Add Personality to Your Planner With These Free Printable Stickers

Maddie here, sayin’ hey hi and hello! As you can see by our Brit + Co planner line (available at Target, yippee!), we love a good stationery accessory. What I love even MORE is an accessory that can work double duty. After I decked out my B+C planner to the nines, I thought of some other applications for those leftover embellishments. Scroll on to see three nifty uses for some of my favorite #BritxTarget accessories.

1. Add letters to your… shoes?! You know those alphabet stickers I can’t stop talking about? Turns out they’re the sassy accessory I didn’t know my shoes needed!

2. Use photo corners in your sketchbook. Artists, try this simple exercise: Place an inspo photo on the left side of your sketchbook with our photo corners (FYI: They do zero damage to the photo!) and quickly paint or sketch the photo on the right. I love doing this exercise with vacation photos — like I did with that pic of North Carolina countryside above.

3. Add a stick-on fabric patch to a ballcap. These babies are *that* sticky, my friends. I’ve already added ‘em to this hat, my duffel bag, and my denim jacket. And I have no intention of slowing down :)

There you have it! Three unconventional uses for some bangin’ stationery accessories. You have so much personalization ahead of you. Plan on!

How have you used your Brit + Co accessories? We wanna see! Post a pic on Instagram with the hashtag #BritxTarget so we can take a peek.

Photography: Kurt Andre

While we love how much technology has benefited our daily lives, there are some days when the constant buzzing and beeping of our tech can drive even the most put-together lady insane. So this week, we’re turning off our push notifications, logging off our social media, and taking the digital detox we desperately need. Here are 11 creative ways to take a digital detox to minimize stress, kickstart your creativity, and unglue yourself from your smartphone.

1. Start using a paper planner. We’re totally guilty of using our iCal or Google Calendar to track our every move, but using a paper planner actually has a few surprising benefits for your brain. In fact, we’ve fallen in love with retro physical planners so much that we’ve even created our own line of customizable planners at Target, complete with ring-bound planners, binders, inserts, and fun planner goodies. Snag ’em while they last!

2. Invest in a really interesting book. Instead of scrolling through Instagram to unwind from a stressful work day, we suggest getting lost in a really good book. Here are a few new adult and young adult books to check out. You can never go wrong by picking up a well-loved classic at your local thrift store either.

3. Take a walk around your neighborhood on your lunch break. When it’s finally time to get up from our office chair and indulge in some nosh, the first thing we usually do is frantically scroll through all the notifications we’ve missed. But this week, we’re mixing things up by leaving the office and going for a leisurely stroll around the block instead, while our phones chill on our desk. Just make sure to bring a watch with you so you know when to start heading back.

4. Treat yourself to a physical cookbook. We love the idea of thumbing through a gorgeously photographed cookbook, but we usually end up searching Google for the quickest dinner or meal prep recipes instead. This week, we’re treating ourselves to a brand new cookbook and putting in a little pre-planning effort so we’re not tempted to look up recipes, ingredient swaps, or troubleshooting tips on the fly.

5. Buy a battery-powered alarm clock. We all know the struggle of trying to resist the temptation of our phones the moment we wake up. To combat the habit, we’re investing in a battery-powered alarm clock (we love the Newgate Clocks Covent Alarm Clock ($38), but a dollar store find will also work) and charging our phone in another room. Treat yourself to a little tech-free time in the morning, lady!

6. Take a tech-free weekend getaway. When the work week is over, it’s time for some much-needed rest and rejuvenation. So instead of spending the entire weekend on your mobile, we suggest planning a road trip where you stash away your tech for emergency use only. Whether you travel with your boo or your gals, having a tech-free travel day is a great way to recharge and reconnect with your loved ones.

7. Test out a film or instant camera for a week. Trust us — your Instagram feed can take a breather for seven days. Instead of snapping 40 pics of the same scene with your smartphone, try using a film or instant camera. It may take some getting used to, but we guarantee you’ll love learning a new skill and having a physical reminder of your awesome week.

8. Break out the guitar or recorder. If you already play an instrument, substitute making music the old-school way for rocking out to your Spotify playlists. And if you don’t already know how to tickle the keys or jam out on the clarinet, we suggest picking up a cheap recorder or harmonica and a beginner’s guide and learning a few basic skills whenever you’re tempted to browse iTunes.

9. Host a wine and board games night. Instead of having all your friends over to binge Netflix, try a boozy game night. We suggest instituting a no-tech policy for all attendees. Solidarity, sister!

10. Write snail mail cards. Everyone likes getting mail, and a tech detox is the perfect opportunity to experiment with your lettering skills and treat your friends and family to a little postal surprise. Plus, we love that this gives us an excuse to invest in cute stationery — or better yet, craft some ourselves.

11. Ditch your fitness app and take a run around your community. We totally agree that a whole week of cardio sounds dreadful, but we’re taking this opportunity to replace our app workouts with a leisurely run around our neighborhood. Not only is it a great way to explore your community, but running outside also lets you set your own route and challenge yourself based on your fitness ability.

