It is Blog Hop weekend and it is time for me to share a tip with you all.

Okay, so my blog posts have been few and far between the past few weeks because I am 100% caught up with 2012 and 2013 Project Life albums as much as possible.  I am waiting on Persnickety Prints to send me a package of yummy photos so I can get cracking on June pages.

So for today, I wanna share a tip with you.  As a new Project Lifer I was very discouraged when I opened up my Big Box of Becky Higgins plastics to find Design F staring me in the eye.  I remember saying, "What is the world do I do with these?!?!"

Yikes!  I had 10 3x4 pockets to fill but all my photos were 4x6.  At the time I have NO clue about all the photo options and for over a month I just stared at this stupid plastic when I would open the box up.  It was very discouraging to me.  And then something happened.

These are my secret to getting an album done quick.  Persnickety Prints 3x4 Instagram Polaroids.  I am in love.

So here is my tip.  If you have stray photos that you feel are important to share in your album but they do not flow with you weekly or monthly spreads, print them as a 3x4 Instagram Polaroid and slide them into a Design F page.

 I work on my Project Life album in chronological order in a Monthly, not weekly manner.  So there are fantastic for adding as my monthly wrap up.  I slide in the carts, normally left over Studio Calico cards and then since these are my Instagram feed cards that I have had on Facebook, I simply copy my Facebook status and use it as the caption on the 3x4s.  I am in love with Design F now.

And lastly, my other idea for using Design F is to slip my children's Valentine's Day cards into the pockets.  I trimmed, folded and layered these cards, backed them all with the same blue grid card from my Becky Higgins Seafoam Edition and added a calandar card and a 4x6 journal card about Valentine's Day. Great for keeping those pesky cards all in one place.

 Well, that is it for this weekend.  Enjoy your Day!

It is Blog Hop Weekend time: Lets Talk About Kits

This week, I have finished a few layouts and put some finishing touches on last week's Blog Hop Weekend post so if you want to go here and give this a second chance you totally can.

I have received some happy mail as well as a few kits so here I am going to take out all the kids because there are a few that I have not even opened yet.

First off lets start with Studio Calico Roundabout Project Life kit because this is my first month as a subscriber and I have to admit that I love the quality of the cards.  In the new box, which I love because they are so similar to Becky Higgins' core boxes, I received 6 4x6 cards, 24 3x4 cards, two alphas and 4 specialty cards that were the embellishments of this kit. As a subber the kit cost 19.99 and shipping for just the kit in the USA was $25.50.

I Like:  My opion is that the cards are awesome.  I love the style and colors of ALL the SC PL cards I have ever recieved so this is really the best fit for me.  The quality of the cards are wonderful.  Normally the embellishments are super awesome too and you can't go wrong with the Thickers or the Basic Grey alpha.  

The Cons: for me is that there are only 24 3x4 cards and out of those 24 cards only nine of them are two sided.  All the rest have the grid backgrounds so they are still usable in the event that the graphic direction does not work for you.  Personally, I would rather have more cards than a 'half' pack of Thickers all though I do love the cork Thickers.  And lastly the lack of embellishments is frustrating.  I would prefer to not have the 4 fancy cards.  

Wrap Up:  Although most SC PL subbers are losing their minds about the lack of embellishments I feel that the cards in the kit are so busy and colorful that embellishments would be too much on most of these cards.  But I am irritated that there are less cards in general this month.

Next up I have Scraptastic's A Day in the Life kit.  This June 2013 kit is the first PL kit as far as I believe.  It was $28 and with shipping my total came to $33.50 in the USA.  

The Pros:  The quality of the 24 3x4 and 4 4x6 cards and the fact that they are Ormolo exclusive cards is a huge plus to me.  And the Ormolo stamp set is great.  

The Cons:  Lack of embellishments.  Cost more money than the high popular Studio Calico kits.

Wrap Up: I love Ormolo but these cards are not my style.  I do not think I will purchase another Scraptastic kit because of the embellishments and price of the kit.

