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

DIY Pocket Mini Album | Part 2 - Creating the Pages & Finishing the Album

Good morning! Today I'm sharing how I made the pages for my Love Mini Album. You can find Part 1 - Making the Album Cover HERE. In this part, we'll be making the pages, and putting the whole thing together. After this your album will be ready for photos and embellishments! That's so exciting right? I had so much fun making this album, and I hope you learned something, and were able to make your own beautiful album! I'd love to see your finished projects, so you can leave a link in the comments, or let me know and I'll host a mini album link party.

Supplies:

• 9 Patterned Papers - unless you want more pages
• Score board (optional)
• Bone folder - to score and fold pages
• Sewing machine (optional)
• Double sided tape - I used my ATG
• Twine, string, or anything you could use to tie it closed (optional)

First, select your 9 papers that you want to use. I made my cover purple, and so I struggled a little bit with choosing papers, but in the end I think the papers I chose, will compliment the purple cover perfectly. All of the papers I chose are from the Maggie Holmes Open Book 12x12 paperstack. I chose neutrals, green/teal, and a little bit of pink and yellow. I think they look beautiful together!

 Next you're going to cut your papers down to 9 3/4" x  7. Or, if you made your album a different size, you're going to make it double the width of your front cover, minus 1/4", by however tall your album is. You have to take off the extra 1/4 inch so that when it's closed, the spine doesn't push the pages out beyond the edges of the covers. You also make them twice as wide as the cover so that you can fold them in half.

Once you have them cut to size, just score them and fold them in half, except for one paper that will go on your front cover. That paper gets cut in half and set aside.

After I scored and folded my papers I chose the order in which I wanted them to go in my album, and stacked them so they were in order from front to back.

Then I got out my sewing machine and stitched around the outside edges of all of my papers (individually). I didn't do this in my other album, but decided to do it for this one. You can skip this step if you don't want to sew on your pages, or if you don't have a sewing machine. If you want any additional stitching detail, AND still want to create pages with a pocket between them (like in my Love album), you'll have to do that now, or you'll sew your pockets closed.

I took one half of the paper I cut in half and adhered it to the inside of my front cover. Because of the size I cut it, it hides the uneven edges of the fabric, and goes all the way to the spine. I sewed around the edges of this paper before I adhered it to the cover, since I had already sewn the cover.

Once you've sewn all your other papers, decide whether you want your pockets to open at the top, or on the side. If you want them to open at the side, run your tape along the top and bottom (the short sides), and along the side where you're page is folded. If you want them at the top, don't put tape at the top, but run it around the other three sides. If you don't want pockets, run your adhesive around all the sides.

As you can see, my pocket is along the side (again). This is the very first page of my album, so I used the same paper that I used for inside my album cover. Adhere the rest of your pages together, just like your first page (unless you want to switch up where your pockets are on each page).

On your last page, run adhesive all over it. This page lifts a little bit when you flip to it, depending on how thick your other pages are, so don't worry about that. Just make sure you press it down so it stays in place.

Make sure your pages aren't over the gap where your back cover meets your spine. If they are, peel them off and move them further from the gap, otherwise your album won't close properly.

There you go. You're finished adding the pages to your album. Go ahead, flip through it and admire your handiwork.

LOVE LOVE LOVE this paper.

This is my last page. As you can see, the right side lifts a little bit, but that's only because I put 8 pages into it. If you did less, the last page wouldn't lift, but you also wouldn't be able to pack it full of love!

You have some extra space between your pages and front cover, but that's okay because once you start adding your embellishments and photos you're going to need that extra space for them to expand.

I added twine around my album, and to make sure the twine stayed on my album, I poked a hole in the spine of my cover and folded my twine so that when I wrapped it, the bow would fall on the front. Then I pulled it through the hole I made in the spine and tied a knot to secure it in place. I did the same thing for my Love album, but when I tied it closed, the bow was along the side with all the tags.

Here's what my finished album cover looks like. It's so perfectly me, and I'm so happy with how it turned out. It'll look beautiful on the shelf next to my other mini albums I've made.

If anyone knows where I can get some more chipboard, that would be great! I want to make a bunch more of these, and host a giveaway. Leave links to your projects in the comments, and I'll either host a link up, or a round up of my favourite albums!

Thank you for checking out this tutorial. I hope it helped you to make pretty albums!
Have a great day!
-Alexandria

DIY Pocket Mini Album | Part 1 - Creating the Cover

A few people asked me to share a tutorial on how I made my Love Mini Album (here). Today I'm sharing with you how I made the base of my album. I decided to split this into two parts because there's a lot of photos. I didn't think anyone wanted to spend two days reading through all of it!

