Scraplift

Late July I ran across a great layout on the Studio Calico blog here.  This layout was created by Anna-Maria Wolniak.

What drew me to this layout was the small glassine sack that was used as packaging in the Studio Calico Project Life kit and the title of lost tooth.  And then the gears literally started turning.  I had two folded up napkins, a plastic baggie and a church offering envelope all containing Keaton's baby teeth that had fallen out.

So, I went to rummage my stash for a glassine sack and some supplies.  My final layout has a similar style but much different colors.

Glassine sacks can be purchased also in the Studio Calico Studio Selections.

 This was my first experience using a mist on a 12x12 layout.  I love it!  Now, I will be collecting mists.  I actually put the teeth into the glassine teeth.  I will likely do something similar for the remaining teeth.  The kids will love this as they get older.

I used the frame from my Elle's Studio June limited edition kit.  The red shipping tag came from the Studio Calico Project Life Cumberland Gap add on in June.  The Currently card is by Kristin Tweedale.  Cream/mint Project Life card is from the Studio Calico Project Life Valley High July kit.  All stamps used on this layout are Studio Calico stamps.

I took the photo on my phone with the Rhonna DESIGNS app for Apple.

A look at my July PL pages

Happy Thursday friends.

I have been crafty this week.

Anyways I was able to get this fun page done.  I just realized by accident last night that I can use PhotoSheet and my Instagrams to print from my Selphy CP760.  Sadly I can only print 4x4 and 2x2 but I am honestly ok with that.  I made this page using mostly Elle's Studio July kit.  I worked in a calendar card, the blue Studio Calico '4' card and a special Persnickety Prints card that is red and white striped.  I used kraft, red, white, blue, mint and black and I really love it!

I am really iffy on this next one.  I really wanted to document a few photos that I had from our week.  I may go back and dig for another photo.  I had a few sweet friends send me some fun cards and I also used the blue chevron card from Elle's Studio Cameron line and all the rest were from my Studio Calico July Valley High PL kit.  I will likely go back and add some more embellishment to this also.

I have never played with Mister Huey's mists before till this layout.  I flipped some of the orange mist onto a few cards,  I am pretty excited about it.  Now I need more mists in my PL colors.  Cards here are Studio Calico Valley High PL kit, Becky Higgins Rad Dad and there are a few cut apart cards from Amy Tan's Ready Set Go line.  This is also my first time using a screenshot of a weather app.  I will be doing lots more of this.  

Now I will go back to waiting for my UPS driver to get here with a package of goodies from Studio Calico.  I am oddly in love with the colors of the Marks &Co kits this month.  I would have loved to actually have their scrapbook kit as well this month, but I am sticking to one kit at month at this point.  See you all soon with my July spreads!

And so the dreaming begins

Vintage Craft Campers...yes, I said it.  I have my camping roots and my love for vintage and then there is Dear Lizzy.  It all began with this picture.

I have been a Dear Lizzy fan for awhile now. Love her lines, love the feel and love the new Project Life 5th and Frolic Becky Higgins core kit.  I have been sitting and debating the purchase of the kit for a week or two now since I have seen it make it's introduction onto every single PL group I belong to in all the Land of the WWW...but one thing holds me back, I have boys.  It is more pink than I use but I NEED it.  Just have to have it.  

Then something else happened...someone else didn't have a craft room and a lady suggested a vintage camper and then my ADD went into over drive I tell you.  All photos came off of Pinterest.

 Someday, once I own my own home and move out of this townhouse, I will own a vintage craft camper and I will put it in my back yard.  Just saying.

And then these are too cute!

Back to School

Our school system had officially began it's first day of school yesterday on the new balanced calendar.  Back to school on August 1st has its' perks, we get two weeks off for fall break in October and two weeks off for spring break in April.  Luckily, my boys were eager to get back in the groove of school too.

My oldest, Keaton, is starting the second grade and my little man is repeating kindergarten.  My little, Isaiah, has high functioning Autism, ADHD as far as some other minor developmental delays.  He has three years of being at school under his belt.  Two years of their Early Childhood program and a year of full day KG.  While he did a wonderful job last year and worked really hard academically, he struggled still socially at the end of the school year.  We had a little bit of a let down and Isaiah was not able to remain in the same class as last year but I am already hearing wonderful things, he has a sweet new friend named Jacob that he has been playing with.  As for Keaton, he is too social, it is only a matter of time before I get that phone call that my son will not stop talking in class.  

