Featuring Ali Edwards │ May Projects

Hello friends, I'm here today to share the projects I made using Ali Edwards products this month. Things are quiet here and we're really looking forward to getting out more as soon as the orders are lifted. We continue to be grateful for a home to shelter in and family to spend our days with. Documenting and continuing to take photos of how we are filling our days continues to bring me joy and creating things with the images is wonderful therapy.

This first spread was made with the June Stories by the Month kit. I loved all of the circle elements and used them to dance across the page. I used a little photoshop magic here to turn my vertical photo into a horizontal one by mirroring my image to span two pages. I love how this turned out and the wood veneer suns were my favorite accent.

My second spread was made using the May Digital Stories by the Month kit. I used a journaling card for my inspiration and turned the sections into digital frames to clip photos too. I have been asked to do a tutorial on how I did this so watch for a video very soon.

Lastly I made a 9x12 layout using the We Story Kit. I loved the bold graphic symbols in this kit and used a journaling card for the base of my page my enlarging it. I added some minc silver foil to a few elements to bring in some shine against the grey.

Featuring Ali Edwards │ March Projects

Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well and staying safe and healthy. Things have certainly taken a crazy turn since I was here last sharing projects. I have found some solace lately in creating so I'm hoping you are also finding some solace in your hobbies right now too. I hope these projects that I made in March bring you some inspiration and ideas and since its so quiet I plan to share some things I have made recently that I haven't had the time to share here. I send you all good wishes and please stay safe. Now for some creative distractions.

First up is a pocket page spread that I made using the March Stories by the Month digital kit. The colors of this kit were so great, I'm always a fan of bright bold colors so I was a fan. This spread covers quite a few days in March last year and it was fun to get these memories saved.

Next is another pocket page spread using the April Stories by the Month physical kit. This kit covers so much ground for April stories so I used it to document our Easter celebrations. I adored all of the floral elements and just loved embossing some of the stamps with Rose Gold embossing powder.

Lastly was a travelers notebook spread that I made using the Friends Story Kit. I used a combination of digital elements of the kit and the physical pieces too. I love mixing digital with physical stuff and really enjoyed printing the digital flowers on vellum to fussy cut out for dimensional embellishments. I will for sure do this again and again.

Sending you much love and good wishes during this extra crazy time!

Take care,

Featuring Ali Edwards Designs │ February Projects

I can't believe its almost the end of February. Just when we thought January would go on forever, February goes by in a flash. The weather here and been unseasonably dry with no rain at all this month so while I've been enjoying the beautiful weather and Spring like temps I'm afraid but still hopefully March ends up being wet. We sure do need the rain.

Anyway, here are the three projects I made this month using Ali Edwards kits.

The first was made using the March Stories by the Month kit. This kit covered all kinds of Spring time related themes and the theme of growth really stood out to me. I thought it was a great way to tell a story about my daughter conquering some fears this past year. I loved the pastel vibes of the kit and the stamp set and word strip stickers were fun to play with.

The second project I made was using the February Digital Stories by the Month kit. I used the kit to tell the story of these two heading off to the Father Daughter Dance. Anytime I can use x's and o's and hearts on a project I'm all in.

The last project I made was made with the You Story Kit. This kit has so many great story sparks and I was drawn to the You Are card and used it as a way to share some things I love about my two favorite people. I also really loved the canvas hearts in this kit. They were so fun!

Take care,

Pieces of Us │ A Mini Album

Sometimes projects come along that excite me and make me want to dive right in. When Ali Edwards shared a few weeks back that she was going to work on a project called Pieces of Us I was immediately drawn to it. The concept as she explains in this blog post was going to be a week of focusing on images of ourselves so that we could get ourselves into the story and to also focus on all of the things we should be loving about ourselves. I loved the idea and don't usually have any issue with sharing photos of myself. I was surprised as I was moving thru the days that it was getting harder and harder for me to focus on myself and also share about myself as you will see in the journaling I did each day.

After the week was over and I let my feelings sit I knew I wanted to put the photos and words together into some sort of mini album. Once I started working on it everything seemed to gel and I really ending up loving the images and the words that I had written. They were true and honest to how I was feeling at the time and they really helped open my eyes to some of the negative things I have allowed to float thru the air recently. I'm super thankful that I stuck it out and I'm super thrilled with how the mini came together.

Here are the fine details about the project. It's a 5.5" x 7.5" simple folded mini album. I used Bazzil White Orange Peel cardstock for the cover and 65lb. white vellum for the interior pages, and the photos and text pages are printed out at 5x7. The titles are from Ali and she shared them in this blog post. The digital frames I used for the base of my text pages is this set, and the hand drawn florals that I used are from this digital set. The font I used for the headers is Silverline Script and the font I used for my journaling is Marista. All of the other embellishments and supplies are from my stash.

Once I knew how many pages I needed to complete my book I made the booklet and stapled the pages inside the cardstock cover. I used a digital card from the Ali Edwards February Stories by the Month kit as the base and enlarged it to 5x7. I printed the base in color first on my printer and then fed the same sheet of paper into my laser printer so the digital brush title and florals could be run thru my Minc machine. I love how the gold shimmers and I'm always a fan of adding gold bits to things.

