Kelly Purkey's June release

It's release day over at Kelly Purkey's shop and its a super, super fun one so make sure you check all the new stuff out, you can see everything right here. I made three projects that I want to share with you and I think you will really love everything that Kelly has done this month.

The first one combined two of the new items, the Love Joy alpha and the Happy Mail stamp set. The Love Joy alpha totally reminded me of days gone by, when travel was done right and air mail was the only way to communicate overseas. I made a super quick and easy card that took its cues from the Air mail stripe that was so popular ages ago.

I think this alpha looks amazing when embossed and I love how the blue pops against the background of the stripe. And what's not to love about that super cute flying airplane. I matched the outside of my envelope to the card and also made a little envelope seal by stamping on a piece of vellum.

My next project was a Project Life® spread using the Shutterbug kit. I love the colors of these cards and what's not to love about anything related to Instagram. It was a total bonus that I had just celebrated my 4th anniversary on Instagram so this spread was the perfect one to use with this kit.

I wanted to stamp everything and I love how well the stamps worked on top of these cards. Its so such fun to mix and match with this kit. I also ran a few of them thru my printer to add my text right on top and that worked great!

My last project was made using the Family stamp set. Every once in awhile you make friends that feel like family and these people are like my family. I loved that the family stamp set included that sentiment and had fun making a background for my photo to help convey the importance of these people to me. I just stamped randomly and kept adding the sentiments that I loved in as random of a pattern as I could. I layered it with two solid colors of paper and added my photo on top. I made a simple tag to help focus one of the larger sentiments right on the photo. I used two of the new Clearly Kelly tags to help anchor my date and it was done. This layout will go along with my Project Life spread about this weekend adventure and love that this photo will get the attention it deserves.

I hope you enjoy the shop update! I'll be back later this month with some more projects focusing on the Clearly Kelly products.

Branding your next camping trip

This past weekend we went camping with our friends. It was a family affair, four families and 9 kids. This was my first time camping a really, really long time and I wanted to try to do something special for our friends. Initially I thought of having t-shirts made but the cost to have them printed for all of us was a bit more than I wanted to spend. I remembered that one of the Dad's on this trip loved collecting Koozies when he traveled so I thought maybe that would be a good idea. A quick google search lead me to TotallyKoozies.com and I was super happy to see that yes I could upload my own art and have two dozen printed at a really reasonable cost. I picked the single color solid koozies for this trip but love that they also offer so many other styles based on what kind of beverages you wanted to keep cool.

I made the logo in Photoshop Elements using the information that totallykoozies specified on their website regarding what size to keep the designs too. I just upload my art when I placed my order and within one business day I had a proof back from their designers. They had amazingly quick turnaround and are willing to work with your deadline date so I had them in hand by the day I needed them. This was the most easy and hassle free ordering of a custom item online that I have ever experienced. Needless to say they were a HUGE hit with our friends and everyone really loved them. Here is a shot one of our friends posted to Facebook, they totally fit in with our surroundings.

Since those were primarily for the adults I wanted to do something fun for the kids so I thought it would be fun to turn the logo into a temporary tattoo. I purchased the Silhouette Cameo Temporary Tattoo paper and just modified my initial logo design adding in a background color and making sure to flip it so when applied the text was in the right place.

I scaled the size down just a bit keeping small kids in mind and was able to get 12 on one of the sheets of paper provided. I printed these on my home printer and then cut them out on my Silhouette Cameo. I brought along a bottle of rubbing alcohol to clean the kids skin hoping it would make them last a bit longer. The kids loved them and all the moms ending up tatting up too. It was super cute and lots of fun but next time I would make sure to wait to apply them to the kids skin after they were done swimming for the day. They definitely faded and fell off but in a normal situation would last a solid day had water and swimming not been involved.

My last bit of fun and branding was to make a flag for our campsite. I decided to work with our local Fast Signs shop where I live and decided on a two foot by two foot square flag. I sent them the same logo and we picked a background color for the flag and they did a direct print onto the canvas. They added the three grommets for me and my husband built the stand for me out of PVC pipe that he spray painted and we attached the flag with some zip ties. At the campsite he secured into the ground with a piece of rebar that he hammered in. The flag was at our site the whole trip and I made sure to get lots of pictures around it of the whole group and each family.

These were all really simple easy and quick things that just added that finishing touch to the trip and made it that much more special for everyone. I will definitely try all of these things again and hope that this inspires you to brand your next group outing.

Note: all links provided are for informational purposes only and no affiliate benefits are coming to me for sharing these vendors with you. All opinions/reviews expressed are my own.

Featuring Clearly Kelly

I'm back sharing two more projects I made using Kelly Purkey's Clearly Kelly products. If you aren't familiar with Clearly Kelly products it is a line that Kelly has with Hero Arts and its all super cute and true to Kelly's aesthetic.

The first thing I made was a Project Life® spread using the 3x3 square page protectors that I just can't get enough of. One of my favorite things from the Clearly Kelly line is the set of sticky notes that Kelly designed. I was especially drawn to the rainbow order of these tabs and knew they would be perfect for a Project Life spread.

