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30/10/2015

We Are Made of These Moments

Remember a few weeks back where I said I was obviously obsessed with embroidery on paper. I have another embroidered page to share. AND this one actually has photos on it. I'm thinking that I might add a page of journaling to go with this page, but even if I don't, I love how this page turned out.

I went with rainbow colours on black and love how the colours pop against the black. I added photos along the right side, and wrote the date for each photo along the edge of it.
These photos are some of the only photos of us in existence. Which is unfortunate, but we're not people who take selfies together. Another fun fact, my mom took the top 2 photos, and my sister took the bottom one.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. I'm also trying to figure out how to incorporate embroidery into some of my Christmas projects.

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

29/10/2015

Project Life | Week 32

Today I'm sharing my spread for Week 32. More cards from Studio Calico (slowly making it through my collection) I love that some of them just perfectly fit the story I want to tell, but looking at it now, I need to add something to the top of the orange card on the left side.

 Here's the left side. The "let's stay home" card was perfect for documenting how we stayed home all day Monday and just relaxed. We got a new game this week called Exploding Kittens. It's hilariously inappropriate (still not as bad as cards against humanity), and we love it!
Here's the right side. Since I started using Snapchat, I like to include those in my spreads sometimes. Like when there are so many pizza orders that I can't see over the desk.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. Even if it once again contains a bunch of photos of Gracie.

Have a great day! Tomorrow I'm sharing another stitched page.

-Alexandria

28/10/2015

Leaves & Love

I shared this sneak peek on Instagram a couple weeks ago, and I love it so much. I love seeing a tiny piece of a layout and wondering what the rest of the project looks like. Then when I see it, I'm often blown away. This sneak peek might not blow you away, but I love that it captures the essence of everything on this layout. Leaves, paint splatters, stars and enamel dots, the colours, and thickers.

Here's the full spread. I used an old-ish Maggie Holmes paper that already had some pink paint splatters in the bottom left corner, so I added more pink, some orange and some yellow. I love how this spread turned out, and I love that photo. I added some fake leaves to the left side, and tried to keep things a little more simple on this spread.

I stacked some labels at the top and stitched them down, and stamped the date the photo was taken on on label. I added a a few enamel dots to finish it off.

In the bottom left corner I added 3 little chipboard stars and stapled them down to make sure they stayed in place. I love this angle. I love seeing a lot of the spread, but not seeing all of it at the same time.

Another angle of the top corner, this time with journaling. I love all the open space on this spread and I love this photo. I'll probably make another layout with it in the future, but even if I don't I'll still enjoy looking at this spread a lot.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. I will be back tomorrow sharing another week of Project Life and I hope you'll come check it out. I'm slowly catching up again and it's so nice.

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

26/10/2015

Project Life | Week 31

Today I'm sharing Week 31 of my Project Life. This was the week of Jon's sisters wedding, and it was incredibly stressful for everyone. I used mostly cards from Studio Calico again.

Here's the left side. The emoji wood veneer is from Freckled Fawn.

Here's the right side. The "Not my day" photo overlay is from an old studio Calico kit. It had three rows of "not my day" and I trimmed it to be used three times. I also added 3 photos of Gracie to this spread somehow.

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

23/10/2015

You Are

Good morning! Today I'm sharing this layout that I've been teasing on Instagram all week. I'm so incredibly happy with how this spread turned out, and it blows my mind how well it all came together.

This spread showcases the I AM . WE ARE . YOU ARE stamp set by Kellie Stamps. I love that she's gone digital which means I can alter the stamps in so many different ways. Here I used my silhouette to create a template for the stitching. I don't have the sketch pens for the silhouette yet, so I cut out the letters and trace them onto the page I want to stitch on. I added some stamps along the right side and coloured them to match the letters on the left side. I added journaling that went along with the stamps I used on the right, and at the bottom, I added two sentiments from the Digital Kiddo stamp set.

I added star embellishments from an old Studio Calico kit, to bring out some of the colours in the photograph. I added a sticker from an incredibly old My Minds Eye sticker sheet (I think it was from Sweetest Thing).
And a close up of the stitching because it's not always pretty up close, but definitely has become one of my favourite techniques to add to my projects. It's fun and therapeutic, and I just really enjoy doing it.

