Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Making Dreams Come True | Project Life

I'm baaaackkk !

I am so happy to be back with you today. Being sick is no fun. I have felt blahhhh for to many days. But I am slowly getting back to normal.

Today I am going to be sharing an older spread from this past spring. This one is all about a bike ride/adventure we took.

For weeks and weeks before this particular day happened Noah kept asking to go biking all together on the bike trail. At the time we needed to get our biking gear back in shape. A few of the kids needed new helmets, and tubes for their bikes.

We got that all taken care of and I surprised the kids by picking them up from school with their bikes in the back of the van.


I used a lot of the Simple Stories Bloom & Grow collection for this one. The colors seemed to go perfectly for my photos. Isn't this heart card the cutest ?!!  I used a Heidi Swapp word on top of the hearts and added a few embellishments to this make shift title card.


You all know how I love to add in a larger photo into a spread when I can. I added in this big photo of all of us on trail.



Here is a journal card and filler card I added in to this first page.


I used some digitals from the Ali Edwards Wild Story kit digitals as well for this one.


After our ride the kids played in the river and found All Of The Moss.


Now this right side of my spread is okay. I am like Meh, I should have spend a little more time on it. But seriously I was in this " I need to get this one done and move on to all of the other empty pockets " zone. Done is better than perfect.

I used more of the Simple Stories supplies like that cute gnome.


Another look at the right side.


Another photo of the kids in the water. I used another digital brush from the Wild Story Kit and a vellum arrow from Studio Calico.


Along our ride the kids wanted to stop and explore. I let them case birds, squirrels and naturally I took photos of the weeds and water behind them. Naturally !!


Here is a close up of a photo of the kids exploring. I am always trying to remember to step back and take some of those photos that show the whole scene.

I used the Afternoon stamp from a Kelly Purkey stamp set from Hero Arts.


Well that is it for this one. I am so glad that I am getting these fun stories told.


Wednesday, September 21, 2016

A Disney Day | Project Life

Welcome everyone !

Today I am going to quickly share with you a Disney spread. The kids and I took the day off from school and life to go to Disneyland back in April. It was a great day and although I did not take that many photos I love the ones I got.


Over the summer I bought some of the Echo Park collection called Magical Adventure. If you have Disney photos you should totally check them out. And the colors were perfect for this one.

I cut out this little banner out from one of the 3x4 cards and added it onto my title card/journaling card.


On the drive down we drove through some fog and rain drops. It was kind of neat to drive through but we hoped it would go away once we got down to Disney. It did and the weather was perfect.

I used the GO digital stamp from Ali Edwards Drive Story Kit. The " make it happen" , I can't remember it is either also part of the drive kit or it's from Kellie Stamps.


That white YEP rubber piece I have been saving to use on a Disney spread and so happy that I used it on this one. I added a few stickers from Echo Park underneath and left the rest plain.

On the photo of my Dole Whip I added the hip hip hooray from Kellie Stamps celebrate digital stamp and then added some small white letters on top.


We happened to be over at the Racers ride right when the sun was going down and I snapped a photo. I still need lots of practice with sun flare pictures ! I added a stamp from a previous Studio Calico kit on a diagonal right above the building. I always like to look for fun places to place stamps, journaling and embellishments.


Well, I wanted to get a good photo of us seeing Mater ( Noah's favorite). I handed my camera off to the photographer there and this is what I got. I can't blame them, it was a bad lighting situation. Oh well, no biggie.


This trip I let the kids bring along a stuffed animal. Noah chose his little Mickey. He didn't want his photo taken so this is what I got while we were waiting for the racers ride.

Underneath the photo is a few journaling cards and a small photo of me and Noah on the tractor ride.


I love including quotes that the kids say. I included this one and the sticker about was perfect to go along with it.


Some more photos and journaling.


I participated in this weeks sketch with Studio Calico again. This journaling card and photo are my version of the sketch.


One last photo of the kids taking a breather in front of these gorgeous gas pumps. The colors are oh so pretty.


That is it for this Disney spread. This one was pretty busy, the photos were busy so I tried to keep the rest of it rather simple. I have lots of more Disney days to document so stay tuned for that.


Sunday, September 18, 2016

Valentine's Insert | Project Life

Operation Catch Up. Let's do this. I realize that most of you might not want to see Valentine's Day layouts when Halloween is right around the corner. But here goes.