I used one for each day of the week and stamped the dates on each tab. I then made sure to lay out my printed text to leave a space for the stamps I planned to use. I found out that several of the Studio Calico Color Theory inks were the perfect match for the tabs and used them to keep the rainbow order going.

Clearly Kelly products I used // Take Note / Yes Please / Real Life / Daily Life / Live Big / Happy Place / Outline Alpha / Sticky Notes

matching Color Theory Inks // Flamingo / Orange County / Lemon Zest / Yes Peas / Emerald City / Purple Rain / Lavender Soda

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My second project was purely for fun, to help jazz up my planner. If you aren't using a planner right now you should know that there are many people out there that are in to decorating their planners daily. That's why I thought this would something fun to try. I have a planner and use it every day but I rarely if ever decorate it. I wanted to show just how versatile the Clearly Kelly Icon stamps were and how they can be paired with some of her other stamps to make a weekly to do list.

I found a simple graph paper background on line and printed it out on letter size paper. I then plotted out my sections and used a light grey pen to mark them. Kelly's Get it Done stamp set had the perfect titles for all of my sections and I added in the icons from the Clearly Kelly Planner Icons set. I used the Outline Alpha to add my title and the inks I used here are the Hero Arts Neon inks; red, orange and pink. The stamp I used for the Target Bullseye is in Kelly's Summertime Kit and I love that little thing. How perfect is that.

For my Meal Plan sheet I used the same graph paper background, plotted out my sections and drew in the lines. I added in the days of the week sticky notes and added a simple title at the top with the Outline Alpha. I love this so much that I might have to start doing this weekly!

Clearly Kelly products I used above // Outline Alpha / Planner Icons / Sticky Notes
Kelly Purkey products I used above // Get it Done / Summertime Kit

I'm now obsessed with putting all of my stuff in rainbow order thanks to these little sticky notes. I hope these projects help inspire you to use them in different ways.

Announcing Kelly Purkey

When you've got it, you've got it and Kelly Purkey has it. Her designs have been gracing my work for years, from back in the days when she designed some Epic and Awesome stamps sets for Studio Calico to flash forward to today with her own brand of products. I get her and she seems to get me because everything she designs seems to just work for me. It also really helps that we have the same brain for catch phrases so that's a total plus. So much so that when she recently put out a call for her first ever design team I was very intrigued and applied. Needless to say I was absolutely thrilled when I got an email asking me to join the team. Which brings us to today. The release of the first batch of products I used as a member of her team. Her newest release of kits and stamps are so awesome, there really is something for everyone in this release. These sets can only be found on her website and when they sell out they are rarely restocked so you have to jump on the ones you love. You can see all of the new releases right here. I'd love to show you the three projects I have made so far this month.

The first that you can see a glimpse of above is a little mini album that I made with her Summertime kit. I took the opportunity to go back thru last summer's photos and pick out all of my favorites. It's super small and compact, just a lot of photos and some text and its a perfect little reminder of the fun that was had. Its totally putting me in the mood for summer to officially start.

This card above was the perfect cover, I used the new Bedford Alpha to stamp the year. And can I just say how much I love when alpha stamps come with coordinating numbers because I always need the numbers.

There were some really great cards that were perfect for adding in some journaling.

And what's not to love about fruit slices and heart eyes emoji's! The emoji stamp is from the Done and Done stamp set, LOVE!

Speaking of the Done and Done stamp set, it was perfect for a little catch up/my faves spread for my Project Life® album. The little icons were the perfect thing to highlight some of my favorites from this past month.

I also really loved working with the new 9" x 12" sized page protectors for this spread. These 3" x 3" squares are totally speaking to me.

The last thing I made started out just as a 12 x 12 layout but I decided to turn it into a Project Life® spread at the last minute. Since I had already done the mini album for our trip this didn't need to be as detailed or full so it was the perfect way to capture it in my Project Life® by just focusing on the high points.

This side which was going to stand along as a layout was completely inspired by the tile wall we took this picture against. I cut the tiny 1/2" square pieces of paper from three shades of blue and one really pretty pearly metallic paper. I wanted some shimmer in there somewhere. It took some time to place each square down individually but I think the hardest part was placing them in a pleasingly random way. The Space Needle stamp in the PNW Is Best stamp set is the CUTEST thing ever! I stamped it in two colors to give it some depth. If you have been or are planning to go to Portland or Seattle anytime soon this stamp set is perfect for you.

Here's the left side of the spread where I got to use some of the other stamps from that set. I also used the Bedford alpha for the title card. I love the mountains and the coffee cup, I mean who doesn't love a good coffee cup stamp.

It's been a really great first month and I'm just so excited to work with Kelly. If you haven't already done so make sure you sign up for her newsletter you can find the spot to do that on the front page of her website here. She always announces her releases there so its really key to stay in the know with what's going on. Later this month I'll have even more stuff to share using some of Kelly's new Clearly Kelly releases so I look forward to that as well.

Take care,