XOXO the cut file

When I was asked to make a cut file for the Studio Calico Camelot release I was super excited because of the direction that they wanted me to take.  I knew it could be super cool and I was so hoping the Design Team would love it.  I have tremendous admiration for all of these ladies and watching the sneaks come in and then seeing the full pieces in the gallery truly amazed me.  And hearing how much they loved, well that was just icing on the cake.

In no particular order here are the amazing results of their unbelievable talent.

 source: Paige Evans

source: Nicole Samuels

source: Shanna Noel

source: Loredana Bucaria

source: Geralyn Sy

source: Marcy Penner

source: Melanie Louette

If you are interested in getting the file for yourself, you can find the file here.  I sure hope that you love it and have fun playing with it.  Please make sure to tag me or let me know if you post it anywhere online so I can see it.  And if you have any questions on how to work with it please let me know.  I know that an instruction sheet was provided but if you still need help, I'm happy to help in anyway that I can.

P.S. the rest of the digital items in this months release are crazy good, so make sure if you love all things digi to check them out here too. Templates, Digital Brushes, Cut Files and Printables.

Studio Calico Camelot Full Reveal

Hello and a good Sunday to you all.  It seems so weird posting this on a Sunday but since reveal is today here we are.

Just a reminder that all the links below for the kits will be active for subscribers as of right now, 9:00am PST. If you are not a subscriber the links will work for you tonight at 9:00pm PST.

I'm so happy to share with you what I made with these Project Life® kits.  I made two spread and the first I'm sharing is made entirely from the Camelot Project Life® kit.

I've already talked about the elements that I loved in this months kits when I posted my sneaks but I really did love these kits so much and I really think that you will too.  I loved our last snow day of the year and focused the whole left side on it.  I love floating a larger vertical 4x6 card in the middle and ringing it with photos.  It's something I've done before and I know I'll do it again.

The scratch off card that Tina made is probably one of the most unique cards I have ever seen.  I didn't scratch it off until right before I snapped this picture and I honestly thought I was going to leave it.  I liked the air of mystery that it offered but in the end I just had to scratch it off.

Here is my title card up close.  This was made with Shanna's template set but I ended up cutting parts of it out on my cameo to give it some dimension.  I really, really loved the variety of her template set this month. It's jam packed for sure.

Here is my second spread using the addons

Man did I love these addons!  That shade of green gets me every time, it even matches my plates!  There were a few cards in the Lancelot addon that I knew the moment I saw them they would get used on this spread in some fashion, the Today & Tomorrow card and the multi stripe card.  Those pops of color were just rocking my world for sure.  The super hero card in the Girl Art Paper set was just the most happiest of accidents.  I had literally just taken the selfie of my daughter and I with Spiderman it clearly was meant to be. I did a fair amount of tweaking one of the printables that Tina designed for my title card.  I loved her calendar and really wanted to use it so I just changed the color, moved the dates around and deleted all but one row of the dots for the dates.  Oh and that alpha in the Arthur addon, hello amazing!  I adored the graphic quality it added to my spread.

And then there is my cut file.  I am so unbelievably excited for you all to see what the design team did with this file. I shouldn't be surprised but I was, it's all just so amazingly good.  You can see the full gallery here.

So in summary, here are the things that I think are absolute must haves this month...

1. The Camelot Project Life kit, you will not be disappointed, trust me.
2. The Lancelot Addon because the cards in this kit are amazing!
3. The Arthur addon because the black and white stripe alpha is so good!
4. The Girls and Boys art sets from Ashley G.  Oh man are these fantastic!

As far as other items go, these are a few of the things that made their way into my cart

1. The darling Bow craft die, I mean hello cuteness!
2. This Zig Wink of Stella glitter pen hello its glitter so you know I bought one in every color.
3. Vellumptuous Paper Pad, it had me at glitter diamonds
4. Dot Glue runner refill pack, this adhesive has become my very favorite and its always a good idea to have backups, especially if your kid keeps stealing them like mine does.

I hope you have a great Sunday and I'll be back next week to talk in depth about my cut file and show you some of the amazing things that were done with it.

Studio Calico Camelot Sneak Peaks

I absolutely loved working with the Studio Calico Camelot kits this month.  I think the thing that I love the most about the main kit and the addons this month is that the two spreads that I made are completely different.  One is soft and the other is very bold.  I love that there is so much variety in the kits and just by combining the right things you can end up with such different spreads.

Here are my sneak peaks using just the Studio Calico Camelot Main Project Life® kit only.  I love the bits of gold, always anything wood veneer and this month the wood veneer is amazing.  I also featured lots of digital on this spread.  The title card is a template set from my friend Shanna and its amazing.  I opted to cut it on my Cameo and I love how that turned out.

