Project Life, week 8

The full spread:

This week, I went back to doing a little bit at a time and I like the results better than the previous 2 weeks, where I did everything at once and it looked a little too matchy-matchy for me. I didn't start off with a yellow/gray color scheme, but that's what it ended up being.

Left side:
A BH title block also used as a "week in review" journaling area; a pic of Jacob's favorite toy; a BH journaling spot talking about how many dozens of eggs I passed off to Terri for the school; a BH journaling block with a text conversation between Rick and I; a BH journaling block about Jacob's toy; part of the Blockbuster mailing label with a list of movies we went through this week; a photo of the eggs in Terri's trunk; and a pic and movie ticket of the movie I went to this week mounted on MME paper.

The right side:
A BH double journaling spot with a photo of a just emerged butterfly that Brandon took; a graphic Brandon made on the ipad; two photos I took with the roidizer app on my phone: margaritas with Terri and our Dollywood tickets for vacation, mounted on a B side of a piece of 7Gypsies paper; a BH journaling card talking about taking down the swing set; a BH journaling card with a pic/story of paying Brandon his allowance on a prepaid Visa card so he could use it online; a photo of some of Jacob's handwriting mounted on MME paper with a AE stamp I manipulated to have the arrow pointing left instead of right; and a collage of taking down the swing set printed in Photosheet.

365 Layouts total: 129 layouts and 5 mini albums

counterfeit kit #4

My inspiration was the Sweet Peach Crop Shop June 2011 kit, but apparently they closed up shop at the end of December and their website is no longer there to pull the pic from, and I don't tend to save the pics after I print them, so...this was my take on it. The original had a couple pieces of MME Lime Twist and other assorted papers. I had a few pieces from the line, but I really just bought the 6x6 pad and several of the die cuts. Since what drew me to the kit was the the color combo of orange/blue/green, I just went with that and started pulling stuff from my stash.

Added in a Martha Stewart chipboard number, a MME frame, white buttons, and a Martha Stewart round tag from her new office supply line. I kind of went with a mama and babies feel with the flowers to echo the sentiment of the pic.
After I trimmed down the paper, I cut the remaining clouds from the discarded piece and pop dotted them onto the layout for dimension.
This photo was cracking us up last night. Look how small they were!
The diagonal stripe paper is the backside of the number paper, so I just flipped it over and added Karen Foster letter stickers, since I wasn't sure how well the green ones would show on the blue paper.
Mustache cut from a scrap of Echo Park paper, Martha Stewart office tag, and Karen Foster alpha stickers added in. Based on a Becky Fleck/Pagemaps sketch.

I still have a few sheets that didn't get used, and a decent amount of embellies left, but I lost my mojo for the paper after layout #6. Still pretty please with the six I got out of it.

365 Layouts total: 128 layouts and 5 mini books.

dry erase board

Saw it on pinterest and found the frame at Walmart.

Springtime cakes and Teacher gifts

Jacob's birthday cake. I used the freezer paper tracing and transfer method from my pinterest board.
Blue and Gold ceremony.
Teacher Valentine gifts from Jettie and Jacob. I normally use packing tape to attach the candy bars to the dowels but tried hot glue this time. It didn't hold, so I'll be going back to using packing tape.

Creating a Silhouette graphic on the Cricut

There are tons of posts on message boards lately about how the Silhouette Cameo is so much better than the Cricut. Having seen a close up comparisson of finely detailed cuts, yeah it cuts better. And with Cricut seeming to be concentrating on Craft Room instead of cartridges, I decided to check out the Silhouette store. Plenty there to drool over, and plenty I want, but...I still like my Cricut and I have way too much $$$ invested to run out and get a new machine. I went back through my list of "ooh, I would love to have those" graphics and realized that most of them were phrases or were word based things, so I decided to see if I could come up with similar things using my Gypsy and plethora of cartridges. First up:

I totally love this! It's simple and colorful, and something I would actually use. And honestly, I needed to use it for a page anyway, since this is the song that Jacob makes me sing to him most often. So this is what I came up with as my first attempt:
I think it turned out pretty well! There is a definite learning curve for me to figure out welding, placement on the mat, spatial relationship, etc., but it'll get there. It took a few tries to get sizing right; for me "1 inch" doesn't mean anything until I've cut it out and laid it on a page to judge. The "you are my" and "sunshine" in my graphic are different sizes in my final page rather than the same width as in the original, mostly because I wanted it to span the entire top of my 8.5x11 inch page. It could certainly be condensed for a card or a smaller page. I wanted a more playful sun that what they used, but that's a personal issue. The other thing I learned? Write down what cartridges you used because even if you think you'll remember, you probably wont'. This is Going Places (cloud), Doodlecharms (sun), Nate's ABCs (you are my) and Cursive 101 (sunshine)

365 Layouts total: 122 layouts and 5 mini albums

Project Life, week 7

The full spread:

The left side:
A collage of pics of Brandon preparing and presenting on knot tying at scouts, the explanation of that (k & co paper with some Michaels ribbons he tied in to knots for me); a BH journaling card with old, old Chatterbox letter stickers; a BH grid card with an AE stamp for a pic of Jacob hanging out in his room; a BH journaling card with a pic of our boxes of Girl Scout cookies; a BH journaling card with typed words explaining the collage of Jacob pics below; two photos taken with my phone using the roidizer app--first one is the magazines and dvd set that came in the mail that week and the second is the pile of hair on the dining room floor after I got done giving the guys their haircuts; and a collage of Jacob trying to take Snake to school again.

