Featuring Kelly Purkey Shop │ January Shop Update

Hello everyone, I'm here today to share some projects I have made using the Kelly Purkey Shop January products that just launched today. This shop update was a huge one and a great one at that.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission if you make a purchase using the links below. There is no additional cost to you if you use these links.

The first project I made was using just the Full Heart Travelers Notebook Kit subscription only. This kit is so great and perfect for documenting Valentines Day. However, its not just pink and red as you will see in my second project. I used the same kit papers to create another spread that has a completely different look and feel as you will see below.

The xoxo paper was the first thing that caught my eye and new that I had to use that sheet for sure. I also couldn't decide between the two on the left so I decided to use both and create a pocket to hold my journaling. To make the pocket I just trimmed the top sheet at an angle and applied adhesive to just the edges and that's it. Instant pocket!

The tag I made out of one of the sheets of paper by just cutting it down after I printed it out. I used the digital file so that I could easily add in the text prior to printing it out.

 I loved adding in a few of the stamps here and there to dress up the spread. The little row of hearts was a favorite and dressed up the edge of my pocket nicely.

For my second spread I used the same Full Heart Travelers Notebook kit papers but added in stamps from the Date Night and True Love stamp sets. I loved the green and blue papers that are on the reverse of the red and pink cards in the kit and had fun adding stamps to the Love This card.

I love the layered look and I know its planned but it always makes me happy when stamps fit perfectly in the little boxes Kelly designs. Its just the kind of attention to detail and precision and ease that make the kits and papers all work so well together.

I didn't want to leave these vellum and acetate hearts plain and love that they accepted stazon ink so well because I really loved stamping the little sentiments on them.

Always.  Any and all Professor Snape references will "always" be appreciated.

Lastly I wanted to share one little sneak peek of the Groundhog Day stamp set that is part of this release. I cannot wait to document the day on February 2nd and if you love the movie as much as I do, grab this stamp set.

I'll be sure to come back and share what I make after we see if Phil sees a shadow or not, I'm hoping for no shadow myself.

YouTube │ December Daily® 2018 Album Walk Through

Hello everyone, just wanted to share that I have posted a walk through of my 2018 December Daily® Album on my YouTube Channel. The walk through is done in two parts so make sure you watch both videos. You can find my channel right here or click thru the links below and watch that way.

Thanks for watching!

Featuring Kelly Purkey Shop │ Celebrate 2019

I cleared off my desk this past weekend of all of my Christmas supplies and did a deep clean of my main work surface and it felt so good to have it nice and clean. While I was cleaning things and organizing what was out and on my desk I decided to make a quick Travelers Notebook spread using the My Favorite Holiday stamp set from Kelly Purkey Shop. I love this set and I plan to keep it out on my desk all year. Its perfect for documenting all of the fun made up national holidays like National Pie Day which is January 23rd BTW!

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission if you make a purchase using the links below. There is no additional cost to you if you use these links.

Here is a look at the spread I made, super quick and easy but it tells the story of how we spent our New Years Eve. It ended up being a really quiet night which was totally okay for us, an early dinner and then home to build some LEGO's and watch the festivities on TV. While we were waiting for midnight we snapped these fun pictures because this snapchat filter was so cute. I appreciated it that much more since I didn't bother to get us cute head bands for the occasion this year.

I mixed a few stamps sets in with the My Favorite Holiday stamp set, I also added in the year using the 6x8 2019 Calendar stamp set which will be back in stock for the next shop update on 1/28 as well as the hearts from the Love Notes monthly kit stamp set. The base for the spread was made using papers from the Big Plans travelers notebook kit.

I wanted to make sure I had a place to tell my story but I didn't want to cover up the page on the left so I printed out my journaling on vellum and layered it on top of the paper. Because the dots on this page were dark it was a bit hard to read the journaling so I ended up layering a second piece of vellum under the typed sheet to make it a bit more opaque. I also stamped the sentiments on the right side onto vellum as well. This allows it to show but not compete with the strips below it.

I'm really excited to document our 2019 adventures and look forward to adding more pages to this album as the year goes. This album is new from Citrus Twist Kits and if you are looking for an album that will hold travelers notebook sized pages with binder rings this is a great option. I picked two of these up when they went on sale last week and they are beautifully made and arrived so fast. Here is a link if you are interested. Its not affiliate link, I'm just sharing because I love it and think you will too.

