fonts, fonts, fonts

I love text in all shapes and sizes.  I love anything that has text on it, I'm a huge fan of clothing with text on it, with home decor items that have text on it, especially if the text is written in cursive and a a major bonus if its also in french.  I love pretty fonts, I love the way a font can help convey a message just by looking at the text without even reading it.

Because I love text and fonts I have amassed a fairly large collection of downloaded fonts.  When I scrap I found that I was spending way too much time scrolling thru my font list trying to find the perfect font, which was totally no fun.  I decided to make a cheat sheet for myself, just so I had a single page to quickly glance at while I was working.  It looks like this;

I created this list in Excel mainly because I could sort it alphabetically after I had typed all the names but you could easily do this in any word processing program.  This is by no means my complete list, its just some of my recently downloaded fonts that I don't want to forget about, specific fonts that are good for making faux chalkboard art, some seasonal fonts that I needed for last years Halloween party and all of my typewriter fonts.  It definitely makes it super quick and easy to choose a font.  Now if I had tons of time this list would also be sorted by font type, serif, sans serif, script, etc but time is precious so this is the way it is for now.

I posted the above picture on Instagram and had a few folks asked for some of my favorites.  Here is my list for you.  I will link to what I know to be reputable sites only.  Disclaimer, please make sure you have an anti-virus program on your computer before you download anything and make sure to use your own best judgement before hitting any download button.

sources: Antipasto / Cabin / Champagne & Limousines / League Gothic / Neou / Oswald

sources: Ever After / Hello / Mountain Retreat / Skinny 

sources: Esat Hoxa / The Bold Beauty** / The Distressed Duchess** / The Velvet Vixen** / Traveling Typewriter 

** these are paid fonts but at a nominal cost

Like I said this is nowhere a complete list but just the favorites that popped into my head as I was typing back my response on Instagram.  I tend to find a ton of fonts online on Pinterest and a few of the blogs I read regularly do font features at least once a week.  You can see and follow my Pinterest Board here.

Let me know in the comments if you would like me to start featuring fonts more regularly and I'd be happy to do that.

a little bit of Easter prep

I can't believe its almost time for Easter, now that St. Patrick's Day is over its on to the next holiday countdown as my daughter loves to do.  On Wednesday we got out our little Easter decorations and fancied up the place just a bit.  I don't go over the top just a few bits here and there to mark the season.

Earlier in the week my sweet Instagram friend Jen posted this cute shot of how she decorated here mantle with my little cut file I made a few years back.  You can see more of her super cute decor and her amazing Project Life® pages on her blog here.

It reminded me that while I posted the file on my blog ages ago I had never actually provided a download for it.  So if you are interested you can download the .png files here and the .sil cut files here.

You can see my original post about it here, where I showed how I just dotted on the eyes using a pencil eraser and some brown ink, super easy.

I hope those still under snow get some relief soon.  We have had some amazing weather lately but its raining now as I write this so Spring has not officially hit although its making a really good effort to stick around.

Studio Calico Bluegrass Farm full reveal

Just when I think it cannot possibly get any better, it does and it does by a lot!  The Studio Calico Bluegrass Farm kits are out of this world amazing this month!  I LOVED these kits, let me say that again....I LOVED THESE KITS!

I cannot wait to share what I made so let's get too it.  This spread was done using the main Project Life® kit only.
 

We had literally just returned home from our road trip vacation and I had to get right to work on my spreads. I opted to make this one main kit only spread just about our vacation so it's longer (in days) than my normal spread covers.  I plan on making a separate mini album about this trip so I didn't worry too much about capturing every detail.  I pulled out all of the orange, yellow and green bits because they tied so well to the colors in our team gear (hello spring training)!  The digital offerings this month are amazing so I had to use a few of the cut files in this spread.  I'll link up all of my favorites down below for you.

When I saw this large background cut file I new I really wanted to use it some way.  I also really wanted to make some of my favorite photos larger than my typical page spread would allow for.  I ended up making more of a traditional scrapbook page for the right side so I could do all the things I really wanted to do.  I really love the mix of these two pages together and I'm sure I'll do this again in the future.

I initially thought I would just have it white on white but wanted a bit of a pop of yellow so I layered another piece of white cardstock underneath the cut piece and traced around all the cut edges with a fine point sharpie.  I shifted the top layer just a bit so the lines would look offset and love the look a lot.