Supplies:

• Chipboard or thick cardboard - I used some from the back of a fridge calendar
• masking tape
• Fabric - I used old white sheets and dyed it, but you could use a patterned fabric and skip that step
• Food colouring, ink refills, fabric dye or anything you can use to dye your fabric
• Glue stick or mod podge - I used a glue stick so I could reposition the fabric if necessary
• fabric tape, or washitape
• scissors
• plastic bag

First, we're going to cut our chipboard pieces to size. You can adjust this to whatever sizes you want, but to fit 4x6 photos into the pockets, you'll want your front and back cover to be 5x7. Your spine will be 1x7, unless you plan to make a lot of pages, then you can make it whatever width you want, just make sure it's the same height as your front and back cover.

Next you'll want to tape your spine to your covers. Make sure you leave a gap between them so your spine and covers can bend to close.

Wrap the tape around both sides, and tape the back cover to your spine as well. I used painters tape because I couldn't find any white masking tape.

Next you're going to cut your fabric. You'll need two pieces of fabric, one will be a couple of inches taller than the other, but they'll be the same width.

 Both should be a little bit larger than your album. I set my album on the fabric and cut/tore it to the desired size. The smaller piece is roughly 1" wider all around, and the larger piece is an extra 2" taller than the smaller piece.

Apply glue to the outside of your album cover. Lay your smaller piece of fabric on it and smooth it out. I close my album and smooth the spine and front and back covers to make sure the fabric won't pull when I try to close it. When it's opened flat, the fabric will bubble a little along the spine, but that's normal. It means your fabric won't pull. It doesn't have to be perfect because it'll be covered by your other piece of fabric.

 Turn your cover over and glue the extra fabric down. This makes sure it doesn't shift around or accidentally tear off the cover. It doesn't have to be pretty, it'll be covered by the second layer of fabric, and the paper.

Decide on the colour you want your cover to be. I used food colouring to dye both my Love Mini Album cover, and my Vintage Book Mini Album cover. I did them both in different ways.

For the Vintage Book cover, I put drops of food colouring onto the garbage bag I covered my desk with, and used the fabric to absorb the colour. The benefit of doing it this way, is that your colours tend to be more vibrant, it's just a lot more messy.

 For the Love Mini Album, and this one, I wanted more control over my colours. I put some water into a cup, and added a few drops of food colouring then added a strip of fabric. When it was the colour I wanted, I removed it, and gently ran my fingers down the length of the fabric to get out the excess water. Then I added more food colouring and another strip of fabric. When it was a little darker than the previous strip I removed it, added more colour and another strip.

I wanted an ombre look, and I knew my colours wouldn't be perfectly ombre (I've done this before), and I was okay with that. I just really wanted a purple album, and was okay if it wasn't a super dark purple.

I left my strips to dry on the plastic bag for a half hour. I left the ceiling fan on in the craftroom to help them dry a little faster. If you want them to dry even faster, you can use a paper towel, or an old rag and dab the strips to remove excess water.

When my strips were dry, I laid them out on my album cover. Because I cut my larger piece of fabric, two inches larger than the smaller one, I was able to overlap my strips of fabric. I didn't cut them all to be the same width, so overlapping them unevenly was okay with me.

When I decided where I wanted each strip, I gently slid them off and ran my glue stick along the first strip. I did the same thing I did when adhering the base fabric. I closed the album to make sure the strip wrapped around the album cover.

I glued down all the other strips the same as the first with slight overlap, and left a bit hanging over the top and bottom. I'm a perfectionist, but I love the messy-ness of this album cover.

On the inside, my purple edges weren't very even. I was okay with that because I knew I was going to cover them with my pages. This album currently looks like a mess on my desk, but by the end I promise that it won't!

Then I ran the album through my sewing machine. I only stitched around the outside edge, but you could sew this however you wanted. If you don't want any of your stitching to affect your pages, do it now before you add any pages, and you can still hide it.

Going back to the inside of your album, now is when you cover your spine with washitape. I used black washitape to hide the green masking tape, but you can use any colour you want! Just make sure that you push a little into the gap between the spine and the covers. I went out the width of my tape from the gap between the spine and the covers. The pages will hide all the tape except the portion on the spine.

Now you can set this aside and work on your Project Life pages, or watch something on Netflix! I'll be sharing Part Two of this - the inside pages and finishing touches - on March 6th. I'm working on that post right now, and I'm so excited for you to be able to finish your albums! You're going to love them!

Thanks for coming by! I hope you found this helpful! I'd love to see your mini albums, so please please please leave links to them in the comments. Even if it's just to a Facebook photo. I'd like to think that my tutorials help people create pretty things!

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

Quick & Simple Sympathy Cards

Good morning! Today I'm sharing some super simple Sympathy cards. I whipped these up in about an hour, after I figured out what I was doing, and the colours I wanted to use. I hate making sympathy cards because death is extremely sad, no matter how well you did or did not know someone. I prefer to make cards for happy occasions like birthdays, babies, etc. 

