project life :: week 8

last week i think i was on picture overload mode with james's birthday. that i didn't really take that many images this week. 

because of how i decided to create the spread this week, i ended up needing to combine my week title card with my week summary card and i was pretty pleased with the results. i downloaded the cute "love this" card from pixels & company, then i stitched it on top of a becky higgins grid card. i made sure to score the top of the "love this" card so that it would fold open neatly. i used some washi tape on the end of the seafoam card, then i stitched a studio calico, darling dear paper and another seafoam dotted card together, dated it and added the studio calico thought bubble with a thicker 8. 

used the camera + app on my iphone to take the picture of james. love that app! then with a precision pen i wrote "love that kid" on the photo and drew a little border. on the picture of san pants james i added a elle's studio circle tag heart. the picture of d's basketball game i took using slow camera+ app, it's pretty cool for capturing long exposures, i have been wanting to try it at night with car lights and signage. so the picture is intentionally blurry. the metallic S sticker is martha stewart's that i found on clearance. 

so this week i got totally crazy and did the spread with a 12 x 12. the boys had a sleepover and i had found this cute free "like it, Facebook" download from pinterest. here's the link. i actually posted this comment on facebook when i saw the boys sleeping together. put the image and card together in photoshop and sent it off to persnickety prints. 

so that's week 8. naturally week 9 will have a 12 x 12 now. not sure i love that because it doesn't give me a lot of space but it is a nice solution for a week when you don't shoot a lot. 

have a good week.

project life :: week 7

what another busy week we had, love a busy week, makes the time go fast and i don't sit around thinking about how much longer i have to be a single parent. march can't get here fast enough!

on the news front, i got a wacom tablet yesterday and its an understatement to say i don't know how i lived life without it before! love this thing!

our week was busy because there was of course valentine's day but there was also JAMES'S 3rd birthday. (talk about time going too quickly). big d was in the daily newspaper on monday. i also did a "day in the life" on the 15th. i did this last year for james's birthday so i thought i would do it again this year. my plan is to do it the 15th of every month now.

this is how the week turned out. 

i did a screen grab of the weather because we actually got snow here in SC. flurries nothing that stuck. i used thickers over the image of my leg, having a vein removed in the coming weeks, so this is my before picture. the ladybugs were on a present from james's birthday and it super cute so i kept it. the journal card with the die cut 3 was from my recent studio calico purchase. i realized that because i am doing a weekly summary this year rather than the daily one i am going to run out of large journal cards so i made some. its a 4x6 with chevrons. i made a series of these and now i opened an etsy store to sell them if you are interested. 

this is a layered view of the right hand side, it has first a 7 x 5 page protector with my husband's news article in it. then behind that is james's "day in the life" layout, and last the right hand project life page. 

above is the "day in the life" i used the template that ali edwards made. in the printing there was an error so i will be reprinting this one and then adding a nice chipboard 3 that i had zing'ed to the center of the collaged pictures.

we had a minor mishap with my canon 60D on james's birthday. at first i didn't think anything happened when d knocked it off the table while it was open but if you look closely you can see where it cracked the frame around the screen. thankfully it still functions correctly but it makes me sick to my stomach when i look at it. 

this is a page protector design G. i used my wishblade to cut the "a day in the life" from ali edwards. the picture of james dissenting a pen has a heart from studio calico on it. a little wooden love arrow also from studio calico on the picture of the boys and me. (i have been wanting to get into the habit of also taking a family picture once a month).  on james's birthday candle image i used a chic indie garland. then lastly, on d's picture with samson, i stamped an ali edwards stamp from technique tuesday. 

so that's week 7, hope you have a good week!

project life :: week 6

this may be my favorite layout so far this year.  the one element that i keep forgetting is that i want to add more b/w photos into my layouts. however, i find this hard because i feel that my b/w photos always look flat. so i did some research and in that search i found a really interesting article about taking better pictures with your iphone. i jump between my iphone and my canon 60D all the time. but the article gave some great tips. here is a link, thanks grumbles and grunts.

