Recent Posts

29/06/2015

Project Life | Week 16

Good morning! Today I'm sharing week 16, and finally taking part in Karen's link up again. I've been super bad about it, but kept her badge in my sidebar. I'm going to make a point to add my link to her link up though, and I encourage you to as well!

This week I packed and left for my trip to Dauphin to watch my cousins Ukranian Dance competition, and final recital. I didn't include too many photos from the trip because I made a mini album of it, but I included a few since it was a large part of my week. I made sure to pick up 2 programs and included one here and one in my mini album.

Here's the left side. I started #myselfiescrapbook this week and included a couple photos that I included in that. I finished another book, and included a couple feet selfies. I love #kelliestamps and used them a few times on this spread. I used them on the blue card and stamped "Family trip/holiday/road trip and journaled about my trip with my parents. I also used her "view from where I stand" stamp on my foot selfies.

Here's the right side without the program. I included my favourite photos that captured what we did this week. I drove 6 hours to find the last bit of snow, my love of old brick buildings, my cousin in her dance uniform, the photo I snapped of my cousin, my mom, my grandma, and my dad not paying attention (of course). My other cousin running around and playing with me, reading stories with my dad, and making alphabet soup. She was super shy when we got there, but warmed up to me immediately. Took her a little longer to warm up to my dad, but when she did, they looked at books every chance she got.

Thanks for coming by to see my spread for this week. I'm still working on my mini album, but when I get it finished, I'll absolutely share it here. I'm just trying to decide if I want to include words with my photos, or just the photos.


Don't forget to visit Karen's blog and add your Project Life link to her link up. It can be a link to a blog post, an instagram post, or a public Facebook post. It doesn't have to be a post you made today, the link up is open for an entire week, and you can add your link at any time. For more information on the link up, just visit her blog.
Have a great day!
-Alexandria

26/06/2015

Scrapping My Stash | Gift Tags

I've decided that I need to stop buying supplies and actually start using the ones I have. That being said, I'm going to try to Scrap My Stash when I get the chance, and use only things  that I've been hoarding for no reason other than my style is simple and I rarely embellish, but continue buying diecuts and ephemera packs.

This week I'm sharing some tags I made using the gold glitter pocket tags from this old Studio Calico kit. Originally I had thought about using these tags in a tag mini album for the latest minibook class at Studio Calico (here).

I tried to keep them pretty simple, and wanted some of the gold glitter to still show. Since the tags have pockets (you can fit money or a gift card inside the pocket) I only decorated the bottom half of the tag. I stuck with pink and black embellishments because I have the most of those colours, and wanted to use them up a bit. Plus what girl doesn't love gold?

I started with at least one black label on each tag, and added the pink embellishments after. I tried to make them all a little different, while keeping a similar look to all of them.

These tags were so quick and easy to make. You could do something similar with tags that don't have pockets. You could include them in a mini album, or on a gift, or add them to a card. I think I'll make little cards to fit inside of them and add them to gift bags.

I hope that this post encourages you to use your supplies and not just keep them on a shelf where you'll never use them.
Have a great day!
-Alexandria

24/06/2015

23 Little Things I Want To Remember Right Now Layout

Good morning friends! You may or may not know that I'm taking Ali Edwards' Type workshop. It's definitely inspired me to use typed journaling on my layouts from time to time, and to tell longer stories, or tell stories that aren't composed of complete sentences or proper paragraph forms. It's been absolutely wonderful to try telling stories in different ways. Today I'm sharing the layout I made using my list of 23 little Things from this post yesterday. 

For this layout I used one of my absolute favourite pictures from somewhat recently. I stamped the date the photo was taken, and the date the list was made on the layout. I used a background paper from Heidi Swapp's Hello Today line, some flair from that same line, the white alphabets are from American Crafts and the square alphas are from Studio Calico, and the words on the photo are from Ali Edwards. The little heart gem is from Freckled Fawn. The first line of journaling is also from Ali Edwards, possibly from her "Little Things Story Kit".