Thank you so much for coming by to see my spread for this week. None of the links to Kellie's shop are affiliate, just making sure you can find the products I used on this spread because they're available.

Have a great weekend!
-Alexandria

22/10/2015

Project Life | Week 30

Today I'm sharing week 30. This week was one of those weeks. The wedding is getting closer, everyone is stressing a little bit because there are things they should be addressing, but they're not. It was a mess. Jon and I worked all of this week, and our stress levels were higher than they should have been. This week I used Studio Calico, one water colour card, and Kellie Stamps.

Left side; Gracie being as adorable as ever. Work being as busy as ever. Thriving in my thrive shirt. We had a family of skunks living in our neighborhood, possibly under our shed, and we were all a little concerned about being outside and accidentally scaring them. That skunk card from Studio Calico was perfect for documenting this.

Right side; a trip to lloyd to pick up some things on my only day off this week. Got shoes for the wedding, not any of the ones I'd been looking at, met my little sisters' boyfriend for the first time, laughed about the boat being parked close to a puddle, and watched some rain on the drive home.

Thanks for coming by to see my spread this week. On Wednesday I'm sharing some photos of the invitations I made for Jon's sister and her now husband's wedding. I'm so proud of them, but wish things had gone differently.

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

21/10/2015

Week In The Life | Sunday

Today I'm sharing the final round of pages from my 2015 album. I love how this whole album turned out, and Jon's flipped through it and he loves it too, though he didn't notice some of the little details and things. That's completely okay with me. It means that he's likely to flip through it again and look for those little things I've pointed out to him.


One of my favourite things that I did in this album, was adding the numbers here and there. Here I added a 9 because I woke up at 9. I wanted to use the numbers wherever possible, and this was the perfect way. I used every single number and I'm so proud of myself!

The yellow labels were a little harder for me to use up, but I used more than I thought I would. The one on the bottom left photo says "love this".



I used A LOT of the gold and cream perforated strips throughout. I love that they're small and just a simple way to add a little extra something to a photo. This photo is super dark, but lighter in person. It's gracie curled up on the bed with me.

To finish off the album, I printed this quote from one of Ali Edwards' #givesunday posts. I thought I would just end it there, but then I grabbed some stamps and these little 2x2 squares from Studio Calcio that have been in my stash since last year sometime, and created a little see-through page for the back. I love that you don't even have to flip that page, everything is readable from the front, and just ends the album with a bit of colour.


As you can see, my album refuses to stay closed. It's so incredibly full, but I'm so happy with it. I know Ali mentioned in one of her posts that they should make the spine larger for the next kit. I agree. My album is PACKED and has literally no space left for anything.

Originally, my daily review cards (the front of the 3x8 pockets) were going to have the wood veneers from the kit on them, but they made the album too thick before I even added anything to it, so I removed them and stamped the days instead. I'm happy with how it looks, but really loved the veneers. Maybe next year!

Thank you for coming to check out my Week in the Life album. This was my first year doing it, and I enjoyed it so much, but now I'm nervous about doing December Daily. Maybe I'll have to limit myself to one two page spread for each day, or even less than that so it all fits into one 6x8 album. I've also been considering doing a 4x4 album for Christmas. We'll see what happens.

Have a great weekend!
-Alexandria

19/10/2015

Project Life | Week 29

Today I'm sharing week 29. More photos this week, less crafty projects. Still Studio Calico cards. I have quite the stash I'm trying to get through, but I'm apparently not using enough of them!
Left side; It's getting close and closer to his sister's wedding and we can all feel the pressure building. Meanwhile, a couple of new flowers bloomed in the back flowerbed. I snapped photos to ask my gardening partner about them. The orange one is a type of Lily and the purple one is bluebells. Our watermelon had a face too ripe to eat. Shoe shopping online and trying to decide if I wanted white or black shoes.