this week we did a lot of new things, in week 6 i officially started to blog regularly about our project life journey. we started the count down calendar on the door for daddy's return from deployment. that has been both a blessing and a curse. the boys have been crazy lately with the thought of dad coming home. 

i wanted to remember to take a black and white this week, and who better than our black and white kitty, boots, he has a twin bother too, oreo. i divided the pictures up among the pockets and i think the outcome is pretty interesting. i finally got my small embellishment shipment from studio calico and two peas in a bucket that i had ordered. so the hashtag and the location mark are from studio calico. the tuesday card is one that i purchase from ali edwards collection on designer digitals.

james has been completely funny lately with what he has said. he has an obsession with chapstick and hand sanitizer, not so much that he uses them just carries them around, like a lot of them, like 6 chapsticks at a time. so i made a jamesisms card with funny things that he has said lately. i used some new paper that i got from two peas in a bucket to make the week card on top of the seafoam core kit, then i stitched the two together. i used a studio calico little wood arrow and inked it black. the ampersand card was a freebie from studio calico and the "keep calm and snap on" card was also a freebie that i found on pinterest. the "so much love for you." is also a ali edwards' from designer digital. 

coming up next week is 

james's 3rd birthday

a day in the life

project life :: week 5

what a fun week! lots going on, lots of fun and lots of sickness. first james then this week denton. blah, knock on wood, i didn't get it.  

i used thickers to detail james's sickness. d had a basketball game and i split that into 3 frames of the protector. it worked out well. this weekend was also a crafty one. we made a hundred eyed monster for the one hundredth day of school. the boys were also crazy for the babysitter putting sticky puffy guys stuck to their face. 

our friend tracy made james's suspenders from masking tape and his headband, which was turned inside out so it didn't hurt his hair. i added a stitched heart sticker there.

i also made a valentine's day wreath made from paper straws. probably the most exciting event of the week was that my huband's foot locker came home! this is a sign in the right direction and we can now start counting down the days until he gets home! i love the bottom left picture of the boys. they look like they were deep in conversation however, d's book buddy at school (its a college student that works on literacy with him) gave him a disposable camera. so d was actually taking a picture of james. 

for the week card, i used a calendar card from jessica sprague. i also did a little shopping this week for small embellishments. i found that most things i had from traditional scrapbooking are too big (i feel) for my project life, got some great deal at two peas in a bucket and studio calico.

project life :: week 4

another fun week but one that felt like it went back to normal, everyone back in their routine. the best part of this week was all the fresh oj. pappy (my father in law) brought us a huge bag of oranges, so many that i didn't know how we would use them all before they went bad. oj seemed the best answer so we enjoyed that many morning. 

the week title card was created using tim holtz cardboard letters that i covered with paper and sanded down then stitched through. we have been playing uno moo in the evenings. this was the first night we played while james was still awake and let me tell you that that little dude beat us both. i thought he and i would play as a team but he was not having it and truly did it all on his own. i used the free cathy zielske download template for instagram pictures. 

all three of the handwritten additions are ali edwards brushes. then i got crazy and decided to journal over 4 cards. the batman cake was for pappy's 65 birthday. i asked the boys what kind of cake we should make, they both said batman, i was looking for chocolate, vanilla, etc. 

project life :: week 3

i was still on a disney high this week so a few more disney moments crept into my layouts. 

i made the week 3 by cutting down some of the seafoam cardstock, i printed the days of the week on it. used two different designs of washi tape for adhering the little typewriter picture down. the 3 button comes from a series from ormolu. LOVE ormolu. 

