Featuring Kelly Purkey │ February Release

Hello everyone, its been a busy time around here for me which means fewer blog posts and I'm sorry about that. I'll try to be better but sometimes I just can't do it all.

The good this is that I'm here today to share that there is a lot of good stuff going on for Kelly Purkey and her shop. This biggest bit of news is that she has expanded her team. I'm super excited to be continuing on and super excited about the new members joining the team. Here is a copy of the announcement below and I have linked their Instagram accounts so you can check them all out and follow everyone.

Krista // Kari // Me

Beth // Julie // Brooke

Jen // Jamie // Juli

Nadia // Kelly

Kelly released a lot of really great stuff in February and I made two projects with them. The first was a super fun insert for my Project Life® album just for a weekend we spent in San Francisco for my birthday. This insert was created using a mixture of of the kits, especially the I Love Weekends stamp set, the One and Only stamp set and the cards and flair from the XO Mini Kit from Kara Haupt.

I loved the yellow cards from the Kara Haupt kit and I always gravitate toward anything yellow so of course I used them. I especially loved the yellow flair piece so that had to be used for sure. I used one of the stamps from the I Love Weekend stamp set to create the Weekend Brunch card, just by repeat stamping the sentiment over and over at an angle on a piece of cardstock. I love how this pop of yellow plays off the two other yellow cards that I used.

I loved the big bold numbers on the One and Only stamp set and used them to mark by new age and that Est. stamps is so cute, I can see using that over and over again.

Working in square shapes with this insert was so much fun, I just love the 3x3 size. I cropped all of my photos to 2.5" square which created a nice larger white border which I really am loving this year.

My second project features the Playlist mini kit and stamp set and the Bushwick alpha stamp set. This story is pretty old, way back from 2013 but its one that has stuck in my mind and one that I really wanted to document. Everyone gets the song lyrics wrong from time to time but this was such an epic rendition and the fact that she let me video tape her signing it was such a surprise. This was around the time that Pitch Perfect came out so the song was front and center in our lives for sure so it was on constant repeat and the words that she sang were just too cute. I also want to mention that my daughter has no recollection of this so when I showed her this layout and video, she was dying! Sometimes waiting to create a page can be so worth it! And yes pricochet is supposed to be ricochet...like I said, its and epic and adorable fail.

Since this whole layout stems from a video and not a static photo I had to use a screen shot from the video on my page. Its a lower quality image than I normally use but I don't mind because my daughter's expression more that makes up for the lesser quality image. Because the best part of this story is the video, I added a QR code directly on to the photo so you can view the video while looking at the layout. I have a tutorial on my blog on how to do this, you can see that here. Its one of my favorite techniques when I have good videos and its actually super easy to do.

Once I had an image to use I knew I wanted to use the alpha stamp to stamp out the words and added in the music note stamp just below it to mimic what a song book would look like. I added in one of the journaling cards from the kit to help tell the story and it was done.

Its a super simple layout but I love the way it moves across the page.

And I love that face. So classic.

I hope you enjoyed the new release, I know the shop is closed for maintenance right now but I'm hoping it opens back up soon. I'll come back and add links to the shop items as soon as it reopens.

Other than that I hope your late winter early spring is going well, I cannot believe we are already at mid March, time is flying by.

Take care,

One second in time

Around January 6th I decided to jump on the One Second Everyday wagon and shoot one second snippets of video to be mashed up at the end of the week, month and year. Its proven to be super, super fun and its got me shooting video which I never really did before. There was a bit of a learning curve for sure on how to shoot and then how to select the exact right one second snippet but once you get the hang of it, its super easy. Here you can see little thumbnails of what I have shot and uploaded the last few days. I try to get a good mix of indoor and outdoor clips, and the outdoor clips always seem to be my favorite. I haven't quite mastered good night time videos yet but I'm sure as the year goes I'll improve a bit.

Its also definitely given me a very fresh perspective and motivation for capturing our lives on video. Here is what a one week mash up look like, this one is from the beginning of February.

The other thing I love about this app is you can also create freestyle mashups for specific occasions that aren't day specific. Meaning you can mash together multiple snippets from the same day and create a video. I really wanted to give this a try and since we spent this past weekend in San Francisco celebrating my birthday I decided it was the perfect occasion.

I just randomly took a few seconds of video clips during our stay and during breaks in our sightseeing and in the car ride home I added the snippets and created this mashup. I love it! I can totally see myself doing this again and again.

If you aren't already using this app, you totally need to download it. Its been so much fun! I love expanding my memory keeping in new and different ways. It sure helps keep things fresh.

See you soon,

Valentines Day │ 5 Things We Love About You

A notice came via email a week ago from my daughter's teacher asking all of the parents to write a love note to their child that would be read aloud this week at school. I of course thought this idea was amazing and sweet and totally right up my alley. She stated in the instructions that she was hoping for messages of accomplishment, encouragement of personal goals, memories and expressions of paternal love (x2 for us). That added up to five things in all so my wheels started turning on how I could accomplish this. I could have easily sat down with pen and paper and written it in letter form but she also said that we could feel free to get creative and add photos, artwork, stickers, etc. I need no extra incentive to make something more that it needs to be so when she said we could use photos I thought a little micro mini was the perfect idea.

My inspiration came from the numbered tags that Ali Edwards had included in her December Daily® kit this past year. I used one of them in my album as you can see here so I initially thought I would use the one thru five tags since I had only used the number fourteen.

