Project Life | Week 35

Today I'm sharing week 35 of my Project Life. This week was a little busier for us, between work and planning and hosting an event for Jon's nerd friends (super nice people).

Here's the left side. Captured the cutest photo of Gracie, and absolutely needed to include it. Made some red velvet cupcakes because it was one of our friends birthday's during our weekend event. I also had to make a few other baked goods, so borrowing the mixer was a huge help.

Here's the front of the insert. It basically covers the mess I made in my kitchen. Something that happens almost every time I bake, but it's still worth documenting. I added the final strip of the "not my day" overlay to the bottom photo.

Here's the second half. This covers the whole weekend (Friday-Sunday) and so much goodness happened in those days.

The back of the insert covers a couple of Jon's friends. Nathan (the top photo) and his wife Teri are two of Jon's closest friends, and were the fist of his friends that I met. They're loud, sweet, and hilarious. Their daughter is adorable, smart, and extremely competitive at boardgames she knows how to play. They've also become good friends to me, and we venture down to Calgary and try to at least have dinner with them when we visit the city.

The right side covers the rest of Provocon, and the family dinner we had with my family Sunday night. My nephew is the cutest and you can see the layout I made using that photo (here).

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. I hope you have a wonderful day!

-Alexandria

Project Life | Week 34

Today I'm sharing my spread with an insert for Week 34. This was the week that I did Week In The Life. I didn't want to exclude this week from my regular Project Life album, but I also didn't want to repeat everything I wrote in Week In The Life. I chose a few photos from across the week that covered all the things we did that week, and I feel like it was adequate in telling the story of this week. Here's a look at the left side and the insert.

Here's the left side. I added some black chipboard alphas to the left 3x4 mostly for my own reference that this was the week of Week in the Life.

Here's a look at the front of the insert. I just love that windmill photo. They're beautiful, and it's awesome that they provide a ton of green energy as well! So excited that we're getting them in the area.

Here's the second half of the spread.

I love the city skyline, and added stickers to cover a car and a license plate. It's fine that it's covered, I didn't take the photo of the car, I took it of the city. I love the Calgary tower, and the skyscrapers, but also love the openness of living in the country. I'd thought about making the Giraffe card into a flip pocket and having a photo of the giraffe behind it, but this is the back of the page, which makes it a little harder to do.

I've used that rain photo on several projects, and I just love how it looks. Sorry for the red glare on the top pockets. We have Christmas lights around the window where I take my photos, and I never remember to unplug them to avoid the glare. On the favourite/least favourite card I included a few of my favourite things from the week (moment, quote, photo).

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. I hope you have a wonderful day!

-Alexandria

Build a Life You Love

Good morning! Today I'm sharing a layout that I absolutely love. Ever since that first hand embroidered page I did, I've fallen in love, and try to add embroidery to as many projects as I can. It's something I just love to do while I'm watching TV, and I can definitely see more of this in the future. I love the texture it adds to my pages and how easy it is to add some colour.

With this layout I tried something a little different. I stitched my title on the left side, and then I went back and cut and "interior offset" using my silhouette and cut pieces to fit inside of each letter and painted them similar colours with water colours. I love how they turned out. The letters looked incomplete without the paper in the middle, and I'm so happy with how it looks. On the right side, I added a piece of rainbow chevron striped paper, a photo of Jon and I, a little chipboard banner, and some typed journaling. I wrote the journaling as more of a letter to Jon, and love how this layout turned out. I love that the focus is mostly on the large title, and there's minimal embellishing to take away from that.

Thank you for coming by to check out this beautiful spread. I think I might frame this one and hang it in our bedroom. It's too pretty to sit in an album where no one will ever look at it.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
-Alexandria

Project Life | Week 33

Today I'm sharing Week 33. Here's the full spread. I  used Studio Calico cards (again) and one card from the Inspire Edition of Project Life.

Here's the left side. I worked on and finished our Christmas cards this week, and then put them aside until December.

This week I made a point to include a photo of each of the cats. They're so cute sometimes. I have no idea how Gracie can sleep like that, and socks was using the edge of the step to scratch his neck. I might go back and add something to the red stripe card, looking at it now, it just feels incomplete.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread! Have a wonderful day!

-Alexandria

Fangirl Moment | I Heart Studio

Ladies (and gentlemen), I'd like to interrupt your Sunday to tell you that Wilna of iHeart Studio is releasing her beautiful Christmas products today. I can't rave about her and her products enough. They're beautiful, and whimsical, and absolutely creative!

On October 28th, I shared this photo on Instagram. I was so excited about the page that I couldn't contain my excitement to share it with the creative world. I used this flourish set from Wilna and my Silhouette to cut this page. I cut two and glued a piece of vellum between the flourishes to add a bit of necessary stability to the page.

I also shared this sneak peek of the giant stack of pieces I printed and cut from the new set, and the things I cut from the old set. I love the amount of colour in her new set. It's beautiful.

I shared this sneak off the dividers I was cutting to add to my album. They're beautiful!

I shared this sneak of the printed and cut flourishes. Look at that colour! This is what happiness looks like!

Here's a close up. I love that she includes a file with an offset to cut out the printables. If it's to wide for you, you could always do an internal offset off the original cut to get a closer crop around the printables. I love the cute little hand painted deer.

I also have some really horrible quality photos of my December album so far. I chose the December Memories printable to be used as my official cover page. I wanted to keep my album pretty traditional colour-wise (red, green, gold, silver, white and touches of black). But after seeing her new Christmas products, I'm fairly certain that other colours are going to make an appearance in my album, and most of my plans have been thrown out the window, but I know a lot of Wilna's products are going to make their way into my album.

Here's my final diecut page. I added one of the "divider" files to the front because the solid white space wasn't enough for me. I love how the white on white on white looks here. That diecut edge takes my breath away every time I look at it. Currently my favourite part of the album.

Guys, I strongly suggest that you at least go check out Wilna's new Christmas products. I wasn't paid for this post, and there are no affiliate links, I just think that if you find something you love, you should tell the world about it, and since discovering Wilna and her products, I've been in love with them. I'm all for supporting small businesses, and raving about them so other people know they exist, and this is one I think you all need to know exist!

I can't wait for December to get here so I can do more work on my December album, and I can't wait to share it with all of you. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, I'm off to work shortly, and trying to get plans nailed down for my birthday later this week (Thursday in case you were wondering), which is also release day for the new Kellie Stamps so mark your calendars!

Have a great day!
-Alexandria