Project Life 2013 - week 20

I cannot believe I'm saying week 20 already!

This past week was super hectic, seemed like I was running every day. On Friday I took a trip in to San Francisco and had dinner with friends. It was a long but super fun day and I got to see some folks I haven't seen in a really long time.  I decided to focus my whole left side of the spread on that one day and had some fun with it.

Here is the whole spread

The top two photos are from my first stop in San Francisco. It was so good to see everyone, my former boss and amazing co-workers. I miss my job everyday and they really are such inspiring amazing people. Well worth the trip in for sure!

The bottom three shots are from dinner with some friends at the cutest little place. We had a blast and talked way too much and for way to long but it was an awesome night.

One of the biggest things about my day on Friday was the amount of driving I did and how long I was gone. I wanted to show that in some way with my journaling and since I had already used a map element (seen here) that I totally could have done again, I wanted to do something different. I made a piece that I had initially planned on attaching to the outside of the protector that covered three of the horizontal 4 x 3 slots. The paper is a white woodgrain 110 lb. cardstock that I absolutely love. It's my favorite neutral background and the texture is divine. I usually buy it from Studio Calico but it looks like they are out of stock. I really wanted to print on it and decided to give it a go. I planned out my text roughly keeping in mind where the breaks would normally occur for the slots and sent it off to print. I loaded it in my rear tray where my photo paper normally goes (I have a Canon Pixma MG5320 inkjet printer). It fed no problem and printed perfectly, even down into the little crevices of the woodgrain.

I added some stitching with two colors of embroidery floss to show my path. I added three wood veneer geotags that I inked with a cranberry pigment ink and then embossed like 6 times with clear embossing powder to get the super thick shiny surface.

In the end I didn't like the way the piece looked sitting on top so I opted to cut it apart. Since I had already done the stitching I adhered a piece of thin cardstock to the back to seal in the stitches basically and cut through both. I did add a few little drops of glue to smooth out the cut thread so it wouldn't look like it was cut through.

Here are some more detailed shots so you can see the printing and the stitching.

I had to use the right side to fit the rest of the week in and really had to edit down my photos. The title card is a cut file from the Silhouette store of  the San Francisco skyline, so perfect for this week. I cut it from craft paper and placed in on top of more white woodgrain and added some white letters for the date.

For the rest of the spread we have Simone wearing a hat from her Uncle, me and Kari at Hobby Lobby (two visits in a week, CRAZY!), Larry doing some gardening, me and my sister in law and niece seeing Gatsby in 3D (loved it even more than the regular version). A card from Life Love Paper leftover from Christmas, a sprucing up of our master bath, the end of The Office (I totally cried), a field trip that Simone had on Friday and a day out with Dad on Sunday.

 

 

One thing I'm really loving lately is leaving some spots blank meaning no photo, just a decorative card. Sometimes I get stuck thinking I have to put a photo in every slot and that's just not the case, it's been fun mixing it up a bit.

 

We'll have to see where I end up next week!