Project Life | Week 15

Happy Monday friends! I hope you all had a great weekend! I had to work, but I work basically every weekend , so it's all good. Today I'm sharing my spread for Week 15.

Here's my spread. This week was lots of books, a bit of creating, and our new couch arrived! Finally. It's so beautiful, and I love it so much. This week I used a title card from Studio Calico, and two journaling cards from the Midnight Edition, as well as some labels from my stash.

Here's the left side. Because I read Looking For Alaska this week, I thought it was only fitting that I use this title card from Studio Calico that says "I go to seek a great perhaps" which is a line from the book. I had a lot of photos I wanted to include this week, so I used labels to journal on the photos. My sister came back from Ireland this week, and was bummed that she missed the snow. I made a mini album with some magic moments and used a Kellie Stamps stamp on the cover. My books and mugs arrived.

The last photo of the old couches. Plus my favourite shot of my niece putting up the newest window stickers (which are still on the window). More Kellie Stamps, the new furniture (which looks AMAZING). Gracie peering over the couch at Jon's phone, and a peek into my Details mini album, which may very well be a permanent work in progress.

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

Week In The Life | I Can & I Will

Happy Friday friends! I must admit that I have a huge girl crush on Ali Edwards. She's an amazingly inspiring human being, and I'm so incredibly grateful that I found her and her creative business. I first learned about Week In The Life last fall (just a little behind on the times). It was never something I thought I could do. Like a lot of memory keepers I thought that you had to think your life was interesting enough to be documented. It took me until this year to realize that it doesn't matter if my life is "interesting" right now, in the moment. What matters is that I choose to document the monotony of my daily life RIGHT NOW. In a few years, we hope to be getting married and starting a family. Things definitely won't be the same as they are right now, and I want to be able to see how our lives change, even if we don't notice it right away.

I'll be documenting my week with Ali's Week In The Life Kit and I'll probably add in some things from my stash (to be determined). I'll be constantly giving myself pep-talks to ensure that I follow-through with this. Part of my One Little Word plans for this year, was to do things that I've been putting off for various reasons. This is one of those things, and it's so unbelievably exciting to be crossing something off my list that I never thought I would do.

If you're not doing Week In The Life, I hope that you set aside whatever is holding you back, and just try. My plan had been to do Day In The Life first, but we were in Calgary, and then things just got busy and I haven't done it yet. Maybe I'll do it AFTER I tackle Week In The Life.

Thanks for coming by. I hope that you'll document a day, or a few days, or a whole week in your life right now, and in 3 years, we'll do it again and make note of the obvious differences!

Have a great weekend!
-Alexandria

Project Life | Week 14

Happy Monday! I feel like Monday's get a lot of unnecessary hate. Yes they're the start of most people's work weeks, but sometimes they're my Friday, and other times, they're my Thursday. But almost every week, it's the day I share my Project Life spreads. I'll be the first to admit that doing Project Life has been really therapeutic for me, and a great way to document all the seemingly boring little details of my very monotonous life.

Despite that, you all seem to keep coming back to see my spreads every week though, so that's awesome! Thank you! This week I'm sharing Week 14. This week it felt almost like summer, but only for one or two days before it snowed again. I used one card from my Studio Calico stash, and the rest are from Honey I think.

Here's the left side. I don't have much to say about this weeks spread. Maybe that's because it happened months ago. In my attempt to document the every day, I snapped a photo while I waited for a coworker to pick me up for work, Jon and I started watching suits, I finished reading The Heiresses, Gracie was "couch diving", and I received some more Kellie Stamps. I love them!

Here's the right side. The top two photos document the one day we had warm weather (around 18 degrees Celsius) and we took Gracie out on the deck with a leash. She tries to venture outside whenever the door is open, so going outside is actually terrifying for her because she never actually gets to go out. I finished The Vacationers and The Girl With All the Gifts. Both were really good! The day after we were out on the deck, it rained, then it tried to snow, and then we had a layer of snow on the ground. My sister was in Ireland and mad that she was missing the snow. I also took a close up of my coffee because I've been drinking more lately.