I did a similar style of this a year and a half ago, when I first started this blog. Today I'm going to share the measurements so you can make them yourself! (I'd make a sketch, but I have no idea how to, without drawing it out by hand)

The card base is 4x4, and if you cut a piece of 12x12 paper just right, you can get four cards out of it! Bonus right? The grey paper on the left is 2"x3 3/4". The YEllow Flower paper is 1 5/16" x 1 7/16". The thin yellow strip with the white gems on it is 1 5/16 x 1/4. The little white tag is 1 1/2" x 2 3/4".

Happy crafting! Thanks for coming by to check out these cards. I'd love to see what you make with them! Have a great day!
-Alexandria

Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Does anyone else feel like Peanut Butter Banana Bread is a giant mouthful? Luckily it tastes as good as it is long, and it was a huge hit with my boyfriend and I. A friend of mine made muffins with a similar recipe once, and though they were a little dry, they were still really good. The only thing I added to this recipe was crunchy peanut butter (I ran out of smooth) and some chocolate chips.

Tell me that doesn't look delicious! I made two of them, and ate them both almost entirely by myself. 

The recipe comes from here.

Yields 9 x 5-inch loaf

1/2 cup (1 stick or 113 grams) butter
3/4 cup (150 grams) brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup (130 grams) peanut butter
1 cup (125 grams) all-purpose flour
1 cup (120 grams) whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (60 ml) milk

* 1 1/2 cups of Chocolate chips - Optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C). Grease a loaf pan.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well between additions. Beat in the vanilla extract, mashed bananas, and peanut butter until fully incorporated. Mix in the flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Stir in the milk.

Transfer batter to the prepared loaf pan and bake for 55 to 65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool loaf in pan for 10 minutes before removing and transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!
-Alexandria

Lemon Cranberry Muffins

On Monday in my Week Thirteen spread, I promised to share the recipe for the Lemon Cranberry Muffins I made. I found it on Pinterest, and changed just a couple of things to give us some pretty amazing muffins.

Before I share the recipe, look at those delicious cranberries! They're so beautiful and red.

I've made this recipe twice now, and the first time I did it, turned out a little better than the second (according to my boyfriend, and since he's the one who's eaten most of them, I'll take his word for it).

The original recipe can be found here. Below I'll share my recipe.

2 cups plain vanilla yogurt

2 cupes granulated sugar

6 large eggs

1/4 tsp salt

3 cups all-purpose flour

4 tsp baking powder

lemon zest from one large lemon

half of the juice from one large lemon (set aside other half of juice)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix the yogurt, sugar, salt and eggs together in a large bowl. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla extract.
2. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour and baking powder. Add dry ingredients to wet, and stir together until moistened.
3. Add oil and mix until batter is smooth and homogenous. Fold in cranberries and mix with a spatula to prevent breaking the cranberries.
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted into muffins comes out clean.
5. After baking muffins brush remaining lemon juice on top.

In relation to the original recipe, I double the batter and use lemon juice as well as the lemon zest. I feel that the lemon zest isn't quite enough to give it the lemon flavour that I expected from it. In the first batch I made, I mixed it exactly how it said, but when I added the cranberries I felt that there wasn't enough batter so I made a second batch but had no more lemon zest so I used some of the juice from the lemon. I didn't have enough to make the lemon glaze so I just brushed straight lemon juice on the top.

There you have it! Lemon Cranberry Muffins. You could also substitute the fresh/frozen cranberries for dried cranberries to make them more like Safeway Lemon Cranberry Muffins.

Enjoy!

-Alexandria

Multiple Pocket Photo

Good morning! Hope You're all having a wonderful week. On Friday I'll share my completed album from my Vancouver trip, but today I'll share how I made my multiple pocket pictures.

I've seen similar things in other people's posts about their albums, but it took me until I started planning my album to figure out how they did it. You just get the photo printed large enough to fit in all the pockets and crop it accordingly.

This is the first page of my album. I knew I wanted to start it off with a group photo (I used a lot in this album). 

I chose this photo. I ordered it at 8" x 12". The space is only 6" x 12" so I had to trim it down accordingly.

On the back of the photo, I drew the lines to cut on. I cut two inches off the bottom, and the rest was cut into 3" x 4" photos to fit into the pockets.

I chose to cut the bottom off because no one cares about our legs, but we love the view!

Some of our faces were cut up a little bit, but it still looks good. 

I did another one with this photo of the bridge. This one turned out the best, partly because no ones faces were cut into four. This is one of my favourite photos from the trip. I can't wait to share the rest of my mostly simple album.

Have a wonderful day!

-Alex