Here's the full layout. I love the giant photo and the large block of text. I love that I mixed the three fonts for the title. I love the way they look together and I love that you can read the title as "I want to remember 23 little things right now" or "23 little things right now" or "23 little things I want to remember right now". I love that it's simple. Since the photo and the journaling covered most of the page, I used a busier background paper and I love how it looks!





I love how this layout turned out and I'd like to thank Ali for encouraging us to tell longer stories, and to try things that might be uncomfortable to us. Thank you for coming by to see this spread, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
-Alexandria

23/06/2015

23 | Little Things I Want to Remember Right Now

Ali Edward's encouraged those of us in her Type Workshop to document some things we want to remember about right now. There was no limit on how many, no suggestions on things you might want to remember. I decided to do a minimum of 23 things I want to remember, and to share them here. I'm writing this list in May, and I'm sharing the layout I made using these words tomorrow.

The way Tori says "I love you the most"
How happy and giggly Emmett is
Jon's beard scratching and tickling my skin
The way Gracie lays on her side and stretches out and tells me about her day while I pet her
Socks singing us "the song of [his] people" at all hours of the day (and at night)
The smell of the lilacs - even if it is a little overwhelming at times
How much I love the Pitch Perfect 2 Soundtrack
Gracie trotting to the front door to greet us when we get home
My collection of owls. Soon I'll need a room just to store them all
The smell of a new book
My current favourite songs
    • Stressed Out by 21 Pilots
    • Fight Song by Rachel Platten
    • Blank Space by Taylor Swift
    • Bright by Echosmith
    • Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran
My obsession with making mini albums
The obscene amount of money I spent on T-shirts to support a sort-of-stranger who is becoming an Instagram friend
Jon and I planning our wedding and we're not even engaged yet
The amount of fun I had creating my mixed media cards for One Little Word
Cuddling on the couch with Jon & Gracie watching Netflix
How close my sister and I are growing as she gets older
Bonding with my mom and my sister over our mutual likes/dislikes
My parents gradually mending their relationship after years of arguing
Adjusting to my new phone, and learning about all of it's awesome features
The pressure from my mom to get married
Warm showers and their ability to relax me
The smell of coffee in the morning
Tomorrow I'm sharing the layout I made using the words from this post. I chose a different photo, and I'm so happy with how it turned out!
Have a great day
-Alexandria

22/06/2015

Project Life | Week 15

Happy Monday friends! I hope you all had a great weekend! I had to work, but I work basically every weekend , so it's all good. Today I'm sharing my spread for Week 15.

Here's my spread. This week was lots of books, a bit of creating, and our new couch arrived! Finally. It's so beautiful, and I love it so much. This week I used a title card from Studio Calico, and two journaling cards from the Midnight Edition, as well as some labels from my stash.

Here's the left side. Because I read Looking For Alaska this week, I thought it was only fitting that I use this title card from Studio Calico that says "I go to seek a great perhaps" which is a line from the book. I had a lot of photos I wanted to include this week, so I used labels to journal on the photos. My sister came back from Ireland this week, and was bummed that she missed the snow. I made a mini album with some magic moments and used a Kellie Stamps stamp on the cover. My books and mugs arrived.

The last photo of the old couches. Plus my favourite shot of my niece putting up the newest window stickers (which are still on the window). More Kellie Stamps, the new furniture (which looks AMAZING). Gracie peering over the couch at Jon's phone, and a peek into my Details mini album, which may very well be a permanent work in progress.

Thanks for coming by to see my spread this week! I hope you have a wonderful week!
-Alexandria

19/06/2015

Week In The Life | I Can & I Will

Happy Friday friends! I must admit that I have a huge girl crush on Ali Edwards. She's an amazingly inspiring human being, and I'm so incredibly grateful that I found her and her creative business. I first learned about Week In The Life last fall (just a little behind on the times). It was never something I thought I could do. Like a lot of memory keepers I thought that you had to think your life was interesting enough to be documented. It took me until this year to realize that it doesn't matter if my life is "interesting" right now, in the moment. What matters is that I choose to document the monotony of my daily life RIGHT NOW. In a few years, we hope to be getting married and starting a family. Things definitely won't be the same as they are right now, and I want to be able to see how our lives change, even if we don't notice it right away.

