit down I make lots of them at once, because it's not my favorite scrappy thing to do. I got the Poet Society card kit so that is what I used this time, plus whatever other leftovers was on my desk from other kits. I made a batch of cards, but I'm only sharing my favorite four.

/Magdalena

ONE BUSY FALL

The start of the new semester at school has been crazy busy. I've been coming home exhausted with no energy left for blogging, which is why there haven't been many posts lately. From this week on things will be relaxing a bit, so hopefully I will have more time for crafting.

Today I'm sharing my PL September spreads. I've already recieved October kit from Studio calico, so I want to hurry up and get September finished.

/Magdalena

LOTW

This Saturday I have the honor of being selected Layout of the Week at the Studio Calico blog. It's my Stars layout from my last blog post that is being featured. Happy news!

I'm also sharing one more layout from the crop last weekend. This one went through quite a makeover after I got home.

The reason was the artificial lights at the crop which was held in a basement. What looked like photos, papers and embellishments in the same shade of green turned out to be four different shades when I got home. It didn't look good.

I had to use a much bigger photo than I originally did to cover up the rips in the paper after removing everything, but I ended up liking this layout SO much more. It was totally worth the extra work.

/Magdalena

MY FIRST CROP

So this Saturday I was at my first crop ever. I was with three friends of mine, and we were very productive and had a good time. I made 5 layouts in the 9 hours we were there. A few of them still needs a little tweaking before they're completely finished, but I'm really happy with that result. 

The hardest part for me was not having a printer for my journaling. I tried both a roller stamp,journaling by hand and not doing any journaling at all. 

When me and my neighbour arrived we immediately noticed we had brought very little stuff. I had a small bag of tools plus my IKEA desk organizer with the Studio Calico "Poet Society" kit. The majority of the people there had actually brought more stuff to the crop than I even own. Hilarious!

The Poet Society kit was very easy to work with and was more than enough for me to have products to pick from all day. Here are two of the layouts I made:

I had cheated a tiny bit by printing the grid ahead of time. The bottom layout is for a Pen and Paper class challenge.

Tomorrow it's time for my contribution to the Pen and Paper class to be posted at Studio Calico. You can still enroll for the class. I highly recommend it. Laura Kurz is an amazing teacher. Here's a sneak from the project I made:

/Magdalena

12 IN 14 SEPTEMBER

It's the first Monday of the month and it's time for another 12 in 14 challenge by the Stromsvigt DT. This month's prompt is "minimalistic". Something that should suit me, right?

Here's what I made:

I had a hard time finding that last piece that made it feels finished, but when my husband suggested I'd add something yellow it all came together. Unfortunately there was a misfortunate stapler malfunctioning, but that's the only yellow star I had left so it is what it is. I had my son sign his name to the tag since he's the photographer. That's me reading the morning paper, while little sister watches the kiddie shows.

This is also my layout for the second assignment in Laura Kurz' "Pen and Paper" class. If you haven't joined this class already, go do it right now! (Yes, you still can.)Laura had me sobbing with just the introductory video. Yes, she is really that good!

Since the class is about writing I wanted to add a translation of my journaling for those of you that does not speak Swedish:

"Lately Dante has been borrowing my phone to take photographs. His pictures aren't always pretty and sometimes they are out of focus, but he photographs our everyday life. Mommy, daddy, sister, messy rooms and bath towels hung up to dry on a door. He's also taken a whole lot of crazy photos the entire family have laughed at really hard. So thank you, Dante, for helping me document our everyday life! I hope you will keep on doing so."

To see the rest of the Stromsvigt minimalistic projects visit:

Nina Christensen
Katharina Pradel

Don't forget to add a link to your own minimalistic project at Nina's blog for the chance to win a prize!

/Magdalena