I did the same thing for my title page so that the Pieces of Me and floral brush could be foiled. For the inside front cover I dug thru my stash and found this cute Crate Paper tag and created a little cluster. The gold die cut leaves from Studio Calico are carried thru the whole album giving it some cohesive elements.

I knew I wanted the pages to have a uniform feel to read like a story book so I laid out the text pages and just replicated them for each day. I adjusted the size of the digital frame and colored the inside in a soft pink shade and then copied in my text for each day. All of the text I used came directly from the captions of the photos I shared on Instagram as the week progressed. There were two days I added in additional text and you will see that text separated by some dashes. The grey set of word strip stickers had the days of the week on it so I decided to use those to label each photo or text as you will see as you look on.

For a few photos that had extra space in the text I added my embellishments there instead of on the photo and I like how that mixes things up.

Here is a day where I wanted to add in some followup text.

And here on the last day I added in some additional thoughts and feelings about the project as a way to finish things up and add my conclusion.

I really loved how this turned out and I'm so glad that I participated in the project. It really made me think about how I can be kinder to myself and also the importance of sharing more stories about me too. I know that this project is going to stick with me for awhile and I love that.

Take care,

Featuring Kelly Purkey Shop │ July Shop Release

Hello everyone, I'm so excited to share with you the three things I have made, so far with the latest Kelly Purkey shop update. The update was filled with so many great themes and the main kit Breakfast Favorites is perfect for anyone who loves breakfast and the Travelers Notebook kit is perfect for all the book lovers out there. Lets jump in so I can share my projects with you.

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.

My first project was a Travelers Notebook spread using my favorite stamp set this month called Dive In. This stamp set was designed by Tina Aszmus of LifeLovePaper and it was an extension of her people stamp sets. 

I adored the vintage vibe of this stamp set and it paired perfectly with one of the pages from the Travelers Notebook kit, it totally reminded me of a beach towel when I saw it.

My next project was a full size layout using the Breakfast Favorites kit. I haven't made a layout in awhile but I didn't really have enough photos for a pocket page spread and I had too many photos and cards to use for a Travelers Notebook spread. It was fun working on a layout for a change and it definitely gave me tons of room to move things around.

I loved all the phrases in the stamp set.

My last project was a travelers notebook spread using the Bookworm Travelers Notebook kit. This kit was also designed by Tina Aszmus of LifeLovePaper and I new right away that I wanted to document all of the books I'm reading this summer.

I created by own little book with a little bit of digital scrapbooking magic using the printable papers and kit cards that Kelly offers each month with the kits. It was so much fun creating this little book to hold photos of the books I've read this summer.

Here are the pages so far, I left some room since I'm counting all the books I read thru August as a summer read.

I know the two main kits sold out quickly but there are still plenty of cute stamp sets available and I have at least one more project planned so I can use them. This Summer Fun stamp set is so cute and it's perfect for documenting a family dinner we had right before 4th of July. I can't wait to use it.

I hope you grabbed all you wanted and more this month! And I hope the rest of your summer is amazing as well!

Take care,

Kelly Purkey Shop │ October Release

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! Today seemed like the perfect day to share what I made with the October Kelly Purkey shop release because the two project I made are Halloween themed. That's not to say that the October Kit it geared toward Halloween, its not, its about Time. But there were still plenty of cards that I could pull for two great Halloween themed projects.

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 a pocket page spread. This year my girlfriend and I decided to have weekly Halloween movie nights and this spread is about the first one I had a my home. It was so much fun and were already talking about doing it for Christmas.

I used the cards and stamp set from the main kit, The Best of Times as well as the Washington Heights alpha stamp set, the Favorite Recipe stamp set and the We are #Blessed stamp set. I love those little word chip stamps, there are so many great sentiments you can use that stamp from now until the end of the year with all of the holidays it covers.

Here you can see a few of the Favorite Recipe stamps used to dress up my snack photos.

The Washington Heights alpha is so cool for Halloween and fall, the hand drawn aspect is a great addition to your alpha stamp collection.

Here are those We are #Blessed word chips in action. I love stacking and then fussy cutting them to add on top of my photos and cards.

My next project is a Travelers Notebook spread. I was really drawn to the time aspect of the main kit and wanted to use the stamps to tell a story of the passage of time instead of the actual time. Since I had been spending some time looking back on old Halloween photos I decided to make in into a layout in the TN. Its crazy how time flies when you are raising kids and its no more evident when you look back on photos from the past.

I used a sheet of paper from the This is Us Travelers Notebook kit as the base for my photos and then plotted out how many small photos I could fit on one side of the notebook. My photos are sized 1.5" x 2" and I was able to fit the five photos and still have room for the numbers. That meant I had to leave some out but that's okay, I still love the look back. The digital clock stamps are meant to tell the time but I think they are awesome numbers on their own and just stamped and cut them out to add on top of my photos.

To title my spread I used the Washington Heights alpha and stamped it directly on the page of the notebook. I added in a small sentiment from the This is Us stamp set and added in the clock stamp above. I also stamped the leaf from the This is Us stamp set to dress up the middle of my clock. I wanted to add another little element there to bring in the orange to the left side.

I absolutely love how well all of these stamp sets coordinated together this month and I hope you loved them all too.

I hope you have a wonderful Halloween! 

See you soon,