I love scrapbooking. I love it when it's made with paper and glue, I love it when it's made on a computer, I love it when its a combo of the two. I'm just a fan, period. I like making pages and sharing stories no matter the format. Today I'm going to share a page I made recently about our kitty Mo. She's such a fun loving little girl and I've always got something to say about her (& all of our cats for that matter).

I used some new products from One Little Bird called Sunshine in my Soul. I use these types of products for so many digi made projects, including my blog header, titles, buttons, pages, e-vites, an so much more. I absolutely love to use them digitally, but did you know that if you have a Silhouette, you can use the digital elements as print & cut images. If you would like a tutorial on that leave me a comment and I will get to work on that. :)

Thanks for stopping by & checking out my Digi Made project!

Can I profess my love for...

Yeah! Burger, again? & again?

Because I will. Over & Over & Over... until I'm blue in the face. I'm literally wearing a Yeah! Burger shirt RIGHT NOW, as I type this.



Ryan has this thing with food. Well, we both do. His, less socially awkward than mine... but maybe it's just me?!? Anyway, Ryan WILL NOT eat food that he cannot be assured is all-natural or organic. That's one reason we like to shop at Trader Joe's. So for a long time, we had a hard time finding restaurants to eat at... well then after I FINALLY downloaded Yelp, we discovered Yeah! Burger. [BTW if you don't have the Yelp app, it is one of my favorite apps] After reading GLOWING reviews, I scoped out the menu online. I almost always check out a place's online menu before I go there. Call me cautious. So after we found out they served only all-natural or organic food, & that they served something other than burgers [that's one of my food problems] we decided it would be our next spot to try... well if you know us, you also know that we haven't tried another new restaurant since. It's that good. I would recommend that if you go into Atlanta, you have to stop. There are 2 locations, West Midtown & Virginia Highlands. We always end up at Midtown, so that's the only one I can vouch for, but I'm sure both are just as good.

So the point of the post was not just to recommend an awesome Atlanta restaurant, but rather to share a layout. :)

Here it is, another layout to profess my love for this amazing restaurant! Like I don't have enough as it is... lol.

I used some of my many instagrams from our trips there... boy does that shake & grilled cheese look good. Oh & I used some Paislee Press & Studio Calico Digi stuff.

So there you have it. 

A New Digi Page

so I've been getting the urge to create... well I LOVE using new product & since being on a design team I've gotten kinda spoiled b getting access to NEW stuff as it comes in. So I've gotten into this habit that I have a hard time creating with older product, it just leaves me uninspired after using it a couple of times. After I lose my want to create with a certain product I usually just throw it into my project life bin to get good use out of it...

We are at that point in our industry we're there's a lull in available product. CHA has just ended and product won't be available to ship from most companies for quite a while... so I've also been in that lull... but I found a way to get out of it. After being desperate for something new to work/play with, I started to look all over the internet for some cute digi stuff that could keep me inspired and creating until new CHA stuff starts shipping...

Today I have a new digi page to share with you. I have fallen in love with Paislee Press... her tag line is embrace your inner minimalist. I love that. Her products are so amazing. I wanted to buy it ALL! but I settled for 2 collections. Photobooth & The Weekender. I love the color palettes for both collection & they actually coordinate quite well. [at least to me they do :)] So as soon as they downloaded & I organized them into their correct places on my computer, I began creating. It was amazing.

I find that if I throw a digi page into my usual paper mix I get so inspired and ready to create something else. & it just keeps going.

So after getting home from seeing The Dark Knight Rises, I wanted to scrapbook my photobooth strip that I took with my iPod at the theater... they had a photobooth there, but my strips were FREE & I already bought the app, so why not use it... their photobooth did inspire these photos though. :)

To say that this movie wasn't Epic... well I would be lying. It was my favorite of the trilogy. I LOVE Christopher Nolan & Joesph Gordon-Levitt... who doesn't love him?? :) I think there will be more DKR pages in the future to profess such love. 

So I used a pretty equal amount from both kits & tried to "cut" the title from the background page & lift it off of another piece of pattern paper, but I guess my drop shadow wasn't good enough to make the effect look right.. oh well. maybe next time. 

Summer Project Life

So I found that as I was altering the BH Template I had bought for this summer's project life, the rounded corners were becoming weird looking. & in my traditional project life that I am making to document my life from the day I turned 24 to the day I turn 25 I don't do the whole rounded corner thing. So this week I decided to take it upon myself and create my own template with regular square corners, that way I can alter it to make it fit into my style of photos and such for the week without it look wonky and silly.

So now that I've made the template I'm going to go back and drag all of the stuff from my other weeks onto my new templates to that I can make them cohesive, so that when I have the book printed for them at the end of summer they will have an AWESOME book to look back on the summer with. It also makes me want to go back and create a photo book for last summer too. Definitely not journal intensive or anything, because, lets face it. The only details I have left is the summer book I made last summer for myself. But I'm not a BIG journaler in mini books so I doubt there would be enough there to make it into a project of the same magnitude.

So here's the 2 page spread for the first full week of June.

Like I said, I used my own template. I used some Ali Edwards brushes, the Echo Park Sweet Day Digi Kit, & some random fonts. 

I love how this spread came out. It's what I envision Project Life looking like all of the time. 