Take care,

December Daily® 2018 │ Days Twenty One thru The End

Hello everyone, today I wanted to share a look at the last few entries of my album. It's always bittersweet to finish but like I mentioned in my last post, finishing later than I would have liked made me want to finish it even more. I really was ready to put this all away for the season and get started on other things.

As I completed my album and looked back through a few themes seemed to be on repeat this year; tags, pockets, and transparency pages. I added more things to tags that I have ever done and I love how they look. I also used a fair amount of pockets to hold extra photos on busier days. Again, I love a good pocket so no surprise there. I also ended up with a fair number of single page days and when that happens I love to divide them with clear transparent pages, so there are plenty of those this year too.

One really significant and major change for this years album was that I didn't use any page protectors. Not one. I wouldn't say that I planned on it or set a goal not to use any but its definitely something I thought about from the very beginning. I wanted to get back to the way the project was done when Ali Edwards started it years ago by making pages using various sizes and shapes of paper and making each day different. Its my favorite style of mini album to make so I knew it would be fun to work on. I did love it a lot but the downside to this style is I used no traditionally sized journaling cards, no 3x4 and no 4x6. That meant a few things I loved from the kits I bought didn't get used. Yes I was sad about a few but I was pretty okay with it in the end. I can always use the ones I loved next year, they will happily get added to my stash of Christmas supplies.

I have no idea if I will do this next year since I wait until the last minute to figure out a game plan so we shall see next November what I decided to do. I will say that if you are feeling like you are repeating yourself too much with this project, you may want to shake up your format and give this a try.

Okay enough of that, lets share some pages. Day twenty one was a cookie making day with our friends and I used this project I had made using Kelly Purkey stamps as my inspo for the entry by recreating similar tags to dress up the pocket.

I used one of the larger 6x8 sheets of paper Kelly designed for her holiday kits and just shrunk it down and altered it to become a 4x6 journaling card. I added a digital stamp from Kerry Bradford in the top box, it fit perfectly.

 
Day twenty two was a movie day for my family. We just loved this movie, I mean, wow!! I kept the page simple with another movie image hanging off the page with tickets attached on the side with a clip. I kind of love repeating similar layouts for like entries. It gives the project some nice cohesion.

For Day twenty three I created two photo strips of some silly Santa selfies we took in Snap Chat. I wish I had taken more than one image for each of us because three just didn't seem enough so I created two strips but varied the position of our photos. I like how it looks layered and it gives the page a bit more impact.

This transparency piece was from Studio Calico last year and I just punched two holes and it fit into the rings perfectly. I like that it was smaller than a full size transparency would have been. I added in a little fabric piece from Crate Paper Merry Days and also stapled on a little clear flag to grab and turn but its hard to see in this photo.

The red heart patch came in a set of ugly sweater patches I bought from the Target Dollar Spot this year. The little chipboard Holiday Selfie piece was from this years Paislee Press mini kit. I love all this red!!

Day twenty four, Christmas Eve. Our family arrived for the holidays and we were so happy to have them here. I'm blurring out these photos because I'm just trying to be more conscious of what I share and being considerate of others privacy, so thank you for understanding. The templates I used on these two pages are from Paislee Press this year and I love her word art and the sentiments worked perfectly. I did modify the word art on the right to add in the word Eve also from Paislee Press.

In the center I added in a 3.5 x 8 piece to hold the story and a few more photos on the back.

Day twenty five Christmas Day always has so many photos so I printed the ones I couldn't leave out and slipped them into a vellum bag. The vellum bag is really old from Cosmo Cricket, I only have one left now and I'm very sad about it. The paper clip is Merry Days, the red transparent 25 is old from my stash and the Merry Christmas piece is Merry Days as is the backing paper I used for the right side. The chipboard Christmas Morning piece on the left is from the Paislee Press mini kit this year.

I used an old digital journaling card form In A Creative Bubble to hold my story. I enlarged it and recolored it to match my photos better, the base of the card was originally bright yellow which was pretty that way, I just wanted a light pink instead.

I always end my album with collection of photos showing what our Elf Twinkle did while she visited and this year I made a little Travelers Notebook to hold them all. I slipped the notebook in a vellum bag that I just adhered right to the inside back cover of the album.

The left page was made using a digital paper from the Kelly Purkey Shop 2018 Holiday Oh What Fun kit. I recolored the base to a more vibrant red and added in a few glitter stars.

