Black & White Mini Album | Socks

Today I'm sharing another mini album. Since I made one for Gracie, I decided that I needed to also make one for Socks. I actually made this one around the same time, but decided to delay sharing it until now. I was hoping that I'd have other projects to share in the middle, but I just ended up making more mini albums. Of course.

Originally I was going to keep this one strictly black and white (socks is a black and white tuxedo cat), but soon found that black or white embellishments were minimal in m stash, so I added a bit of gold to the mix. The white frame is from a Freckled Fawn embellishment kit, the heart in the middle is from an ephemera pack I had in a bowl on my desk. Label and alphas from my stash and Heidi Sawpp gold mist.

For the most part, I kept my pages pretty simple. Using only black and white papers and adding in little gold pieces here and there.

As with Gracie's album, I wanted to capture his personality, and a few of his favourite spots in this album. Most of these pictures are from when he lived at my moms house because I don't have many recent pictures of him.

I tried to journal on almost every page. With either a memory, or some personality quirk of his. Like sleeping in weird spots (around items on the table, on the top bunk of the bed my sister and I used to share, etc.).

I also wanted to include things he likes. On this page it happened to be that he likes to chew on things that crinkle. In this case it was a granola bar wrapper.

Socks was MY cat. I cuddled him, he sometimes slept with me, we hang out sometimes still and watch Netflix in the basement, or I read and he curls up in my lap. Unfortunately him and Gracie don't get along, AT ALL, so he's locked in the basement, and Gracie is upstairs. I keep saying that maybe one day they'll get along, but Gracie is older and stuck in her ways, while socks is very territorial. Ah well, most children don't get along either.

Thanks for coming to check out this mini album.
Have a great day!
-Alexandria

Tag & Pocket Mini Album | Gracie

Good morning! I was going to post yesterday, but things were a little busy last week and over the weekend, so I didn't get my Project Life spreads photographed. I did however, get the living room rearranged and all of our Ikea furniture assembled. The room feels so much bigger, and more organized. I actually enjoy spending time in the living room now. Just need to get our new couch and we'll be all set!

Today I'm sharing some photos from this little mini album I made for our cat Gracie. A few weeks ago, I asked how many albums it would be acceptable to fill with photos of my cats. Everyone encouraged me that cats are cute, part of our family, and absolutely should be recorded, even in their own albums. The tutorial to make this album (and a few others), and the cutfiles for the tags and vellum pockets can be purchased here. Wilna offered this class on Two Peas in a Bucket last year, but added a few new projects, and added it to her site.

Here's a close up of the cover. I splattered some watercolors on a piece the size of the cover. Then I layered some papers from my scrap bin, added some ribbon with hearts on it, and spelt out Gracie with white foam alphas and stitched them down. Then I adhered it to the rest of my album.

I added stickers, ephemera, ribbon, diecuts, and a photo to each of the tags and pages. I journaled mostly on the tags, and kept any additional bulk to a minimum. I added chipboard stickers here and there, but tried to use them sparingly.

I tend to keep things more on the simple side. Mostly because when I embellish it looks exactly the way it happens. I just throw things on the page.

I've been trying to use up some of my stash more, and a lot of it consists of ephemera and stickers that I wanted, but haven't used yet. The embellishments on this tag are from Notes & Things by Crate Paper.

I also wanted to document Gracie in a lot of her natural habitat. Like when she forces her way onto my lap, and refuses to move for a couple of hours.

I also wanted to include photos that perfectly showed her personality. Like when she just flops over on her side and meows at me asking me to pet her. I know she's asking me to pet her because when Jon tries she hisses at him. He clearly doesn't know what she likes.

I haven't done much stamping lately, but while looking through a few that were sitting on my desk, I found this one from Kellie Stamps (here), and knew I had to use it in this album. It was perfect for this card.

I also just browsed Kellie's shop, and absolutely need to buy more of her stamps! They're beautiful!
I hope you enjoyed seeing this album full of photos of Gracie. I imagine more of them will be coming in the future. There's just so many techniques I want to try.

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

Studio Calico: Poet Society Card Kit

It's really starting to get colder here. I must admit I was excited about winter, because I wouldn't be so warm all the time, but I'm also very much not looking forward to being freezing cold all the time either. I hate socks, but my feet get cold so easily, and when I wear slippers they get too warm.

