Rosette Making Tips

Tips for making the perfect rosette:

• Score all of your paper first. I decided on a couple of papers, scored them, then cut them in an assembly line fashion. That way you're not going between scoring, cutting, folding and assembling everything.
• Decide on the sizes you want your rosettes to be. You need to remember that whatever size you cut your strip of paper, you're finished rosette will be twice that size. If you want a 4" rosette, cut your strips of paper at 2" wide.
• After folding your rosette, straighten out your folds. When you fold them, sometimes the peaks of your folds don't line up, simply hold it on the table and push so they're straight across. 
• Before you glue your rosette into shape, test fit it a few times and get the paper used to being pressed down into that shape. Manipulate your paper so you know how you want it to look.
• Use a larger circle to glue the back to. No one sees the back of your rosette, so they'll never know if your 4" rosette has a 3" circle on the back to hold it into place. It also doesn't matter if your back circle is in the centre, just make sure it doesn't hang over on any of the sides.
• Roll a piece of tape and use it to stick your back circle to your work surface. This makes it easier to glue your rosette to the back circle. It won't move around, and it's easier to get it close to centre if you test fit a few times before.
• Allow the glue to set for a few minutes before moving your rosette. If the glue is still soft, there's more chance of your rosette falling apart.
• Always, always, always, use hot glue to assemble it. If you're using thinner paper you can use a tape gun to put your strips together, but always use hot glue to glue the centre together.

Most of these tips can be found in this Youtube video that helped me become more confident in my rosette making skills

Good luck with your paper rosettes! In my next post I'll show you the beautiful rosette's I made for my living room and dining room!

Have a wonderful day!

-Alex

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

Merry Christmas

This year, I sent out three different Christmas cards. A handful of friends got one, half my penpals got another and the other half got another. They're similar, they're just not all as close to the same as I wanted them to be, but that's okay.

This is what I wanted all my cards to look like. Unfortunately, I only made 6 of the trees, and couldn't find all the other ones I had cut out before we moved. I also hate glitter so I didn't want to make more of these.

Instead I found a cute little tree stamp, and used gold ink to stamp trees onto the remaining cards.

These cards I left just like this because I felt the yellow paper was too busy to stamp on top of it.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the supplies or the time to make any other Christmas cards this year, but now that I have a bunch more Christmas stamps and Christmas paper, I might start now and make a bunch of cards for next year.

Hope you all got your cards out on time, mine went out just before New Year's.
-Alex

Black Friday Online Shopping

Good morning lovelies! My Black Friday orders arrived shortly before Christmas, and another order of washitape that I ordered a while ago. The mail has been slow to get here with everyone's Christmas letters and packages going through the mail.

Washitape is a horrible addiction. I have more tape than will fit into the 20 Recollections racks that sit on my desk. I have a box (from a previous Michaels trip) that holds all my duplicate tapes and new tapes that don't fit into the racks. My goal for the first half of the year is to improve my storage for all of my supplies, and purge the things that I don't use to get some extra money. The tapes on the left I got from Pick Your Plum's Black Friday sale, and the others came from Peachy Cheap.

Here's  my Freckled Fawn grab bag from a while back. I'm super excited about the wood veneers. They're so pretty! I want to get my hands onto some more wood veneers.

I also got an Elle Studio Journaling Cards grab bag from their Black Friday sale. 

These cards are 4x6 and the favorites one has a list of favorite things (color, food, etc.).

Here's more 4x6" journaling cards.

Here's all the 3x4" journaling cards.

The top left and right are circle tags, the centre is Christmas gift tags. The next row has a variety of tags and paper pieces. The bottom row has labels, and tags.

Here's more labels.

They also sent packages of journaling cards. I might end up with a few duplicates, but they're so pretty that's totally fine with me.

On the left, this stamp says date, and on the right it says notes.

The front side of the paper I received.

The back of the papers I received.

Now I just need to find a way to store all these extra journaling cards.

I hope you all got some good things from your Black Friday shopping. I don't normally shop on huge sale days, but I couldn't pass up the Elle Studio grab bags.

Have a great day!
-Alex

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

First, let me apologize for my posts being all over the place from September to December. After much debate, I've decided to decrease my posts to 2-3 times a week instead of 5 times a week. I simply don't have the time or the energy to be creative enough for 5 posts a week. I'll also try and save all my shopping hauls for one large post once or twice a month.

I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday! We definitely did. We were excited to have our first Christmas living together, though we didn't celebrate at our house. Jon and I had Christmas at my parents' house on Christmas Eve, and his parents' house on Christmas Day. We got a bunch of beautiful gifts from everyone, which we are beyond grateful for, but one that stood out the most was this one my parents gave us.

I mentioned to my mom that I wanted to make an ornament for our first year in the house, and so she gave us that beautiful bell. It was so sweet, I almost cried. It fit perfectly onto our tree, and it'll be there every year. Thanks mom and dad.

The only other gifts that I want to share with all of you, are the Project Life things that Jon gave me, and the one that his sister sent for me.

Jon had a hard time finding mini albums online, one of them didn't arrive in the mail because it was sold out, but he managed to get me the Jade mini album. It's beautiful, and hopefully perfect for our before and after photos of the house.

He also got me the Jade edition of Project Life.

It's very green, but so pretty!

He also got me the Sunshine edition of Project Life. 

He bought it for his sister, and when I was wrapping it, I said that it might be too neon for me, but after flipping through the cards, it wasn't as neon as I thought.

For my two large albums, he bought me a variety pack of pocket pages. I think I'll use these for my Vancouver trip, and buy a pack of Design A for my 2014 album.

Jon's sister from Calgary sent me the Holiday Edition.

I thought it would just be Christmas (I had a brain fart then realized that's the Merry & Bright edition). It covers every single holiday through the year from New Years, to the Fourth of July (useless since I'm Canadian though), to Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Hanukkah.  

I also got a bunch of owl things from book ends, to a lunch bag, a set of boxes, and a stuffed owl from my sister. It was a wonderful Christmas and I was beyond excited to spend it with my family. We also celebrated my Grandma's 80th birthday on the 21st, and I found out that I'm going to be an Auntie again. I'm so excited for my brother and his family. Maybe I'll be able to help out with the birth announcements again.

Happy New Year!
-Alex