My second spread was made with a combination of the Lancelot and Arthur addons as well as a few cards from the two sets of art cards from Ashley G.  The Ashley G cards are amazing and I had a really hard time cutting one up but I did it anyway. I think I just might have to go back and buy another set.  This spread also features a cut file that I designed for the digital shop this month and I'm beyond excited by all the sneaks I'm seeing of how the other design team members have used it. All I can say is they have completely blown me away with their interpretation of the cut file.

Like I said above isn't it amazing how completely different these two spreads look.  I love that! If you are not currently a subscriber to the Studio Calico kits, it's not too late to sign up for a kit subscription, you can do so here.  The best thing about the subscriptions is you get to shop early for these amazing addons which I can imagine this month will be quite busy. I'll see you all at reveal on the 27th for the subscribers! Don't forget we always to a live chat one hour prior at 8:00am PST.

Five on Friday

1. Happy almost Easter! We got ahead of the game a bit and dyed our eggs earlier this week.  I always loved dyeing eggs and Simone seems to love it too.  She was a super big help in counting out the precise number of drops we needed of the food coloring we used to dye our eggs. 

2. Does the Easter Bunny hide real eggs at your house?  Our Easter Bunny always hides the plastic ones that are filled with money and little toys. I think I need to contact the Easter Bunny and make sure he also hides some of the real ones too.  Its kind of not the same if you aren't hunting for the real deal and then worrying if you found them all.

3. We made this burger the other night for dinner and then had the leftovers for lunch the next day.  They were SO good, I mean look at these.  

4. A Charming Charlie just opened in my town, my inner fashionista is super, duper happy about it!

5. A friend shared this video on Facebook the other day and I immediately shared it as well.  Would you apply for this job?

I hope you have a lovely weekend!

Project Life® weeks 7 and 8

So I've been really bad this year with sharing my Project Life® spreads except for the ones I've made for Studio Calico, and its not because I've been holding back.  It's because I'm behind.  I've been behind all year and I'm hating it!  It's not in my nature to get behind on things, well except maybe the laundry.  But I digress. What started out as a 'give myself a bit of a break' period has turned into more than I expected.  I didn't realize I was so behind until I sat down to take a look and realized pretty much all of February was not done.

I set a goal of finishing February by the beginning of April and that didn't quite pan out but as of today I'm only one week off that goal.  I worked on two spreads over the last week or so and I'm happy to finally have something to share.

Here is week 7

It wasn't until after I finished this spread that I realized I had used some of these photos already on my week 6 spread, which I cannot for the life of me figure out why. I guess I got the dates all wrong on that previous spread but oh well, I wasn't going to go back and re-do it.  Everyone will just get a second change at looking at them.  I used a mix of embellishments from the Office House Project Life Kit and the Sugar Rush Project Life kits along with the Free Valentines Day Printable set that Studio Calico shared on this mostly Valentines Day spread.  I just love this week in February its always one of my favorite spreads in my albums every year.  Its just so bright and cheery and happy.

I love making the journaling spill into two of these horizontal slots.  It gives me more room to write and it helps if I don't have just the right photo to put in.  Maximize when needed has always worked for me.

Here is week 8

Amy Tangerine's Plus One collection has to be one of my favorite of all time.  I purchased quite a bit of the line and plan on using it to make my Road Trip mini album which I plan to start soon. When I saw that a digital mini kit was made I had to have it and picked it up at the Project Life® digital shop here.

When I started making this spread I knew I wanted to use pieces from it but then ended up making the entire spread using just the digital pieces.  I did add a few embellishments from the Studio Calico Bluegrass Farm Gertrude add on and the Office Hours Report addon because they worked perfectly.

Not all of the things you see on the spread came this way in the digital kit.  I played around with quite a few things to make my own cards.  I extracted some of the text to use as word art and I also moved, changed and deleted lots of parts to make the cards work the way I needed them too.  Its so much fun having the pieces digitally in order to do that.

This spread happens to cover my birthday so the top portion here was about that day.  I shared it with my daughter and her soccer team as they had a big match that night so it wasn't a super big birthday celebration. It was pretty low key but still really nice.  The center card with the team photo flips out for some journaling about the game and another photo that you can see below.  The photos on the bottom section were from the night after and it was such a great night.  The two vertical 4x6 cards were actually 3x4's but with a bit of resizing I made them what I needed them to be.  My photos from that night were also not the best so with a lot of editing in Rad Lab I made them work.  I also turned the card on the right into a frame by duplicating the layer and deleting the center section of the top layer and placing my photo underneath.