Today I'm sharing the cards I made using the Poet Society Card kit, and the Jar Stamp Set add on, the 4x3" Circles Stamp Set by Splendid Fiins, and the stamp from this Project Life Add-on Yeats. This is the first time I've purchased add-ons for either Project Life or Card kits, and I ended up making almost twice as many cards. I had so much fun trying different things with the stamps in this kit, and of course the member gallery was overflowing with great inspiration! I imagine these are stamps that I'll use again and again in the future!

First up, a card I made using the Jar stamp set. The one thing I dislike about it, is that the stamp for the jar is just the outline, there's no center part to help it keep it's jar shape. I'm okay with my jar having curves, it adds character to it. The "a pint of thanks and a quart of gratitude" portion was made to fit inside the jar, and it's the whole reason I love this stamp set so much. Not to mention the jar stamp would be beautiful for tags on canning that you were gifting, or selling.

I stamped this on the blue/white stripe paper, stamped the hearts in the jar in a variety of colors, then added the sentiment over top. I used the circles stamp set to add a bit of interest to the background, and tied some crochet cotton around the top of the jar.

I wanted to use the sentiment from the Jar Stamp outside of the jar as well, so I stamped it on a tag. My one goal is to use at least a small portion of each paper in the kit, and given that I was stumped by the diamond paper, I added it behind the tag to make the tag stand out against the background paper.

Here I used the stamps from the Yeats add-on. I love this Cyan color so much! I want to use it for everything I possibly can. I also added some little of the star gems, and a heart stamp. This was so obviously inspired by the member gallery because I don't think I could have come up with something so pretty on my own.

I wanted to use the Circle stamp with a hear in it as a background because I feel like one heart isn't enough. I randomly stamped them all over this card, and added "with love" in my favorite cyan color, and called it done.

I saw a card in the member gallery, that was similar to this, but it had stitching on it. I tried to machine stitch something similar, but it didn't turn out, so instead I drew lines to make the "hey" look the opposite of the rest of the card.

This card happened somewhat by accident. (It happened after the faded gem card), In the member gallery is this card, and I wanted desperately to try something similar. At first the colors I used, didn't work AT ALL. So I stuck with one color and used multiple shades of it to make it a monochromatic ombre. I trimmed it on an angle, mounted it on the grey paper, and added some crochet cotton.

Another card inspired by the member gallery. Didn't quite turn out how I wanted, but I wanted to try and make use of at least one of those plastic gems, and a wood veneer.

I hate this card so terribly much. But I included it because I know there are going to be those cards that you hate beyond words, but at the same time, you made it, and perhaps someone will like it....or not, and that's okay too. I'm not even quite sure what I was going for when I made this, but I don't think it was what it ended up being.

This was the first card I made with the kit. I was so excited about the gems, and there were like a dozen cards in the member gallery that did something similar to this, so I just had to try it. I love how it turned out!

Another card that I don't like. I trimmed the first page of the paper stack, you know the one that shows all the papers and who made them. I trimmed it so I had a small portion of each of the papers and made it a banner, and adhered it to the bottom, but it looks like it doesn't belong because it goes with nothing.

This happened completely on accident. I stamped the purple one first, and the bottom half didn't stamp quite as dark as the top half. Then I got the idea to make two-tone gems!

I added ink to the top half of the gem in a darker shade, and the bottom half got a lighter shade and then I stamped it. I made sure the ink overlapped a little bit to get the full fading effect. To do this with three colors (like the hooray card from earlier) you start at the top and stamp about half of it with the darkest color. Then you stamp the bottom, going a little above the halfway point with the mid-tone color, and then stamp the bottom portion with the lightest. You can also do this the opposite way, or with completely different colors.

I used the little diamond stamp to make a background, and stamped "you're a gem" with silver ink on the blue paper, and attached it to the grey/white stri[e and adhered both to the card with foam squares.

There were so many papers in this card kit, that I knew I could never use them all, but this card helped me make use of a few of them. I love the colors of this card and how simple it is.

Originally this card just said hello. But Jon told me it was missing something, so I added the lines to the bottom, and the extra sentiments.

My favorite card from this kit, (aside from any using the jar stamp). I love the blog of papers in the middle so much.

Thanks for coming by to see these cards I made. I hope they inspire you to make a bunch of cards. Now I wish I had some time to work on more cards, perhaps unrelated to the card kits.

Have a great day!

-Alexandria