Thursday, July 31, 2014

Project Life 2014: Week 27 Part I

Week 27 was another week that got a little out of control.  Eight pages... EIGHT pages!  Granted we were in Michigan doing cool things and there were two Independence Day celebrations... but EIGHT pages!

Here's part one...



Supplies:


Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Road Trip 2014: Travel Journal Prep Part II

WHAT WE MADE...

So, one day I got this bright idea that I should make divider pages for each day of our trip.  In my original plan, I would map our route for each day and add that to the page.  Well... our plans kept changing... how many days we would be gone, what we would be seeing on what day... it was all a bit in flux.  I still really wanted to do the dividers and still wanted to document our route, so I used Emily Merritt's outline map of the US instead of an actual map.  This way I can still map our route, but this is more forgiving.  I printed an extra couple of days... just in case.  All of the bases seem to be covered!


The other thing I had printed was a large selection of embellishments and journaling cards.  I decided to try something new here.  I had them all printed on sticker paper!  I had shopped and shopped for stickers for this trip, but really didn't find anything I liked.  Everything seemed too 3-D and I had a feeling this book was going to be thick enough when it's done without adding extra bulk.  I wanted nice flat stickers... so I made some!
I hope it all works out as well as it does in my head!  :-)

The only disappointment is that I either mis-measured my pages or they reduced the image for printing. But either way... my pages are smaller than the actual book pages.  
I'm not getting upset about it though!  I truly love how they turned out and I think the different sized pages will add some interest!

Now to pack it all up!!

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Project Life 2014: Alex's Week 26

 And this is what the boys were up to while Clara and I were gone!


I was totally at the mercy of other people for photos this week.  But thankfully I was able to find some quality shots.  Alex had an absolutely amazing experience at the Hard Rock!

Supplies (links on pinterest):



Saturday, July 26, 2014

Project Life 2014: Week 26 My Tuesday

While at nationals, the girls had dance classes most of the day.  On Tuesday, a group of moms from our team all decided to do a little sightseeing on our own.  We spent the morning at Brookgreen Gardens.  It was really beautiful!  I wasn't sure what to do with these photos though.  I thought about doing them as an insert, but it didn't really go with the other pages.  I ended up just deciding to do it as it's own two page spread.  I'm fully embracing the "as many pages as it takes" philosophy!  :-)



The pony covered in succulents was my most favorite thing!  I want one of my own!  :-)

Friday, July 25, 2014

Project Life 2014: Clara's Week 26

Week 26 ended up a little out of control (6 pages done... plus two more that I'm waiting to get photos for to finish)!  Clara and I were in Myrtle Beach for her dance nationals.  These pages are about the down time the girls had.  I still have to do the pages for the actual competition, but I haven't received the photos yet.  Once I get those and design a cover, my book for the first half of the year is ready to print!  That is both exciting and frightening to me all at the same time.  I can't believe how fast this year is flying by!

Here's Clara's week 26...

This was a major highlight of Clara's year of dance.  While I'm still not 100% sure about the hard core competition dance world... she has loved this year so much!  And what better way to cap it off, than to go on a beach vacation with a bunch of your best friends!

Supplies (links on pinterest):


Thursday, July 24, 2014

Road Trip 2014: Travel Journal Prep Part I

 STUFF WE BOUGHT...

Clara and I are starting a brand new project for us... travel journals/smash books.  Later this summer we'll be going on the Great American Road Trip (Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, the badlands, etc.) and we wanted a way to document it all.  We each have our own motivation for this project.  For me, I wanted a way to keep on top of the details so I can include them in my project life spreads and a bigger trip photo book when we get back.  We'll be gone 2-3 weeks, so that's a lot of stuff to remember!  For Clara, it's a way to keep all of the scraps of paper she loves to save corralled in one place, and a project to keep her entertained.  She's my crafty girl and loves projects.  We did a trial book for just her on our trip to South Carolina and it went pretty well.  We learned a few things, but in the end she has a nice little journal full of memories and it was a project that kept her entertained during the 2 hours our plane was delayed on the way home!

So here are the main things we bought for this project...

After much deliberation, we ended up with Michael's brand Recollections Creative Chaos Travel Journals.  I picked this out from the beginning.  Clara had originally purchased an official Smash Book for hers (she ended up using it for our Myrtle Beach trip instead).  After looking through mine, she decided that she wanted a book just like mine.  What drew me to this one primarily was that it was a three ring binder.  I wanted to be able to add stuff to my book... not just glue things to the pages.  I have visions of punching holes in postcards, brochures, etc. and adding them.  We'll see what actually happens though!
The cover is a nice hard cover and the pages are really thick card stock.  The pages are nicely decorated and have some pages that I really like (like the travel log above, I plan on using it as a run down of all of the places we go).

The other big purchase...
Dollar-wise, this was a MUCH bigger purchase.  It's an Fujifilm Instax Share SP-1.  It was my Mother's Day present.  I love it!  We used it during our trial run in SC.  It works really well.  It prints polaroid type photos from your phone.  Is the quality spectacular?  No, but it's great for what it is.  This is not to print every photo we took that day, it's just to print one or two each day to help tell the story in our journals.  It is super tiny (one of the main reason I wanted it) and easy to use.  Clara has the little Instax camera (in pink!) that she will be using as well.  They both use the same film, so I should probably order some more before we leave!

We've acquired some other stuff along the way...
This isn't all that we have that we might take.... and we're not necessarily going to take all of this.  It's just a pretty good pile of stuff to represent what we might take.  Still working on what we're packing and how we're packing it.  But that will be another post closer to go time!

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Project Life 2014: Week 25, Clara's Saturday

So, here's where things start to get a little out of control (but in a good way!).  Part of my new philosophy regarding project life this year is embracing making as many pages as needed to get the story told.  Spring Break was the start of that (I think that week ended up with 6 pages!).  Starting on Saturday of this week, our family was split (Clara and I in Myrtle Beach and Jeff and Alex here).  Each set had some really cool things going on that needed some decent space to get it documented properly.  Since I had the one pager for week 25, I decided to do Clara's Saturday as it's own page to go opposite it.  There was enough going on that day to make it it's own page, so I think it worked out okay.

Week 25, Clara's Saturday....

Supplies (links on pinterest):

Monday, July 21, 2014

Project Life 2014: Week 25

So, week 25 marks my first ever one page layout for a week.  I don't know what happened that week... but when I sat down to do my page I realized that I only had three photos to use!  I was able to take another that had to do with that week (Alex's folder) and take a screen shot from a video I took to beef things up, but it was still a little sparse.  I just couldn't stretch it into a two page spread... so a one-pager it is!  It's also the week where I decided to give up on lining up my journaling with the lines on the card.  It absolutely makes me crazy to look at it.... but it was also making me crazy trying to line it up.  I'm not sure I made the right choice.... time will tell!

Week 25...


Supplies (links on pinterest):


Sunday, July 20, 2014

Project Life 2014: Week 24

I'm still here!!  I've hit a couple of rough patches with PL where I got behind due to travel and then this layout couldn't be posted until the kit was released (yesterday), so instead of jumping around, I decided to just wait it out.  I'll have a bit of a posting frenzy while I get caught up and then I'll probably disappear again while I sort things out after our next trip.  :-)

This is from Clara's last week of school (and now we're almost halfway through summer break... sigh!)...




Supplies (links on pinterest):