Today I am going to be sharing a old insert that I created for Valentine's Day. I have always taken photos with my kids on Valentine's Day. This year was no difference. Some of them were more willing participants than others. Ha Ha.


I ended up with lots of fun photos from Valentine's Day. So I created an insert to add into week 6 that Valentine's Day ended up in. This page protector is from Becky H and it is design G.

Another yearly tradition that I do is buy a few props for our mini photos shoots. I love how this photo of Katelyn turned out. I added a digital stamp from Kellie Stamps. It should still be available in her shop.


Noah came home from school one day with a Valentine for me. Inside was a card with this precious picture of him. Naturally I pried it off of the card and in it went.


On the other side of the card was this hand written note. It was the perfect size for the album. I added the flower sticker and some letter stickers to spell out his name. It needed something on the right side and his name was perfect.


I used my hands to make a heart for this photo. Thankfully Katelyn took a great photo for me.

The moments is a digital sticker from the everyday collection of PL.

The filler card next to the photo is a card from a 12x12 sheet that I bought at Michael's. I think it was from Reflections. I added some striped paper behind it and embellished it from there.


This is my journaling card. Lots of fun stickers and layers on this one.


Let's move on to the other side of the insert.


I really had fun with this 4x6 filler card. Most of these stickers were from a Crate Paper sticker sheet.


The top left corner was a photo of my flowers. It is kind of hard to see but the gold circle says lucky.


I always get the kids balloons for Valentine's Day. Noah sure loved his.


A couple of fun photos to finish it off.


I tried to go simple on this insert for a couple of reasons. I wanted the photos to stand out and I wanted to have it done.

Thanks for coming today everyone ! I will check back in with you in a few days for more fun Project Life pages. Take care now.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Venice Beach | Project Life Spread

Good day everyone ! Today I thought that I would share with you a beachy, summery spread that I finished last night. I have a catchup blog post also coming this weekend as well. Cross your fingers I can make that happen.

This spread came about when we were down in So. Cal. for a doctors appointment. It seemed silly for us to drive all the way down there and not visit the beach. So that is exactly what we did.


This card here acts as my title card. I used it as a journaling card so that when you look at the spread you can read what these pages are all about. I kept it simple this time, only adding two embellishments. I loved the color of this card and thought it tied in well with the rest of the color scheme.


The left side of the spread. I am loving all the blues and yellows.


After our dr. appointment we drove over to the coast. This time we decided to go to Venice Beach. She was lovely. I can name a beach a she right ?!!! The water was warm and the sand was soft. I sat down for a bit to watch the kids play in the water. Later on Katelyn really loved climbing on the nearby rocks. I used a digital brush from the Wild Story kit on the photo of her.


As it turned out these two cards were the last ones to get finished. I felt that the card on the left needed something to finish it off. I played around with a few things but ended up stamping the label from Kelly Stamps. The touch of black was perfect.

The card on the right was another one that I was unsure on. I didn't want anything to busy or big. These little heart stamps from Ali Edwards Week In The Life kit were perfect. I also needed to tone it down a bit so I added some vellum.


These cards here I created using the Studio Calico sketch challenge as inspiration. Did you know they have a weekly sketch challenge ? It is for all kinds of scrapping, layouts, pocket pages, cards. I didn't know they had such a thing but now I do. You can find more info on their blog, look under Sunday Sketch. I love how these two cards came out and it was fun to come up with my own cards based on the sketch.


Katelyn spent a lot of time making a full sized human nest out of sand. The bottom photo is of her early goings.


Even though the kids DID NOT want to have their picture taken that night, I made them ! LOL. I set the camera on my bag and set the timer. I wanted to add something to this photo so I added this digital brush from Ali Edwards. I added the number 4 to represent that there were 4 of us.


Here is a look at the  right side.


I recently purchased a kit from Paislee Press and love how fun it is. This collage is part of that kit. It is fun to be able to add more photos into my pages. The top one is another one of Katelyn on the rocks. She is hard to spot, I stamped that circle around her and added a few embellishments.


For this right side of my spread I used the Design D page protector. I kind of like this one !


