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.