Right side; It finally rained a bit. After a summer with almost no rain, we finally got some. I love that it made everything green again! I finished painting my file cabinet. Of course I didn't take any before, or during photos, but I have a nice white file cabinet and that's all I care about. I had several layouts in the works at this time, and continually left them sitting out on my desk in the hopes that I'd work on them. The bottom ones were finished, but the navy ones are all works in progress.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. I'll be back on Wednesday sharing another project.
Have a great day!
-Alexandria

16/10/2015

Week In The Life | Saturday

So close to being finished with this album. I hope you've enjoyed my pages so far, you can type "Week in the Life" into the search bar to see the other posts about this album.






I took a few less photos this day, but documented more words from today and a few from the rest of the week here. I wasn't concerned if I used a photo that wasn't from that day to document something routine (like showering or going to bed).

On Friday I'm sharing the last round of pages from my album. I've had so much fun with this project and I'm excited to do it again in the spring!

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

14/10/2015

Kellie Stamps | October

Ladies (and possible gentleman), I'm so excited to finally make this formal announcement here that I've joined the Kellie Stamps design team. I rave about her products all the time, and I'm so excited to be a part of her team. I shared this on Instagram a couple weeks ago, but was trying to get a few projects completed to share here when I made the announcement.

 Remember when I had a weird obsession with clear stamps? Now I have that obsession with digital stamps. I love the freedom to make them a variety of sizes, and to use them in so many ways. I have a few projects that are works in progress and I'll share those later on, but today I have a few that I whipped up before the official release.

Here I used my silhouette and the digital doodles from the GOSH! stampset to create these little diecuts. They're a little larger than I'd hoped they'd be, but still small enough to add to a notecard or a pocket card in my Project Life. I might add some colour to them with watercolours, but currently they're in a small dish on my desk waiting to be added to a project.

 I have the same obsession with my silhouette as I do with digital stamps these days. Here I made some notecards using the cake and donut doodles from the GOSH! stamp set. I love how they turned out, and after I paint them, I'm going to add a little sentiment to each of them, but I love the black and white look as well.

I made some little Project Life cards using the I AM. WE ARE. YOU ARE. and GOSH sets. I added some colour with watercolours, and a little strip of washitape and a wood veneer. I have a thing for ampersands!

The GOSH set has a beautiful happy birthday sentiment, so I've been working on some birthday cards (working on some different ones as well). I love the simplicity of the black and white, but might add some watercolours or something to the front.
 Inside I added a cake pop up and the "Oh yeah cake!" sentiment. I love this because it's a calorie free cake, and I love pop up cards.
I'm working on a little 4x4 album, and so I made these little 2x2 cards with books to document a bit of what I'm reading this month.
Here's the cover page I made using the Jan-Sun stampset. This is my cover page for my October album. I also added in some washitape from an old Studio Calico kit.

I'm having so much fun playing with Kellie's new Digital stamps and I hope that you'll try out some digital stamps. You can purchase her stamps (here) and check out her blog for more inspiration (here) or her Facebook page where she shares creative team inspiration (here) and the Kellie Stamps Instagram (here).

12/10/2015

Project Life | Week 27 & 28

Today I'm sharing Week 27 & 28. I had a similar layout last year, where I shared two weeks in the same two page spread. This week was one of those ones where you're caught up in all the craziness of life and don't take many photos. This week I used Studio Calico, some of my watercoloured cards and Kellie Stamps.

Left side; This side is week 27. I started working on my first embroidered layout this week. I was trying to relax after the stress of everything going on lately. It helped immensely, and I see more embroidery happening in my future. And of course, not one but two cute Gracie photos.
The right side; week 28. The top left photo is my "arrivals" report at work. It tells me who's checking in, what room they're checking into, and gives me a total check in number. I covered the sensitive information before I took the photo, and journaled on that blank space. Another cute Gracie photo, the finished embroidered page, and the Week in the Life photo I shared on Instagram, and my blog.

I understand that this spread doesn't quite cover everything that was going on during those two weeks, but I'm okay with that. I don't want to remember how close I was to having a mental breakdown, or how much Jon and I were arguing those two weeks. I realize that's part of our story, but I don't want to devote an entire page to documenting that because I don't have enough photos to fill the page.

I'll see you all on Wednesday when I share Saturday of my Week in the Life album. I hope you all have a wonderful day.
-Alexandria