Here, in this crappy quality Instagram photo I have the Limited Edition Elle's Studio kit for June.  If you purchase this kit on it's debut, the 10th of every month it only cost $9.99 but after that day it jumps to $11.99.  Also, shipping was just a few bucks.  There are 8 3x4 cards, some tabbed, 3  4x6 cards, 2 frames, a sheet of vellum labels and a handful of die cut bits.  

The Pros: the designs and the price.

The Cons: I want more.  When I purchased this Elle released her new lines Cameron and Saltwater, so my total was more than the cost of just the kit.

Wrap Up:  I will likely keep purchasing these kits.  The designs are adorable.

So these are currently the three kits that I purchased this month.  I also purchase parts of Pretty Little Studio's Nature Walk line, which always has a vintage feel to it to me, which I love.  As well as a few goodies from TSY 1.0 on Facebook.  

And lastly, I have the most adorable Pen Pal, Mrs. Jones, who sent me my first goodies.  We did a getting to know you theme.  I am just finishing up one last pen pal package for a lovely lady in Austrailia and then I am off to the post office to mail these off.  But here is a look at my goodies.

So cute!  Plus it coordinates perfectly with my Seafoam and Jade core kits I am using this year.

So anyways, how do you feel about the kits?  What does your mailman bring you every month?  Lets talk.  

See you soon for more Project Life spreads!

Blog Hop Weekend #1

It is Blog Hop Weekend and I threw this post together really fast but wanted to be able to provide you all with some new layouts that I have been working on this week, actually I worked for 5 hours yesterday on most of these.  The majority of these spreads are put together with Studio Calico's May Project Life kit, Planetarium.  I pulled together a few pieces of Studio Calico's Atlantic also, since it all matches and really worked beautifully with my photos too.

I have 9+ spreads so far for May, it was a busy month between our daily life and Mother's Day, my little brother was swarn into the Army, graduated from high school and had an open house too. I had lots of photos and for protection of my brother, have chosen to not post the Army photos although I feel like those are some of my better spreads.

So, this was the beginning of our month and just a few photos.  That middle card that has the Freckled Fawn star bits on it, actually pulls out to be a Jade folded card, first one I have ever used.  I need to get a picture of that tomorrow.
EDIT:  Here are a few photos of the pull our journal card.

Mother's day here.  Loved all these colors.  I will likely play around with my placement on this still.  This was a really fun day for our family.

 So here, the kids and I have been working on some garden pots.  Isaiah planted a pickle seed a month ago and woke up disappointed multiple days in a row when he discovered that nothing grew.  So, Keaton and I went and bought a cucumber plant one day and planted it while he was still at school.  He was so excited once he came home and saw it.  I don't expect it to grow too much since it needs to vine and it is in a pot.  It was really an important even this month in my house for Isaiah.

 This was mostly all about soccer.  These are MAMBI cards.  I needed to journal about how difficult soccer has been for Isaiah.  The month of May was very difficult on him.  Isaiah has ADHD and high functioning Autism and his meds were tweaked a bit and this caused mass chaos this month.  If you are an autism mom and deal with this sorta thing then you know JUST what I am talking about.

 Scrapbooker problems.  When you have alpha stickers stuck to your feet and you keep finding them for a few days.

This was a mess up.  Well, my kid cut the other side of this plastic trying to get the sequins out, HA!  So I figured it would be perfect for this spread with these few photos.  The other side is an awesome Army spread but for privacy reasons I am keeping it private.

 There was a lot of detail here that I wanted to catch, that was really difficult in the lighting with the velum here.  I really loved the photos here.  My kids, whom will be 6 and 7 years old next week, have never been fishing, shame on me, had their first fishing experience.  Isaiah caught his first fish, but was scared of it so Keaton, being my little clown, had to pose with it.  Plus this was super special because we never spend much time with my dad, so it was a lot of fun for my boys.

This page is not finished yet, but I wanted to put it out there still.

Monthly wrap up page.

 This might be one of my favorite spreads I have done.  The corals and mints are some of my favorite colors.  This was my kiddo's last day of school.  I spent my day working on my 2012 PL album and was able to get those awesome shots of them getting off the bus, the same way I got shots of them getting on the bus on their first day of school this past year.