Thanks for coming by to see my spread for this week. I hope you all have a wonderful documentable week!
-Alexandria

One Little Word | May Prompts

Good morning! Today I'm sharing my May One Little Word prompt. This was exactly what I needed right now, and how Ali knew that when prepping this class, I have no idea. Maybe she's been doing it for long enough that I should just trust that she knows best! I loved this prompt so much. It was so much fun, and is definitely something I will do again in the future. I loved making these cards, and it's definitely something I recommend. It's fun to get a little messy and just create and not care that you're getting messy.

So here's my cards that I made. I used light molding paste, some Heidi Swapp stencils and watercolours. It was so much fun. I love the texture molding paste creates, but I hated the white on white, but I also didn't really want stark white on coloured paper. I took my stencil and my molding paste. Using an old card I spread plain white molding paste over the stencil onto each of the cards. I drug the card across the stencil leaving a thin-ish layer of molding paste on the paper. Enough to create texture, but not so much that it was really thick.
Once the molding paste dried, I took my water colours out and decided where I wanted each card to go and chose my colours. I painted the bottom left card first. For no reason, other than I just chose to do that one first. I brushed my watercolours across the molding paste and the paper, and once the whole card was covered I lightly pressed a piece of paper towel over the card to remove some of the paint. The result was an uneven colour on the molding paste and the paper. It removed most of the paint from the molding paste (which I wanted) and added to the texture, but most of the paint remained on the paper behind it. I'm so happy with my rainbow cards.

Here's my two finished pages together. I put all of my I am statements onto my cards, and printed out my full page of review. I thought about backing it with a simpler paper, but I love these two together.

I printed my I am statements onto vellum. I used the digital "I am" stamp and changed the colour to grey, then I typed out 9 I AM statements that are relevant to right now. I cut them out with 1/8" around the words (each piece is a slightly different size) and used my tiny attacher to staple them onto my cards. I thought about writing my I am statements onto the cards, but the texture would have made it hard, so I printed them on vellum so I could see all my hard work through it, but still easily read my words over the backgrounds.

Here's my review. I love the colours of the background paper. I feel like it connects the two pages, without making it too overwhelming.

Thank you for coming by to check out my One Little Word prompts. I had so much fun with this project and I look forward to trying more mixed media projects.

Have a great day! -Alexandria

Project Life | Week 13

Good morning! I'm so happy that I have a Project Life spread to share this week. I feel like it's been forever since I shared one (I checked. It's been a month). Today I'm sharing Week 13, and it feels like this week happened in another lifetime.

This week I used a lot of my stash. A bit from Studio Calico, and some blue cards I found in my stash. I recently sorted them by colour, and I love how much easier it is for me to find cards. I just need to go back and put the colours in order so I'm not flipping through everything in the blue section looking for a navy blue card.

Here's the left side. Jon was in Chicago until the start of this week. The selfies of Gracie and I were the night before he came home. She missed him and was forcing me to cuddle with her because she was lonely. I also took my desk apart only to put it back together. I'm still debating getting rid of it and getting something a little smaller and changing the layout of my room a tiny bit. I also read two books at the start of the week. I LOVED Chris Hadfield's book. It made me realize how small my life really is in the grand scheme of things. This I Know was really beautiful as well. I didn't get a ton out of it, but I really enjoyed it. If you've lost someone really close to you, I definitely recommend it.

Here's the right side. One day it was snowing and the next day it was already melting. It snowed before Jon got back, and I left it until he was home to shovel (I hurt my back doing it a couple of times, and so I've resigned to the fact that I won't be doing it). I finally forced myself to finish Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking. It was dry, but I enjoyed learning more about them. She's such a strong woman, and I admire her strength. I'm a photo ninja, and snapped one of my sister before her final Honor Band performance before she leaves for Ireland. I also snapped a photo of Socks, the angry cat.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. I finished it a while ago, I just never got photos taken of it. After what I'm referring to as "the great catch up" of 2015, I photographed 9 weeks of spreads and I'm working on some posts for those as well.

Have a great day! On Wednesday I'm sharing my mixed media "I am" cards for One Little Word. I think it's one post you're going to want to see!

-Alexandria