What are some creative ways that you take a digital detox? Tweet us by mentioning @BritandCo.

Brit + Co may at times use affiliate links to promote products sold by others, but always offers genuine editorial recommendations.

Mariska Hargitay is the woman of the hour anywhere she goes, with her iconic Law & Order: SVUrole as Olivia Benson under her belt for the last 25 years. The character is an absolute advocate to women — and assault victims of any gender — through her words, actions, and powerful convictions of each perpetrator on the show. She takes great care with her victims and pursues perpetrators with fervor, and slowly as you watch the show..the line blurs between Olivia and Mariska.

This isn't anything new — just recently Mariska literally stopped production on the show to help a child (who mistook her for an actual police officer) find her mom. It's just who Mariska is. She walks the walk and talks the talk — including during her speech at Variety's Power of Women's Power of Women event.

Image via NBC Universal

As a Power of Women honoree, Mariska was recognized in regards to her work as an advocate for sexual assault survivors. She took the stage and used her platform to discuss rape and assault conviction reversals, shining a light on the recent overturned ruling in Harvey Weinstein's landmark NYC case. Here's what she said:

Today I want to talk about reversing convictions, and more specifically I want to talk to you about how impossible it is to reverse mine. It’s impossible to reverse my conviction that survivors matter. It is impossible to reverse my conviction that what happens to us matters, and that our society must respond to survivors with a more a compassionate, holistically, deeper, and more nuanced understanding of what healing means.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that after a trauma, survivors can reclaim lives of hope, of possibility, of audacious risk, beautiful intimacy, and glorious, glorious abundant joy. And I stand before you as evidence of that statement.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that we must listen to survivors as experts on what justice means. It is extraordinary how little their voices are consulted, let alone incorporated, in the process of deciding how to repair harm. Justice is not a one-size-fits-all journey.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that patriarchal impunity has to end. Patriarchal impunity is when a male-dominated system exempts perpetrators from punishment. Studies show that only 20% of all rape cases in the U.S. are reported to the police, and that between 5 and 0% of all rapes result in a guilty plea or a conviction. So why do 80% of victims not report? Because they're met with a system that grants impunity to perpetrators; a system that blames victims; a system that accepts only those victims who are experienced as "real" rape; a system that completely misunderstands the neurobiology of trauma, which causes behavior in women that doesn't fit the picture of how a "real victim" would act.

Is that change needed that victims should just pull themselves together? Just buck up and report anyway? No. No, it's the system that receives them that needs to change

It is impossible to reverse my conviction — and the conviction of my extraordinary team, The Joyful Heart — that the backlog of untested rape kits can be brought to zero; that the testing of all new kits must be mandated; that we need a statewide kit tracking system; and that survivors have the right to access the status of their kits.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that grammar — yes, grammar — that we use when we speak about rape must change. In the sentence, "A woman is raped," there's a crime and there's a victim, but there's no perpetrator. Where's the perpetrator? Where is he? Statistically, as we know, most likely he's walking free. He's so free that he doesn't even appear in the language about the crime that he committed. Is that not extraordinary? It's extraordinary that in the very grammar, the perpetrator goes free. Reintroducing perpetrators in the language of rape will make some very unwieldy grammar, but that's the nature of change. It's unwieldy, it's messy, it's uncomfortable, but it's necessary.

Image via NBC Universal

Hargitay continued on in her prolific speech to describe that rape shouldn't be considered a "crime of passion" because it's "not simply the next step in the trajectory of his passion" when a man takes a consensual hookup too far and assaults a woman against her will. She stated that it's "an exercise of power," doubling down that the language we use is important.

The speech went on to address that rape is both about power and control, as a "construct" that was "built, and assembled, and reinforced over time." She noted that there are people with these positions of power — and she specifically called out those in the entertainment industry — that could make a difference and aligned themselves to victims and survivors.

After this and some other remarks, Hargitay specifically called out the Weinstein conviction reversal. She said:

I do want to say something about the Harvey Weinstein conviction, specifically about the reason that it was overturned: too many women's voices. Too many women's voices were allowed to speak. Hallelujah! Amen! I can't imagine anything more beautiful than that. The Daily podcast episode talked about how it was so risky for the prosecution to have that many women testify. Risky to let women speak? You're damn right it is!

Too many women speaking brings change. Too many women speaking shakes the establishment. Too many women means we get listened to more, and people might actually hear what we have to say. Look what happened when women started saying just two words, right? Me too — just as an example — a tidal wave of change. Me too.

And then of course, there was the response: the Me Too Movement. The backlash. The examination of whether the changes that have come are lasting, or are even positive. Of course there's a backlash! What did they expect? For women to speak repeatedly, loudly, together, with a purpose — for there to be no backlash? The backlash is evidence of how powerful those voices were, how powerful those voices ARE.

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Header image via NBC Universal