The right side:
A collage of Valentine's Day pics; a pic of 2 days worth of kid's laundry with an Avery label; a cell phone pic of the boys' pizza (they would live on it if I let them) mounted on a BH grid label; a BH journaling card talking about Valentine's Day; a roidizer app photo of Jacob playing with a balloon trimmed down and mounted on a BH journaling card; a BH grid journaling card with an AE stamp waiting for journaling from Brandon's paintball trip; K & Co paper with a pic of Brandon ready to go serve at a spaghetti dinner in the pouring rain and a small photo of my phone screen with the weather alerts for that day, and an Avery label; and a blank spot waiting for a pic of Brandon playing paintball.

I don't know, I think this is my least favorite week. It definitely has the most photos (21 plus whatever I add from paintball), but I'm not a fan of it overall. I think it's because it's so matchy-matchy and it's colors that I don't normally use (pale aqua and washed out red). It was also the second week I waited and did everything at once. Flipping through, I definitely like the play as you go spreads of the early weeks, so I'll probably go back to that.

365 Layouts total: 121 layouts and 5 mini albums

Mini Book Monday

A little late, but I forgot to take pictures of them on Monday :)

First up: Elf on the Shelf Tag mini:

I inked the edges of some plain manilla shipping tags, then layered a little bit of patterned paper on the front with a tag and some ribbon. I wanted it to be a pretty simple album, so other than the first page with a short blurb about what Elf on the Shelf is, the rest of the album is a variation on this:
dates stamped on the edges with a strip of patterned paper leftover from the December Daily albums under an inked photo.

And the second album:
I fell in love with the Little Yellow Bicycle Hello Fall line when it was released last year, but we don't really have "fall" down here, or we kind of do, but not until December. The 6x12 album bases don't tend to last long at Archivers, so I went ahead and grabbed it, along with the Hello Fall 6x12 pad and chipboard accent pack. When we did get to Oyster Creek for an attempt at Christmas pictures in early December, the leaves were gorgeous, so I decided to go ahead and make my Hello Fall album. For the cover, I added some brown glitter Thickers letters that I found on clearance at Hobby Lobby. Some of the interior pages:

I was running low on accent pieces, so I added the 10 things pocket and some of the chipboard die cuts from the Deja Views Fall page kit at Hobby Lobby.


Not a lot of journaling, but I may go back and add a few things here and there.

365 Layouts total: 12o layouts and 5 mini albums

Some one pagers

My first attempt at misting. Used some OA Sprinklers on the white background; just a couple of spritzes to tone down the brightness of the white. OA Rocket age paper and accents. Also used the copics for the first time on a layout (colored in "Man in the Moon")
The nice thing about the typewriter? Being able to pound out journaling on the fly. The downside? No spell check. ;) Gotta fix one of the strips.
A little bit of the new MME Miss Caroline line, mixed with a photo layover from the Lost and Found 2 line.
Echo Park paper, green K & Co paper from the Halloween pad, StampinUp notebook punch, and MM journal block and letter stickers.
Foil paper from HL, green from MM and red from Crate Paper, gemstone letters from HL and journal block from Michaels.

I think that is officially the last of my Christmas photos, but I can't guarantee it.

365 Layouts total: 120 layouts and 3 mini albums

Halloweeny Fun

Allison Davis/Sketch Support sketch, American Crafts/Recollections Night Fall paper, Jolees pumpkin stickers and WRMK tag for title.
K & Co paper, Deja Views journaling die cut tucked under the pic and an Avery label.
K & Co. papers and photo mat, Deja Views journal square, and colored bling from Michaels.
Old Daisy D Halloween paper, MME Mischevous diamond pattern paper, HL glitter border sticker, MME punch out tag, Echo Park cut out and MM clear die cuts.

365 Layouts total: 115 and 3 mini albums

A couple of quick ones

Paper and label are from a Recollections pad from Michaels, all stickers are from HL.
Paper from MME. After I trimmed it down to 8.5x11 I trimmed the banner from the cut off piece and reapplied it to the corner. After that I couldn't come up with anything else that wasn't distracting, so I mounted the photo on brown cardstock and added a little journaling.