 

this week d had a field trip and for him the best part of any field trip is the best ride. i used a ali edwards' brush from designer digitals from the friends writing at the top. for the summary card i used the 4 x 6 from the seafoam kit and handlettered the 14-20 then colored them in with my copic markers.

on this side, i added two postcards, one from disney and the other from a former student who went to london over the holidays. a picture of me with all my BLING! and the coolest thing for me this week was getting a text from a friend asking if i wanted to go to see the miranda lambert, dierks bentley and lee brice concert, only hours before it started. umm hell yes i want to go! so the concert pictures went down the center. i wrote on them with a white gel pen. the open pocket, i added in some confetti, plush little hearts and an S charm that my friend gave me while we were in disney. lastly, my concert ticket with an ali edwards brush that i stitched through. very fun week.

project life :: week 2

this was a long week in the making. in july i decided to run the walt disney world goofy challenge. that's 39.3 miles in 2 days; a half marathon on saturday and a full marathon on sunday. it was crazy but i am very much a GO BIG or GO HOME kind of person. it was an amazing adventure. i ran over 750 miles in my months of training. the best part of this was that i was able to drag my best friends in with me too. 

before i left i cleaned the studio in prep for staying on top of my project life this year. the bottom left picture is my fav, that my baby, james (almost 3) in his favorite santa jammies "helping" clean up. i also included my running bib from the races.

i created the week 2 intro using the logo from the 20th anniversary race, then i wrote week 2 with an embossing pen and embossed it with glitter embossing powder. i also LOVE ali edwards, i used one of her technique tuesday stamps from the lower left picture with james. lastly, i created a cut out with my wishblade, "disney baby 2013." 

using the plastics design G i created this right side. the picture of the castle is blurry because i took it while i was running, yep we got to run through the castle. it was pretty awesome. it has beautiful mosaic tile walls in it but with 27,000 people running with me i couldn't stop to take a picture of that as much as i wanted to. the characters were at mile 20, for the 20th anniversary of the mickey marathon. i used a mickey brad on the picture of my running partners in crime. and wood stars from studio calico on the lego picture of woody and buzz. i took a screen shot from my iphone for the facebook post. i think this week captured how excited i was about the trip!

project life :: week 1

this week, we had our girls night, i go out with a group of amazing ladies, there are 8 total, we call ourselves the two tuesdays (every other tuesday night). we went to unwine and painted peacock. it was very amusing, it had been a long time since i picked up a paintbrush. i decided i haven't missed it. the progress of my painting was in the middle. we got some pictures from the hubby that week and i like to include them when we have them. 

on the week 1, i used thickers, seafoam paper, and some washi tape. i also used thickers on the "gone too long" and then stitched through them. on the right hand page i enlarged a picture that denton sent home, i added some star stickers to it. the backwards cut out text is part of next week's spread. 

and yep that's my oldest son balancing a banana on my friend's dog's nose. he will sit like that until you tell him to go. it's awesome!

project life 2013 :: intro

hi! so this is my 3rd year documenting our lives, i love it, celebrating the everyday moments as well as those HUGE moments in life. this year i am changing up my project life, in the previous years i have done the day by day journaling. i found that hard i would get behind, i would beat myself up about being so far behind. so this year i adopted the weekly summary, I LOVE IT! i am up to date. i am enjoy the process tons more and i have been playing. 

this is my intro for 2013. i saw somethings on pinterest that i liked before the seafoam kit was available. i created a color scheme and patterns that i thought would work well with the kit, i also saw some cool things put out by studio calico, but i was on their wait list for the january project life kit. so again, i just designed my own things, pulling some the things i saw that i like. in the end i am very happy with how it turned out, i am not in love with the picture of the boys, but its will stay in place until i find another or fall in love with it. 

there are a few things that i want to keep reminding myself of this year. i made a little list and i keep it in my studio. 

1. be true to you! (basically follow what i like and not what everyone else is doing, cause i think they are doing it right and i am not).

2. mix black and white photos with full color photos

3. mix photo sizes, cross over the borders.

4. journal, journal, journal. i am probably the weakest here.

5. embellish, such a fine line

6. tell the story of the week

5. mix the page protector designs. been having lots of fun with that!