Cora

My plans for the weekend: the iMessage sticker collage

A phone photo, an iMessage bar typed mid-frame, six white-edged photo stickers with marker labels. Built on your phone in ten minutes. · 2 min read

This one is everywhere right now: a plain phone photo, an iMessage input bar dropped across the middle that reads my plans for the weekend, and six die-cut photo stickers around it with labels written in marker. Two slides, no typed paragraphs, and it reads in two seconds.

Why it works

The iMessage bar is the most recognisable piece of chrome on a phone. Dropped onto a photo of your bed or the beach it is instantly clear and slightly funny: you are texting the internet your plans. The stickers do the rest. Six boring photos become one poster. Nobody reads a list, everybody looks at a collage on a fridge. And the handwriting says "I made this", not "I downloaded a template".

What you need

• one wide phone photo for the ground: the bed, the car seat, the beach, the kitchen table. Real, a bit messy.
• six small photos, one per plan. Your camera roll already has them.
• a free photo editor that does layers, plus the markup pen your phone already has.
• ten minutes.

Step by step

1. Open any iMessage chat, type the title in lowercase, my plans for the weekend, and don't send. Screenshot it and crop to just the input bar with the blue cursor and the send arrow.
2. Drop your ground photo into the editor. Paste the bar as a layer across the middle of the frame, almost full width.
3. Make the stickers: crop each plan photo to a loose square and add a thick white border (most editors have a frame slider). On iPhone you can also long-press the subject in a photo to lift it out, which gives you the die-cut look for free.
4. Scatter the six stickers around the bar, each tilted a few degrees, slightly overlapping. Leave the bar itself clear.
5. Label each one with the markup pen, your finger, one colour (white or one tone from the photo): beach mornings, matcha breaks, thrift run, long bath, pasta night, no alarms. Lowercase, quick, not neat. If you'd rather type, use the rounded family (SF Rounded on iPhone), small, still one colour.
6. Slide two: same layout, the bar now reads and next week. Stickers: gym 3x, reset, inbox zero, early nights, walks, water. Caption: my plans for the weekend, send me yours.

Make it yours

Food: farmers market, sunday roast, the new bakery, iced coffee twice, cook something slow. Fashion: sale rail, tailor drop-off, the wedding fit, shoe repair, thrift obviously. Mom life: park early, pancakes, nap-time coffee, a wash, grandma's, bed by 8 (me). Keep every label to two or three words; the photo does the explaining.

Plan it in Cora

Save the card, build the two slides, drop them into the Plan tab at the slot Cora suggests, and let the reminder ping you when it's time to post.

Cora · hello@coraplanner.com