Back to school to mommy means craft time!  Woo Hoo!!  As sweet friend gifted me her Canon Selphy CP760 last week and it had taken me some time to figure out how to use it with my Windows 8 computer.  There are no drivers for this device on a Windows 8 system but there is a trick, download the Windows Vista drivers.  Here is how I learned of the solution to my printing problem.  So, yesterday, I got busy and started printing photos and pulling out all my goodies and creating.

 Page made from contents of my Studio Calico Valley High kit, Planetarium kit and Halley's Comet add on.

 Page made from contents of Studio Calico Valley High kit, Spencer kit and Elle's Studio Cameron goodies.

This page was made with the Pretty Little Studio Nature Walk line.  Lisa Wilkinson had a class where she worked with this mini kit.  Everything else here is all from the line with the exception of the washi and glassine sacks.  I still need to do the journalling on this layout.  

I am ready to get some more pages created!  My goal is to work on more pages this next week.  Also, I am trying to hardest to compile all my goodies for my December Daily.  Thanks to a sweet friend of mine I got a huge crate full of scrappy goodness!  But Cubmaster duty calls and my week will be full of setting up popcorn booths, training sessions, and fall recruitment prep and meetings.  More goodness to come soon.

Inspiration Boards!

Well, let me see.  I will be posting my June PL spreads soon.  I generally stay up to date, however in my last photo order I failed to upload a few photos that I needed my the biggest event in June, my kids birthday.  :/  So I will be posting a few of those later today.  In the meantime we are going to talk inspiration boards.  

A few decades back, some distant family of mine lived on this farm, that was sold to another that married into our family, I am talking some 30 years ago...  Since then the farm is looking pretty sad, the porch has fallen through, the old tractors and pick up trucks are in the yard and barns and are all overgrown with poison ivy and small trees and the old farm home that my mom played at as a little girl is now vacant.  The current owner is battling cancer and no longer lives on the property but the land is still farmed on and lawns are still mowed.

It is amazing hearing my mom, aunt and uncles all talk about the house and how they were so eager to get into rooms that they were not allowed in as kids.  Kinda like a kid in a candy shop.  My eldest uncle has to most amazing stories...in our family, he is the keeper of the stories.  Ya know, the one that bought a Sinclair gas pump some twenty years ago, my family's last name, was curious about the namesake and traced our family back to Scotland...we were Templar Knights and guarded the royal family of Scotland, ya we were cool.  My Uncle Don was my favorite growing up.  Anyways, he spent more time on that farm than any of my mom's siblings.  He worked the fields, tended to the animals, rode on the tractors and still can remember every single use for ALL the barns on property.  I wish I had those memories growing up, but I am nearly 29 and in my life, I have sat foot on this land once and it was only to take a glimpse with my mom this past year.

Well, back to my story, my mom brought home an old window while out on her latest mission.  It was dirty, had some wood damage and had window liner stuck to both sides of the glass along with dead bugs,  ICK.  I fell in love with the window and knew I wanted it.  As soon as I got home with it I started working on it and knew right away what I wanted to do with it.  Turn it into an inspiration board.

After the first cleaning.

Detail of the bad corners.  Any idea what to do here to preserve the frame and stop the glass from falling out?

I wish I would have taken before photos but here it is in its current state.

I have PLENTY of room still to add to it and just used washi tape so it can easily be removed and used again and again if needed.  I like to recycle.  :)  I can't wait to see what this will look like once it is time to start with my December Daily.

Here are some inspiration boards from Pinterest that I feel in love with.

So, if my family saw what I did with the awesome window from their beloved farm, they would prolly flip!  But I took the time to clean it up, use it and love it.  My love for old family treasures and my love art, color and memory keeping all come together full circle.

In the future I plan to have some kind of wood molding put around the glass because I am worried that it will not hold in place forever. And I would love to have some hardware attached to the back so that it can be hung but for now, it holds all of my pretties that I love that inspire me while creating.  And it reminds me of my family and their stories of the old farm in Honey Creek.

And lastly, for all my girls from Lisa Wilkinson's class two, here is the library drawer in it's current state.  Thank you Lisa, I LOVE it.  I will always treasure it!

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!