365 Layouts total: 111 layouts and 3 mini albums

Project Life, week 6

So, I had printed out these free journaling cards from Cathy Zielske and then stamped the dates at the top...and we had another gray and blah, week, but I didn't want to waste the ink and ditch the journaling cards, so the results is a rather bright and springy layout. This is the first PL layout that I didn't work on as the week went on, rather waiting until the next week to put it together. This is also the first week I did a day by day style of journaling card. I've got to say, our life is pretty darn boring so I don't know if I'll do it again. :)

Left side:
The bad part about all the free journaling cards floating around is that they are sized for the official Project Life page protectors, where the specific openings for said journaling cards are much smaller than my regular page protectors, so most of them need to be mounted on cardstock so they aren't floating around. I played with different papers before settling on a sheet of Echo Park paper from the Playground paper kit. Each 12x12 piece of paper can be cut down to six 4x6 cards, so that also gave me an extra to use for the title and one of the smaller photos. Title block has an Avery label with the dates stamped on, some Doodlebug stickers and a pic I took of Brandon using my phone, using the Fast Snap app (Droid). Next is a collage of Monday stuff made in Photosheet. Bottom left pic is a BH double journal card with a photo of our shakes taken with my phone and a bit of Chick Fil A logo cut from a nugget box. Lastly is a pic of the boys snapped at home.

Right side:
A pic of all the crayons Jacob snagged from my school supply stash (journaling on an Avery label); photo of my nephew and his family and me, with a Martha Stewart Avery label; the front of one of the Crayola boxes; photo of the books we are reading this week with a Martha Stewart Avery label, and a photo of B printed through Photosheet, with a Doodlebug sticker and an October Afternoon label sticker.

365 Layouts total: 109 and 3 mini albums

EP Season's Greetings Paper Pack

I love just about every collection from Echo Park, and even though I said I wasn't going to buy any more Christmas paper last year, I snapped this up as soon as it came in stock at Archivers.

I (and my overloaded box of Christmas paper) decided I would try and do as many of my Christmas layouts with the paper kit as possible. As usual, I did not buy any "extras" from the line (brads, chipboard stickers, etc.). For some reason, I did buy a second sheet of the small print poinsettia paper, as seen below.
I added a flower from Hobby Lobby and a small sticker from Bella Blvd.
The red strip is the backside of one of the above sheets. I added an old MME frame and some lace from Hobby Lobby. Brandon was goofing off with the camera on the last shot, and of course it ended up being the best one. There was no real way to edit it, so I used it as is.
I love these stickers from HL, but they are a pain to get off the backing sheet and apply. I stamped an AE stamp around the edge of the white paper in alternating Jenni Bowlin inks. Under the tree photos is some white paper edged with a Fiskars punch with a little bit of green rick rack thrown on for good measure.
I think this was my least favorite one of the bunch. I worked on moving stuff around and different papers for over an hour before settling on this. Not great, but passable.
The Toys for Boys and Girls sticker was an easy choice :)
Printed the photo as a 3.5 square in Photosheet, so I trimmed it to look like a poloroid. Extra package sticker is from Michaels. May go back and print out the Archivers logo to put on the brown bag.
I guess it was a good thing I didn't start Elf on a Shelf until the 6th...used a 2.5 inch square punch to punch the pics. In hindsight, it probably would have been easier to make a collage on the computer, but I had already printed the pics.
I wanted blue letters but didn't have any big enough, so I had the bright idea to cover chipboard with some of the paper. I made it a little less time consuming by covering the front of the letters with double stick tape and then laying them face down on the paper, rather than trying to modpodge them. Eliminated the mess and the drying time.
I actually intended to use the paper on the other side of the plaid, but when flipping it over to add adhesive I liked it better so I called Rick in to choose, and he chose the plaid. The only thing not from the kit is the flower from HL.
I had printed the smaller pics as part of a sheet from Photosheet, but only 3 were for Christmas, so I had to decide how to use them. I like how the banner turned out. This was the last full sheet of paper other than the striped one that I had been cutting strips from. Doodlebug twine.
Cut strips from the hexagon paper to "frame" the pics. I liked the subway art sticker from the pack, but it was 1)black and 2) referenced snow, so I used the letter stickers to mimic it.
I liked the mini bingo sticker, but it didn't really stand out from the pattern paper, so I found a scrap of black in my scrap tower. I like it, it kind of reminds me of a Santa belt buckle.
I thought I was done and then remembered I hadn't done a page with our Christmas card yet, so I started moving around what I did have left and ended up with sort of a mish mash. After 13 layouts this is what I had left from the kit:

I didn't want to add a bunch more paper to my scrap pile, so I cute the two strips that were almost 6x12 down to make 4 4x6 cards, took out the journaling cards, and then used some of the leftover strips and stickers to make a set of journaling cards. Now I have a Christmas-y set ready for Project Life in December.

365 Layouts total: 108 layouts and 3 mini albums. I was on a roll last night and am now slightly ahead of pace, especially since there are two more completed layouts on my desk waiting to be photographed. :)