I'll be documenting my week with Ali's Week In The Life Kit and I'll probably add in some things from my stash (to be determined). I'll be constantly giving myself pep-talks to ensure that I follow-through with this. Part of my One Little Word plans for this year, was to do things that I've been putting off for various reasons. This is one of those things, and it's so unbelievably exciting to be crossing something off my list that I never thought I would do.

If you're not doing Week In The Life, I hope that you set aside whatever is holding you back, and just try. My plan had been to do Day In The Life first, but we were in Calgary, and then things just got busy and I haven't done it yet. Maybe I'll do it AFTER I tackle Week In The Life.

Thanks for coming by. I hope that you'll document a day, or a few days, or a whole week in your life right now, and in 3 years, we'll do it again and make note of the obvious differences!

Have a great weekend!
-Alexandria

15/06/2015

Project Life | Week 14

Happy Monday! I feel like Monday's get a lot of unnecessary hate. Yes they're the start of most people's work weeks, but sometimes they're my Friday, and other times, they're my Thursday. But almost every week, it's the day I share my Project Life spreads. I'll be the first to admit that doing Project Life has been really therapeutic for me, and a great way to document all the seemingly boring little details of my very monotonous life.

Despite that, you all seem to keep coming back to see my spreads every week though, so that's awesome! Thank you! This week I'm sharing Week 14. This week it felt almost like summer, but only for one or two days before it snowed again. I used one card from my Studio Calico stash, and the rest are from Honey I think.


Here's the left side. I don't have much to say about this weeks spread. Maybe that's because it happened months ago. In my attempt to document the every day, I snapped a photo while I waited for a coworker to pick me up for work, Jon and I started watching suits, I finished reading The Heiresses, Gracie was "couch diving", and I received some more Kellie Stamps. I love them!
Here's the right side. The top two photos document the one day we had warm weather (around 18 degrees Celsius) and we took Gracie out on the deck with a leash. She tries to venture outside whenever the door is open, so going outside is actually terrifying for her because she never actually gets to go out. I finished The Vacationers and The Girl With All the Gifts. Both were really good! The day after we were out on the deck, it rained, then it tried to snow, and then we had a layer of snow on the ground. My sister was in Ireland and mad that she was missing the snow. I also took a close up of my coffee because I've been drinking more lately.

Thanks for coming by to see my spread for this week. I hope you all have a wonderful documentable week!
-Alexandria

10/06/2015

One Little Word | May Prompts

Good morning! Today I'm sharing my May One Little Word prompt. This was exactly what I needed right now, and how Ali knew that when prepping this class, I have no idea. Maybe she's been doing it for long enough that I should just trust that she knows best! I loved this prompt so much. It was so much fun, and is definitely something I will do again in the future. I loved making these cards, and it's definitely something I recommend. It's fun to get a little messy and just create and not care that you're getting messy.

So here's my cards that I made. I used light molding paste, some Heidi Swapp stencils and watercolours. It was so much fun. I love the texture molding paste creates, but I hated the white on white, but I also didn't really want stark white on coloured paper. I took my stencil and my molding paste. Using an old card I spread plain white molding paste over the stencil onto each of the cards. I drug the card across the stencil leaving a thin-ish layer of molding paste on the paper. Enough to create texture, but not so much that it was really thick.
Once the molding paste dried, I took my water colours out and decided where I wanted each card to go and chose my colours. I painted the bottom left card first. For no reason, other than I just chose to do that one first. I brushed my watercolours across the molding paste and the paper, and once the whole card was covered I lightly pressed a piece of paper towel over the card to remove some of the paint. The result was an uneven colour on the molding paste and the paper. It removed most of the paint from the molding paste (which I wanted) and added to the texture, but most of the paint remained on the paper behind it. I'm so happy with my rainbow cards.

Here's my two finished pages together. I put all of my I am statements onto my cards, and printed out my full page of review. I thought about backing it with a simpler paper, but I love these two together.

