Vancouver Project Life Album Prep

Almost two years ago, my college class went to Vancouver. It was technically a class funded field trip, but we had some fun doing things aside from touring the Vancouver Convention Centre. I'll talk more about that when I share the finished album in a later post. 

In this prep series. my pages are in a Project Life binder, the finished product will be put into a scrapbook because there aren't enough pages to fill the binder, and they'll fit perfectly into a scrapbook. This prep series is also more about helping you create an album before you print your photos.

I had to go through almost 400 photos and I only ended up using a 156 of them. My photos came from the 100 or so that I took with my iPhone, 300+ photos a classmate took with a camera from the college, and a couple additional photos that a few classmates took and posted on Facebook that helped fill in some of the gaps.

I'm only going to share a few photos of my album, no point overloading you with every picture-less page and ruining half the surprise of the finished product.

It's hard to tell on the right side which journal cards and sticky notes are on that page, but the four cards across the centre are the journal cards for that page, and the top and bottom ones have yellow sticky notes with photo number/descriptions for reference.

The blue sticky notes on every single page are there to tell me which core kit was used for each page. I didn't use the same core kit throughout this album. I used Sunshine, Honey, Blush, Rain, Jade, and Midnight. It's a lot, but sometimes one kit didn't work for that particular open space, or it didn't go with the photos I wanted to put on that page, or it wasn't giving the feeling I wanted it to. 

I ran out of yellow sticky notes, so I used orange. On the left I have a page of strictly photos and on the right I have a page of photos with the exception of one PL card in the bottom left. The pink sticky notes you can see on this page are to mark the places that I need to put a title or fill in journaling of some kind.

When I get my photos back, I'll do a quick explanation/tutorial about how I did the page on the right. the top two rows of the right page are for one photo. It's a Design A pocket page, but I've ordered a few photos blown up to larger sizes and I'm going to crop them to fit into multiple pockets to create a larger photo made of multiple parts. I've seen them numerous times in other peoples albums, and it took me a while to figure out how to do it. Now that I know what to do, I have it happening a few times throughout this album. Mostly with group photos, and a few signs from places we went that I really wanted to remember.

To keep track of all my photos, I wrote down the number or name on the photo and put it into a folder for the size I wanted it to be. I had folders for 3x4, 4x4, 4x6, 5x7, and 8x12. I also wrote out a list of page numbers and the core kit that I used.

I kept track of everything outside of the album in case I lost one of the sticky notes. It's hard to keep track if you're moving things, but I love that sticky notes can be moved around if you're unhappy with the placement. I moved sticky notes around a lot. I even had to move them to different pocket pages, and I added a few additional pages to get some more photos in there.

I can't even explain how excited I am about this album. I can't wait to get my photos and share this with all of you! Now I need to get week one of my personal album finished so I can keep up with that and share it with you!

I love sharing Project Life with my family/friends. I gave a bunch of it to Jon's sisters for Christmas. My brother and his girlfriend are having another baby so I'm giving it to them as a baby gift. Jon's one sister is also pregnant again, so we're giving her more Project Life for the new baby.

I hope that this helped you get your PL albums organized. I plan to use this technique to work on a few weeks of my personal 2014 album before printing photos.

Have a wonderful day!

-Alex

DIY Mod Podge Jar

I've been slowly settling into my craft room and trying to get myself organized. I've also been working really hard on keeping up with the blog, and all of my penpals. The challenge I'm currently facing is making time for everything after working all day. I really need to figure out how to balance everything, or start making sacrifices. That being said, I've been trying to make really simple things for the blog that help me get organized in my craft space, and around the house, or for my penpals. That way I can get a bunch of things done at once. That being said, some of my posts may contain things pertaining to other aspects of my life (work, penpals, organizing the house).

While organizing, I realized that it didn't make sense for me to have all my writing pens in my carousel on my desk if I have a small writing desk where I'll be writing all my letters. I found an empty jar and decided that it was boring so I dug out some tissue paper and my mod podge and made the jar prettier.

I used wrap & unwrap tissue paper that I picked up at a Chapter's Book Store, and some twine I had laying around.

I used two colours of twine and tied them in a bow.

I folded the ends down over the bottom, and put a scrap piece over it to secure them.

I don't have an official tutorial for this, but to do something similar with tissue paper or other paper, start by covering the outside of your jar or container with mod podge. Starting with the middle of your paper press it onto the jar gradually moving out to the edges. Let it sit for a while then brush mod podge over the top of the paper to seal it. Feel free to add embellishments to the jar as desired.