For this cut file I ended up using the negative space layered on top of another piece of cardstock that was inked up haphazardly with the Color Theory Sunny Day ink pad.  The positive and negative playing nicely with the cut file on the right side and of course the repetition of the yellow.

My second spread was using mostly the two addons Tabasco and Gertrude, the colors are amazing and the embellishments in these two kits are out of this world cool.  I barely put a dent in them and look forward to using the rest up on some spreads that I need to catch up on.

What I loved most about these two kits; the wood veneer pieces, the watercolor die cuts, the star sequins, the little postage stamp stickers and the perfectly perfect journaling cards.

I also designed my very first set of cut files for the digital store and you can see one in use above, the yellow star circle cut. I used it above digitally which you can totally do and I kind of love them.

Here are my favorites this month for the kits and digital files (Note: the links for the kits will work right now for subscribers (Noon EST), for non subscribers the kit links will work tonight at Midnight EST).

1 - Bluegrass Farm Main Project Life® kit
2 - Gertrude Project Life® addon
3 - Tabasco Project Life® addon
4 - Pip Scrapbook Embellishment Kit (you read that right, a first of many I hope!)
5 - My Journal Card cut file set
6 - Hello Forever Banner cut file set
7 - Background cut files by Paige Taylor Evans

These are my shop item favorites that I had to snatch up.

1 - We R Memory Keeper Instagram Albums (my daughter is totally going to steal my gold one so I bought her the mint)
2 - Cosmo Cricket Vellum and Kraft envelopes
3 - Attacher Craft Die
4 - Splat mats in large and medium

I suspect the shop will be crazy busy this morning and tonight so I sure hope you were able to grab everything you wanted and that you enjoy the Creative Team Gallery.  What I have seen so far is really amazing.

See you soon,

Sincerely yours,

March 24, 1984 a date I hadn't really noticed in the movie but was plastered all over my Facebook wall yesterday. Once I realized what it was I posted this image on my Instagram.

Several folks loved it and asked for a Project Life® card so I made one up for you all.  You can download the .pdf file here. Its sized to 3x4 ready to print, trim and slip right into a pocket.

I really loved this article on the subject, if you have some time I would take a look, a lot of great moments from the film are captured.  The last one is my favorite, obviously.

Sincerely yours,

for the love of color...the watercolor kind

I've been waiting for the new Mr. Huey's Watercolor sets to come in stock and when they did while I was on vacation I made sure to snatch it up.  It arrived today and I literally dropped everything to try them out.  I was of course immediately drawn to the lower right hand corner, I mean its neon....but the other colors are pretty too.

Here they are swatched so you can see them all in action.

I used my small water brush and they picked up the color like a dream.  I'm pretty in love with the peachy shade and the green next to it now too.

Hope you love them as much as I do!

Studio Calico Bluegrass Farm sneak peaks

So...it's been awhile, sorry about that.  March has been a whirlwind to say the least.  We had one amazing vacation and returned just in the nick of time for me to get my spreads done for the April gallery that goes live in just a few days.

Here are my sneak peaks to share, spoiler alert, some vacation shots contained here.... So much fun working with the kits and the amazing digital offerings this month.  These first three shots are from the Bluegrass Farm main kit only.

I had to squeeze in another layout and was happy I could make it work with the time I had because the two addons Tabasco and Gertrude were so awesome this month.  The colors are just so happy!  This first shot contains a little sneak of my very first item that I designed for the digital shop, kind of excited about that.

You will be able to see the full reveal of the kits at Noon EST on March 27th if you are a subscriber and Midnight EST on March 28th if you are not a subscriber.  And let me tell you the scrapbook kits and card kits this month are just as amazing and I will be loading my cart with many of those items for sure.  Click here if you are interested in subscribing early so you can get in on the early bird shop-ortunities!  I expect it to get quite busy in the morning so bring your fast clicking fingers!

Oscars Fashion Scorecard

Last year my daughter and I had fun watching the awards and saying what dresses were our favorites.  We had a really fun scorecard last year but I didn't see anything out there like it this year so I made this one today.  Its a mix of nominees and some of the presenters I saw listed.

If you like to print it out and play along, click here.

Enjoy the show!