I printed my I am statements onto vellum. I used the digital "I am" stamp and changed the colour to grey, then I typed out 9 I AM statements that are relevant to right now. I cut them out with 1/8" around the words (each piece is a slightly different size) and used my tiny attacher to staple them onto my cards. I thought about writing my I am statements onto the cards, but the texture would have made it hard, so I printed them on vellum so I could see all my hard work through it, but still easily read my words over the backgrounds.

Here's my review. I love the colours of the background paper. I feel like it connects the two pages, without making it too overwhelming.

Thank you for coming by to check out my One Little Word prompts. I had so much fun with this project and I look forward to trying more mixed media projects.

Have a great day! -Alexandria

08/06/2015

Project Life | Week 13

Good morning! I'm so happy that I have a Project Life spread to share this week. I feel like it's been forever since I shared one (I checked. It's been a month). Today I'm sharing Week 13, and it feels like this week happened in another lifetime.

This week I used a lot of my stash. A bit from Studio Calico, and some blue cards I found in my stash. I recently sorted them by colour, and I love how much easier it is for me to find cards. I just need to go back and put the colours in order so I'm not flipping through everything in the blue section looking for a navy blue card.
Here's the left side. Jon was in Chicago until the start of this week. The selfies of Gracie and I were the night before he came home. She missed him and was forcing me to cuddle with her because she was lonely. I also took my desk apart only to put it back together. I'm still debating getting rid of it and getting something a little smaller and changing the layout of my room a tiny bit. I also read two books at the start of the week. I LOVED Chris Hadfield's book. It made me realize how small my life really is in the grand scheme of things. This I Know was really beautiful as well. I didn't get a ton out of it, but I really enjoyed it. If you've lost someone really close to you, I definitely recommend it.
Here's the right side. One day it was snowing and the next day it was already melting. It snowed before Jon got back, and I left it until he was home to shovel (I hurt my back doing it a couple of times, and so I've resigned to the fact that I won't be doing it). I finally forced myself to finish Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking. It was dry, but I enjoyed learning more about them. She's such a strong woman, and I admire her strength. I'm a photo ninja, and snapped one of my sister before her final Honor Band performance before she leaves for Ireland. I also snapped a photo of Socks, the angry cat.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. I finished it a while ago, I just never got photos taken of it. After what I'm referring to as "the great catch up" of 2015, I photographed 9 weeks of spreads and I'm working on some posts for those as well.

Have a great day! On Wednesday I'm sharing my mixed media "I am" cards for One Little Word. I think it's one post you're going to want to see!

-Alexandria

05/06/2015

Project Life | Months Behind & My Catch-Up Process

Happy Friday! I almost considered taking this entire week off from blogging, but last night a post idea came to me while I was working on my Project Life pages from the last two months. I didn't notice it before, but I really do have a system for catching up when I'm behind, and while these 8 or 9 weeks of pages might not be my best spreads from the year, they'll be done in the way Beck Higgins intended for Project Life to be done - quickly. 

I almost prefer working on several weeks at one time because I feel like it taps into my creativity a little more, and it takes a little longer than a single two page spread. Which is how I love to create. I love to sit down and do several of the same project at one time (or an entire mini album). 

My process for doing a large amount of Project Life layouts goes like this:
  1. Determine which pictures go to which days for each week (sometimes I do this while making my notes throughout the week)
  2. Sketch my spread and determine photo placements
  3. Print and place photos
  4. Add Project Life cards
  5. Journal
  6. Embellish (optional)
Sometimes when I have the time, I print out my photos and I stick them in the pages and leave them there for several days before I do anything more with them. Sometimes I place all my cards and leave them for a few days and come back to make sure I'm okay with how it looks.

For this particular catch-up, I tried to use up a lot of my Studio Calico stash, so I set those cards out on my desk and while flipping through them, if I had a particular card that went well on a particular spread I'd stick it there. I tried to do one spread at a time, but usually ended up placing cards all over. I double check to make sure that all the pockets on every spread was full before I put my cards away.

My planner pages came from a blog that is no longer, but I'm working on creating a set of my own printable planner pages to offer to my readers.

I hope that you found this post helpful, at least a little bit. If you do something different (like select your cards first, or embellish before you journal) I'd love to hear about it. 

Have a great weekend!
-Alexandria