So simple and so quick. You could have kids do it with little squares of different coloured tissue paper!

Hope everyone has a great day!

-Alex 

Shopping Haul and Storage

Almost every time I go to the nearest city, I can't help but pick up crafting supplies. I almost need an intervention or something, but I promise to eventually use everything I have currently.

First up, I bought more wire cubes from Walmart for my paper stack storage (original post can be found here). Let me just say that I hate these ones because they're different than my other ones. The original set I have is Rubbermaid, and the little circle connector pieces are sturdy and nearly impossible to get on/off, which is GOOD. That means when I'm dragging it across the floor it doesn't start falling apart.

I found all the extra connector pieces from the first set of cubes, and replaced the terrible ones so that it won't fall apart. Thank goodness. The last thing anyone wants is to come home from work and find a giant paper mess everywhere.

Here's my complete paperstack unit currently. I made two entire cubes again and just stacked the top one on top of the bottom one. They're not currently attached to each other so I can take the top two cubes off and move it easily. I realize now that I could use a couple more to get all of my 12 x 12" sheets onto racks like this. I like that I can see all the colours on the top just by standing there looking at them, and all my paperstacks are right there within reach as well. When I have more wall space they probably won't be stacked, or they'll actually be attached to each other.

Last week I went shopping for a few items for my penpals, and conditioner. I stumbled across this adorable binder. I love owls in case you didn't know. I knew immediately that with some pocket pages this would be exactly what I needed to get all my stamps into manageable storage.

I only bought 8 1/2" x 11" pocket pages for now so I could measure my other stamps and see how small I could go and how many I would need. I simply slipped my stamps into the pages, leaving them attached to the plastic sheets they came on. I started with the larger stamps, and left the others in the box. I'll get more pages and show you the finished project when I finally get them all into it. I also need to get dividers so I can sort them by season/use/holiday.

Last year I did a lot of my Christmas cards on the go because Jon was working a lot, and my basement was way too cold to work in for a long period of time. I found this at Walmart, and since I figure I'll be crafting Christmas cards on the go again, this will keep all my tools together in one place. I can also use it when I'm penpalling on the go. It's a win win.

I love these stamps. I have 4-5 sets of stamps like these for different purposes. I have a baby set that I used on some baby cards a while back, a Christmas set that I used for a custom order last year, and a Graduation set that I used when I graduated from college. I also love that they include a little block for them. It's the perfect size!

I don't use permanent markers a lot, but I couldn't pass these up. Who doesn't want neon Sharpies? You never know when they might come in handy! I love the Sharpie pens for writing letters.

Jon got a Staples gift card with his credit card points, so I picked up some much needed cardstock. I prefer Staples for most of my 8 1/2" x 11" cardstock because it comes in these giant packs and it's so much cheaper. I buy all of my white cardstock from them because I go through it the most!

The colours on the front don't even closely match the actual colours of the paper. The top 5 colours are the package on the left, and the bottom 5 are the package on the right. I love love love the purple and pink in the bottom stack. The yellow's are practically the same, guess I'll need to start using more yellow.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thursday! Only one more day until the long weekend! Hooray!

-Alex

Paper Stack Storage Solution

Alright, so for those of you who know me, I have a love of paper. There has only been a handful of times that I've gone shopping, and not bought at least one paper stack. Unfortunately, that means that I have A LOT of paper.
I don't know that there is any right way to store it, but while browsing my Instagram feed, I came across a crafty lady who had come done what I'm about to show you. I thought it was the smartest thing I'd ever seen!
At some point I'd like to get more shelves so I can store all of my paper this way, and not just my paper stacks.

So, there's my shelf. I'm sure you've seen them at Walmart and thought "What would I ever use that for? Things would fall through the holes". They also have fabric boxes that could fit into the cubes. It worked for other things for a while, but I decided that it wasn't working for me that way. So I took it apart and found some metal ties (metal twist ties from bread or garbage bags work).

I assembled two of the cubes and used the remaining pieces (plus two I took from another one of these) to make this. I used twist ties to secure each shelf to the outside in five places. Two on either side and one on the back in the middle. Then I slid all of my paper stacks into it and ta da. You could also use this for individual sheets, just put similar patterns/colours together.

There you have it! A simple storage solution you can make yourself. And there is no limit to how many cubes you could build, I think I might add another two cubes onto this for all my other paper!

Have a wonderful Tuesday everyone!

-Alex