More fun photos from our adventure. The middle one of Katelyn might be my favorite. She finished her nest and then layed down in it and pretended to sleep for a good while. I love her zest for life and pretending.


I haven't talked about the supplies much yet on this one. Some of the card and embellishments are from the You Are Here collection from Simple Stories. Not all of the colors in that collection worked for this spread but I did find some that I loved. The rest of the supplies are from Studio Calico. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask.


Here is a close up of this fabulous silver palm tree card from Studio Calico. I have had these larger letter stamps for ages. I used them on the right there to abbreviate Venice Beach.


This one was sure fun to put together. I hope that it may have inspired you in some way. Until next time.


Monday, September 12, 2016

Week In The Life | Thursday

Good Monday to you all ! How is everyone ? I have been fighting some allergy/sinus stuff for the past 3/4 days and hope to be on the mend soon. I want to get back to scrapping ! I haven't done any in forever.

Today I want to share with you my Thursday pages in my Week In The Life album. Here is what the first spread looks like for Thursday.


The first page here on the left is my title page. Throughout the entire album I have started each day with a large 6x8 photo. I left a white border around each one and also added the digital brush from Ali Edwards. The one that says This Is Thursday.


I have always loved vellum. It is a perfect supply to add to this type of project, mini albums, December Daily, ect. Especially when you get it on clearance ! I added some to this 3x8 page protector and added the circle Hello Thursday chipboard.


On the other side of the vellum I added a photo of some flowers I had bought that day.


I added in a photo of the ads that I looked through that morning before doing some meal planning/shopping. Turns out I was looking at the wrong weeks ads, that is why that epic fail sticker was appropriate. The sticker is from Simple Stories Carpe Diem collection.


Here is a look at the next spread.


After a morning of grocery shopping I snapped this photo of me putting the groceries away. I loved that blah blah blah sticker so much that I had to use it here. Putting away groceries is not high on my list.


This journaling card is from an old Studio Calico kit and I loved all the colors in it. I thought it went well with my photos and such. I also loved how it had all the days of the week on the side. I added in my arrows next to the Thursday to symbolize that it was Thursday.


During Week In The Life you tend to have lots of photos. I wanted to use them all so made my own template in photoshop by cropping my photos and placing them on a 6x8 layer. This is a great way to get extra photos into your album. There are plenty of easy photo templates out there that you can use to add in more photos to any project you are working on.


A close up of the bottom of the photo collage page. I added in a digital brush from Ali Edwards along with a word phrase sticker on the top.


This page is kind of busy. Lots of stuff going on but its ok. I tried to tie in a few of the colors that were in the photos and spread them around.


This template is from Ali's Week In The Life template pack. I really love these. They are easy to use and make pages like this simple and fast.

One other thing I want to point out is that I used this page as my themed page for the day. Each day throughout my album I have a saying, or a theme, to go along with the photos. In this case it was quotes. I chose " We Say" for Thursdays theme. I overheard lots of fun stuff that I recorded and told stories about. The top photo is about how I caught these two taking turns choosing their favorite spray setting. I did not okay this little experiment by the way. The second one was about the afternoon. Nobody wanted to do anything remotely productive. We ended up doing a pillow fight, making a fort, and some other random thing to pass the time.


This page has a photo of me making copies at the kid's school, a photo of the show I watched during lunch and the wood veneer number 4 to represent that it was the 4th day of the week.


Here is the back side of the previous page. A few more fun photos and two journaling cards. When I go about making pages like this that face each other I always try to make them match in color, ect. That way both of them look similar in color. Even if that means moving some photos around. You want a cohesive look.



This photo was an extra one that I needed to fit in my album. I added in the middle of the album without a page protector. This one was of us doing the dreaded multiplication flash cards.


I thought this card was perfect as an edition to the photo of us swimming. It looks like waves in the pool. I added the word swim and a few embellishments.


These are the last pages of Thursday. I took a nap on Thursday afternoon and woke up to the kids in the pool along with Patrick. He apparently threw them in with their clothes on.


In the beginning of this page I knew I wanted to use both the clear T and the number 6. Then I decided that it would be fun to add in the PM in the middle of the 6. So I positioned the PM in photoshop and printed the photo. I love how it turned out.


That is all for today. Thursday is all wrapped up.

Thanks for coming and I hope that you have having a fabulous day.