And lastly, I have something I am pretty excited about.  It is a free eight week summer storytelling workshop called Find Your Voice.  I am really thrilled to learn more and see what Kristin has to offer us.  You and find out more about her workshop on her blog here.

Project 2012 done in a week!

So, first off, thanks for joining me on Monday Project Life days where I am sharing my project life pages.  And now this, 2012 in a week.  Talk about two much time on my hands.  Ok, so let me explain myself first.

1. I work a seasonal job at a children's art company on three months, off three month, on three month, off three months...you get it right?  Well, my on time happens to be the 'busy' time of the schools years just before mothers/fathers day and before Christmas so we work like crazy people copying/scanning and printing art throughout all 50 states in the USA and some countries.  The job is great, if you ONLY could see the art that I see...so yes, I have lots of free time.  
2. While off work, my children ages 6 and 7 years old this month actually, are both at school full day.  So I have the majority of my day to myself.  When I am not being MOM, a Cub Scout Cubmaster or den leader or watching old tv series on Netflix I need something else to do so I make stuffs.
3.  I just really really really love to scrapbook.  I have been scrapbooking for as long as I remember.  My oldest scrapbooks that I still have date back to 1996 but even before then I spent a lot of time making things.  I was an only child till I was 10 so I didn't have any siblings to beat up as a kid, so I would "sit on my bed and make shit" as my mother would say. 

This basicially sums up my reason for documenting ALL of 2012 in a week.  Like seriously.  Let me tell you a few things about my week.  I spent $$$ of photos from Persnickety Prints and they all arrived at once.  So other than pulling a few hard copies that were given to me ahead of time, I was set with that one delivery.

Most of my SC cards that were never used in 2013 current months were used in my 2012 album, so this means that I had handfuls of cordinating cards and embellies.  Plus, I had been hoarding 12x12 pp so I had everything I needed at my fingertips.  

Then lastly I bought a great priced album and used the same design plastics through my entire album.  So all I needed to do was work on it.  I spent two whole Sundays putting it together and a few hours throughout the rest of my week to finalize spreads and add anything extra.

Anything extra at this point would just be photos found here or there from that year that I would likely just throw together on a 12x12.

So here we go.

So, I ordered nearly 200 3x4 Instagram Polaroids and none of them were in order of when they were taken so this took a few hours to sort through them.  This was my last group to sort through.  I was tired of sorting, just chilling bed watching Gossip Girl reruns...I love Chuck Bass.

This I am pretty positive I posted already.  Just me in progress.

The rest is just a handful of pages from the summer/fall months.

 I actually wanna run some sequins along some of this paper with a sewing machine, but have not been able to do that yet.  I am pretty positive that this is The Paper Studio pp.  I love it so much I have like 20 sheets of it.  I use it way often.

This is actually the back of my cover page.  All out of order.

This is my son Keaton, with the short dark hair and his half brother.  I loved this picture.  I journalled on the 4x6 card and then put some more journalling on that 3x4 card with the tab and star on it.  My only thing I want to do with this is run it through the sewing machine, BUT mine broke.  I need a new one.

Most of the 3x4 cards are either Studio Calico or Elle's Studio.  I also used some more of the woodland pp and a few sheets of Dear Lizzy pp and some Atlantic pp from Studio Calico.  My embellishments are an assortment of Smash, SC, Elle's Studio, K&Company, MME and other lables like Chic Tags and ticket stubs, etc.

I want to just encourage everyone to know that with just a few days and ALL your supplies organized in front of you, that you can complete a whole year right now.  I kept this simple, same plastics, majority of this was all 3x4 Instagram Polaroids from Persnickety Prints.  There were multiple other layouts with random photos too, but those came after the basic bones of the album were assembled.  

Anyways, thanks for looking.  

June 2012

These are a few of my most recent PL mini 6x6 layouts.  The product line I used was Studio Calico's Atlantic.  I have used 12x12 papers, journal cards, sequins and a few BH Seafoam cards.