To make the notebook I used a digital paper from Paislee Press, the word Twinkle is an old brush I had in my digital supplies by the designer Gina Cabrera. The Elf Shenanigans word art is from the Kelly Purkey Shop 2018 Holiday Oh What Fun kit. I printed the background and the elf word art first on my color printer and then ran the page thru my laser printer to print the word Twinkle. Then I used my Minc machine to add red foil to just that word. Super easy.

The interior pages are four sheets of vellum that I cut to size and folded in half and then stapled using a long arm stapler in the middle. I created this front cover page using more word art and paper from the Kelly Purkey Shop 2018 Holiday Oh What Fun kit. It was the perfect place to write down what the Elf did each day. I don't always do this but I had the space this year so why not.

I printed out all 24 images and sized them so I could get six on a page and laid them out in date order. I just used vellum adhesive to attach them only on the right side of the pages and it was done.

This year I made sure to snap pics of the Elf in both vertical and horizontal format every day. I've forgotten to snap pics before and I hate missing days so I'm pretty disciplined now to take them each day. I never know what I'm going to do until the end so having both horizontal and vertical pics is nice to have on hand so I'm covered with both formats. This year I also posted the images to my IG Story and added the date to each before posting. I ended up using those images here so I wouldn't also have to numbers each photo. Its super small and hard to read but its there in case I ever want to refer back. Next year I think I'll so the same but just put the date.

And that's it, the end!! I plan to film a walk through and I'll do that in two videos so its not super long. My plan is to film it hopefully today and I'll post here when the videos are live.

Thanks so much for all the encouragement online as I completed this project, it is always so much fun to do so I appreciate it if you took the time to comment, like or engage when I posted my photos to Instagram.

I'll be back soon to share more projects soon.

Take care,

December Daily® 2018 │ Days Fourteen thru Twenty

I completed my December Daily® today and I'm so happy its done. I hated finishing it so late this year but I gave myself many days off this season and gave myself permission to let it wait. Letting it wait allowed me to get so much stuff done that I normally do at the last minute and that was so nice. It also allowed me to have more fun when my daughter got out of school for break and that was great too. Next year I really hope I can figure out a better balance. One thing I'm already worried about is how late Thanksgiving will be in 2019. Anyway, I have 11 months to worry about that so lets share some pages.

Day Fourteen was a bit of a combo page to hold two stories; her visit with Santa and her wish list this year. I used the Kelly Purkey Shop Holiday monogram stamps to stamp and emboss a few of the sentiments on five small white tags. I had my daughter write some of her wish list items on the back as you will see below.

I stapled the string to the backing page and then just wrapped the string around the back, tapped it off and trimmed it down. This was all done before I adhered this page to the back of the previous page. I love how they move and I love how it shows my daughters handwriting.

Day Fifteen was a lucky snap on our way home from a soccer game and the reflection was just so pretty. I kept it super simple and just added in some text and a big number.

To separate it from Day Sixteen I added in another transparency that I dressed up with one of the shaker stickers from Crate Paper Merry Days and some silver stars to continue them across the page. I made sure to pay attention to not cover up some elements that were behind it as I was working on this.

This was my daughters friend birthday party day so I had a lot of photos to include. To hold them all I made a simple vellum pocket that I backed with a really old piece of snowflake paper, its from Elle's Studio. I used a few of the die cuts from the Merry Days Collection and created my own with a custom sentiment based on the design of one that was included in the set.

I printed out the invitation, and created a large journaling card to tell story and just clipped them all together using a large clip from Felicity Jane.

Day Seventeen was a simple entry to capture my favorite wrapping paper this year. And Day eighteen was an entry to show our tree. I'm getting a lot less artwork from school as my daughter gets older so I appreciate all that I do get and this tree had to make it into the album.

I adhered the tree on top of the tree transparency from Ali Edwards but prior to that I scanned the tree so I could trace the shape.

Once I had the shape traced I reversed it in Photoshop Elements and then typed up my text so it would fit the space. I fussy cut around the shape and glued it to the back side of the transparency. It ended up lining up pretty good. I dressed up the small area I left blank at the top with some rubber trees from Felicity Jane and the rubber banner from the Paislee Press Mini kit.

Day Nineteen and Twenty were two super fast entries, the first was a little craft time so Simone could add something to her stocking. We do this every year and this year it was a Plumeria flower since we had just been to Hawaii. The next day we hosted her soccer team for a secret Santa party so I included on small photo on a 6x8 sheet from Kelly Purkey Shop, I just dressed it up a bit with a few puffy stickers from the Merry Days collection to add in a bit of sparkle.

I'll be back Monday to share the last few entries in the album.

Have a great weekend!