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 Ali Edwards Designs │ January projects

I have exciting news to share for the start of 2020! I will be part of the Ali Edwards Design team for this next year. I have admired Ali's way of storytelling and documenting for many, many years now so being part of her design team is a full circle moment for me. I'm so excited to work with her kits and products this year along with these amazing women.

Here are the projects I made this month, the first is using the digital version of the List Story Kit. Our wedding anniversary is this month so I decided to look back on some of the fun moments we shared this past year, our 20th anniversary year.

I enlarged and edited some of the journaling cards to fit my 8.5" x 11" canvas and created a collage of photos on the left side. I printed some elements separately so I could lift them off the page for some added dimension.

For the right side I cut the large numbers using the digital files out of vellum for some transparency and texture and I like how this turned out. It was super fun looking back on some of the fun things we have done this past year.

My next project was using the February Stories by the Month kit. I made an insert for my pocket page album of all of our fun Valentines Day photos, we had so much fun celebrating this day.

 Lastly was a travelers notebook spread using the January Stories by the Month digital kit. I created a simple pocket by printing out the background twice, once on photo paper and again on vellum. I stitched the vellum on top of the photo paper to create the pocket and slipped in some photos I cut into tags.

It's going to be a really fun year and I'll be sure to share my projects here each month too.

Take care,

December Daily® 2019 │ Days 21 thru 25

The final stretch! The last few days of my December Daily® album are always the most photo heave so its always fun to work on these days.

Day 21 was our first ever Ugly Christmas sweater party and we had a blast dressing up and it was such a fun and festive evening I wanted the pages to reflect that. I created a really simple slip pocket to hold the photos on the left by simple cutting around the digital text with an exacto knife. I love how the word art lays on top of our photo.

Products Used: Ali Edwards gold number, Paislee press digital files

Day 22 was our marathon baking day, we baked so much in one day and had the best time. I snapped a few photos while we were working but then took a photo of the finished cookies after, that's always the fun part anyway. I edited the photo so it would span both pages and then simple cut the photo like the previous day to slip in some photo strips of the working photos.

Products Used: Ali Edwards gold number, Kelly Purkey shop digital files, Studio Calico gold star stickers.

Day 23 was a super busy day getting all of the last minute stuff done so it was pretty story focused and I didn't really have a photo to pair with it but I did save this super cute bingo game that Target had posted to their Instagram story. I thought it was a good match for my story and helped illustrate all of the things that we had done this month. I cut a thin piece of transparency to cover the image and that way I could mark off the spaces with the star stickers but it could still be lifted to reveal the graphics below. (Oh and I did correct and reprint my journaling after I photographed this when I realized I actually had six bingo's and not four.)

Products Used: Ali Edwards gold numbers, Paislee Press digital file, Studio Calico gold star stickers, Felicity Jane tab die cut, Kelly Purkey Shop stamp.

Day 24 Christmas Eve, it was a busier day that we have had in awhile so lots of things to share and capture. I was working with the back of Day 23 so it ended up being the perfect place to play with some new digital files from Kerri Bradford. I also created another fold out page to hold lots of photos and lots of text.

Products Used: Ali Edwards gold number, Paislee Press mini kit felt star and chipboard, Kerri Bradford Block Party digital stamps, Minc gold foil, In A Creative Bubble digital file, gold star I cut myself.

Day 25 is always a super photo heavy day for me so I was glad to have that star pocket from Ali Edwards. I really loved that and hope she makes them again. The left side were funny snapchat photos we took in the evening and thought they were super fun and needed to be included.

Products Used: Ali Edwards gold number, Paislee Press mini kit cards, chipboard and digital files.

I still haven't decided how or if I will capture our Elf photos this year. As you may have read this year was a transition year so Simone actually helped a little with the elf fun. It might be a good idea to talk about that transition so if I end up making something with them I'll be back to share. I still haven't put away all of my stuff yet so I need to do that soon. I'm also hoping to film a walk thru and will post it here when I do that.

Thanks as always for being here and following along.

Take Care,