I thought it would be really cute to add some red and pink foil to them using my Minc Machine and since I wasn't sure how these tags were printed I decided to make my own.

The first thing I had to do was create the tag shape. I used a tag I had already purchased as my starting point and then adjusted the size to what I wanted it to be. I knew I wanted to Minc the number and the little circle around the tag hole so I created my documents knowing I would use the Print and Cut feature. I have a laser printer so making custom items to Minc is super easy.

One thing you have to remember to do when creating items in your Silhouette studio is to make sure that if you are doing a print and cut is to turn off the cut lines for items you only want printed and not cut out. Here you can see that after the page is printed and I run it thru my Silhouette, the only thing that will be cut is the outside edge of the tag and the middle circle. The default setting is to always add a cut line to anything you create so if you don't remember to turn these cut lines off your Silhouette will cut everything out.

I knew that I wanted to cut my photos so they were the same size as the tags and lately I have had a lot of fun printing and cutting photos with my Silhouette. I copied my tag shape to a new document and then edited and cropped the photos to the correct size first in Photoshop Elements. I saved the photos as a .png files because I find when I save files as a .png it will import into my Silhouette studio in the exact size I want them to be. If I save them as a .jpg it will open quite large and then I would have to scale them down. I prefer to skip that step and import exactly as I need them to be. 

In order to make sure that the photos are lining up exactly in the right spot for the cut lines I make sure that the tag shape is brought to the front so that I can lay the photo underneath to line everything up. To to this just right click on the shape and select Bring to Front.

Here you can see the print and cut all ready to go and the cut lines are exactly where they need to be. I just run a letter size sheet of photo paper thru my printer and then cut it on my Silhouette. It works perfectly.

To finish off the project I created a little envelope to hold the tags that you can see below. I closed the envelope with twine that wraps around two circles that I attached with eyelets, one on the front and one on the back. I dressed up the front circle using a super cute emoji die set that is from Studio Calico. I cut most of it in gold foil cardstock and the heart eyes are cut from red foil.

I also made a simple cover tag to go on top of the others that I created in my Silhouette as well. It was made using the text tool and the XOXO is a digital element from In a Creative Bubble. The five is a gold thicker that I had in my stash.

My husband and I wrote our messages on the backs of the number tags so that you can read the messages and see the photos at the same time. Its super cute and since its a surprise my daughter has no idea its coming so I can't wait to hear all about it after she sees it.

xoxo,

Featuring Kelly Purkey │ January Release

Hello everyone, its release day over at Kelly Purkey's Shop today and I wanted to share with you what I've made so far with this months latest stamps and kits.

The first thing I made was a Project Life® spread for week three. I used the a mixture of cards and stamps from the main subscription kit, High Five and the Mini in Minutes kit, Life Happens. I also mixed in some of the stamps from the You're A Life Saver stamp set.

Working with the 9x12 size is really working for me. I am loving having the 6x4 slots to fill with larger photos and I've even started taking some in that orientation now that I know I need them. Typically I take all of my photos in the vertical orientation, I know its not 'normal' but its what I like the best so there you go.

I really loved mixing the mini in minutes cards with the kit cards and of course all of the stamps. I especially love the bright red and pink cards in mini kit that was designed by Anne Marie Espinoza this month. That little dotted curvy arrow stamp is just the cutest!

I also really loved adding the alpha stickers that Kelly is including with the kits to my spreads. I have been a fan for awhile from way back in the day when Kelly had released these before. They really are the perfect size and font to add to pocket pages. 

Oh and if you haven't yet watched Adele's Carpool Karaoke, stop what you are doing right now and watch it. I've watched it several times already and when I saw the article online that I added to my album saying they had enough for a full hour episode I died, I would totally be up for that, just sayin'.

My second project was adding some of the stamps and cards to my planner. I have several planners that I like to play around in just for fun but for my day to day planning this year is being done in a Get to Work Book. Because some of the stamps this release were so appropriate for Valentine's day I decided to decorate my February monthly calendar. I used stamps from the You're a Lifesaver set, the Life Happens set, and the High Five set. I also mixed in some of the Clearly Kelly Planner stamp sets; Special Occasion, Travel, Food, TV, Sports and Appointment. I also used Kelly's inks which are amazing for stamping in your planner. The sets I used are; Coffee and Donuts, Urban and Fashion. I love the grey ink in the Urban set. Its nice to have a dark color that's not black. Its like a soft black and I love it, its not to dark but just dark enough.

A few people asked on Instagram when I posted a sneak image how I added the pink and red heart card to my planner. I saw someone post this idea on Instagram awhile back and I'm sorry I don't remember who that was but they used an old Bind It All Machine and punched the holes. I happened to have one too so I used it the same way. After I punched the holes I clipped little notches so that I could add it and remove it from my planner. Here is a better look at that so you can see what I mean.

I love the pop of orange when the card is flipped over. Here you can see that I layered the alpha stickers to create a shadow effect, I just laid down the black stickers first and then added the white on top just a bit off center so the black showed.

I used one of the cards from the main High Five kit to make a list that I can clip into my planner. That little dotted arrow stamp, I tell you its super cute!

There was also a alpha stamp set, Williamsburg that is perfect layered underneath the Greenpoint alpha set that I haven't had a chance to use yet, but its super cute so make sure you check it out.

I hope you enjoy the release, its another great month for sure!