On the right side more regular bits from the week.  The title card came as is but I placed the text from another card on top because I loved the way it looked layered over the colored watercolor strokes.  The pink frame card was flipped upside down and the text was removed to make room for my own. The heart geotag was extracted from another journaling card and made larger for more of an impact as was the Love on the card next to it. The blue journaling card was flipped upside down and made a bit longer so the frame was more toward the bottom of the card and the sun and cloud were extracted from another card to use as an element. The Hey card was just recolored from black and moved a bit to allow space for my journaling.

So now I can move forward on the last few weeks that I am behind on.  Thankfully I just received my May kits from Studio Calico so I cannot wait to get started on my spreads for the gallery.  Did you see the sneaks last night, if you didn't you can find them here, they are so awesome.  And how about that super cute Subscriber Exclusive, love it!

Five on Friday

1. If you've been here long enough you know that I love anything related to sparkle and I love neon. These super sized 3D sequins that I cut out on my Cameo and hung up above my desk are making me all kinds of happy right now.  You can find the cut file here, it seriously rocks! The paper I used is all from Michael's, the gold foil is a specialty paper and the neon was in a multi pack of other neon colors.
2. So I painted my nails this past Saturday using this tutorial from A Beautiful Mess and I must say, its held up super well.  I didn't use the polish they recommended I used this one instead.  I think I'll try it with one of the brands they suggested to see if I get even better results.
3. Did you see the new launch of Studio Calico's latest mid-release South of Market, so awesome! Its just perfect for this time of year when all I want to do is eat yummy fruits and vegetables.
4. Speaking of yummy vegetables, we have been making this salad a lot lately, two times this past week in fact.  Its delicious and so easy.  My dressing was just olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar, several shakes of Penzy's Italian Herb Mix, salt and pepper.
5. Because we have had amazing weather to go along with all of the fresh fruit and veggies we had a little s'mores party outside in our backyard on Tuesday night. There really is nothing better than a hot s'more on a beautiful night.  The only thing that would have made them better is if I could have found these. I've searched lots of stores but have had no luck yet.  I had a s'more made with them recently and they were delicious.  I must widen my search territory I guess.

Have a great weekend! 

Studio Calico South of Market

This next release takes you into a bustling farmer's market with a fresh color palette of spring greens, cheery yellows, and vibrant reds and pinks. You got your first taste of this new line in our Bluegrass Farm kits, (which are still available) but you'll see more in our shop when it ships in May. Be sure to click "notify me" on the items you're interested in so that you'll get an email once they're stocked! 

Here is a great shot of the 6x6 pad where you can see many of the papers in the line. 

I LOVE these wood veneer pieces, especially that little lemon slice, how cute are they!

What's not to love about cork and chipboard.

 
And this handbook, I mean come on, look at that leather snap closure!  Genius!

It just makes me thing of summer and I love it!

Documenting the school years, where to begin

I always knew I would do some sort of scrapbook for my daughter when she started school.  Its a thought that has been in the back of my mind as I sorted thru the many pieces of artwork she has brought home since she started her first mommy and me class when she was seventeen months old.

The how and when and what is still up in the air but as I sat down the other day and sorted thru the pile of papers I had set aside from her 2nd trimester of Kindergarten it struck me how close she is to finishing the school year.  She only has a few months left and I haven't even come close to starting her album.

My approach to saving things so far is to save things that show milestones, things that show progress and things that I think are just cute.  Clearly I need a better and more vicious editing approach because this isn't even the full year and its enough for one full album.  I'm thinking once the year is complete I can lay it all out and do a better job of editing down.  I will certainly be scanning or photographing all the art I have saved to make a collage or something with it all.

I took a quick look around on Pinterest for some inspiration and there is a lot of if out there.  I particularly loved this album using a Studio Calico Handbook and I really loved the page sketches she shared. And come on how cute is that die cut title page!

source Lisa Moorefield

I also hit the Studio Calico Gallery for some inspiration and saved these projects to my Inspiration Book.  Here are some things that jumped out at me for inspiration.

I loved this album idea from Allison Waken, I definitely take plenty of fashion shots of Simone so incorporating that topic into her album will be a must.

source Allison Waken

I love Nicole Reaves' Project Life® approach to her daughters album and I definitely think that a blend of pocket pages and layouts will be part of my daughters album.

source Nicole Reaves

I love the small scale of this flip album focusing on just one year. Plus I totally love the color palette.

source agomalley

This is a perfect example of what I hope to do with the artwork, I love the smaller scale in the pocket pages. It has such a great impact.

 source Laura Kurz

So that's about where I'm at with the planning phase.  Much to do on the actual production phase but seeing as I have enough Project Life® page protectors on hand I should have enough supplies once I get started. I'll be sure to share when I start which will hopefully be very soon!