Thanks for looking & if you have a recommendation for a book printing service I would LOVE to hear about it. I'm looking to have a hardcover bound, 20-30 page book. I've only had experience with Shutterfly, & while I loved the book, the fact that I got a coupon for a free book could have made me biased. I don't want something with a glossy cover though, which is how my Shutterfly book turned out. I want something linen, no photos on the front, maybe just Summer 2012 or something. I'm still trying to work out the details on that. But any suggestions or recommendations would be great!

Summer Life

So I've been diligently trying to take photos for my Project Life album and just general memory keeping. When I started this journey of a year in photos, I had this idea that I didn't have a very interesting life, well as it seems I had plenty to photograph and say about my life in those first several months. And it's funny because I didn't have ALOT going on then. I was just living the life I had been living for a long time... just me, Ryan, and our cats. Well here we are in Summer 2012. This is my first summer off since I started college. I decided not to take any classes, because to be frank, last year with 2 little girls running around our house while taking classes was a horror story like no other. I don't have a bunch of experience with children. I am an only child. All of my cousins were older than me. I was more easily close to adults than kids my own age. So here I am with a 9 & 10 year old 5/7s of the week. Finding things to keep them busy and sister-fight free, is a job on its own. I've reached the most  hectic, busy, photo-worthy time of my year, and I'm struggling. Days pass where I don't take a single photo of anything that has happened. Anyone out there have the same problems?? It also seems that I tend to favor my iPod over my DSLR. I certainly love the photos from my Nikon more than my iPod, but I guess it's just convenience. But I can't blow up the photos to 4x6 from my iPod, making my Project Life look way more product heavy rather than photo and story based. I transgress. I'm really here to show you how I've been working on my Summer Life, digital Project Life. I do know that if I take on this project again, I will probably be doing it digitally... but then again I do love the book I have filled up so far, so I may change my mind.


So here we go. 

This was my Memorial Day spread. I had a TON of photos from the day. So I went ahead and did a double page spread for the day. I thought I would do this for the major holidays in their book, but turns out they will be gone on the 4th of July & back at home for Labor Day, so I guess it will be only this holiday. hmph. 

Since S & S are here for 5/7s of the week (i.e weekdays only) I decided to make their Summer Life album cover just those days that they are here. So instead of a 7 day span they have a 5 day span. It works out for the best. This was the first full week they were with us, from Monday to Friday. I really enjoyed documenting this week, but I feel like I want to go back & add some more words, maybe a little bit about what they have been eating for lunch, what their schedules look like, their chore chart, what books they are reading. I guess those are things I can fill in the weeks I'm lacking on photos in. :)

So that's what I've gotten finished so far. I'll be back with more updates as I finish the spreads. It's so much easier to share when they are digital, rather than trying to film or photograph the spreads. I'll also be back with a share of some layouts that I've made as I dipped my foot back into the pool of digi scrapping. It's nice to get my mojo going with some templates and products I haven't been able to get in paper. Yay!

My Thoughts & Ideas for Project Life

Since starting Project Life back in November I have really grown to love the whole idea behind capturing the everyday. Now I'm not the best at taking a photo a day, shoot sometimes I wonder at the end of the week if I took any photos AT ALL! lol. I've always enjoyed scrapbooking my everyday life, it's what I find most interesting, but this project took that to a whole new level. Here I am at 21 weeks into the project and I still feel like I'm going strong. Last week, my cousins, Steph & Sue came to spend a few days with Ryan and I. To me they're more like little sisters, I've never had siblings, but that's what they feel like and that's how I treat them, anwyays... so while they were here they BOTH showed an interest in my Project Life album. Not because it was out on the coffee table, because it wasn't (I have it put away in my scrapbook room), but because they don't get to see us very often, & when we do see them we don't spend a bunch of time retelling every moment since the last time we saw them... (we'd rather spend every moment creating memories with them) & they're only 10 & 8, I think we would bore them with a long drawn out tale, but seeing the photos & stories together in my album really sparked their interest. They sat down together, which was amazing, & looked over the entire book, they laughed & read together, that made my day. Seeing themselves in my book about my life really drove home how important they are to me, considering weeks when we see them they get a ton of PL coverage :) Last summer they spent every week here, with us. It was stressful. Coming from a family with no siblings & having no children of my own, it was an EYE OPENER as to what goes into taking care of two practically pre-teen girls. We did a lot of stuff together, had a lot of fun & I made a mini album for myself, but I didn't really make anything for them to take home to remember our LONG, FUN, STRESSFUL, AMAZING Summer. So I've already made plans for them to be here again this year & this year I plan on being more prepared for the craziness that is 2 pre-teen girls. I've also made a plan for Project Life this Summer... I'm going to NOT ONLY do my physical project that I've been working on these long, long weeks, but I'M ALSO going to do a special version for my 2 girls... which sounds like it could be expensive & time consuming... but my plan for their project life is going to be a Digital Project Life. I've bought quite a few of the Becky Higgins products digitally to include in my own PL, but now I'm taking the plunge to experience PL completely digitally as well. I can't wait. So I made a test page, that I can include in their books or not, but I thought I would share it with you, this is just 1 day last week, we took the girls to Atlanta for some shopping and Yeah! Burger in Midtown. It was awesome & the girls loved it. Anyways, here's my PL Page for the day (All Digital)

I used the Design A Template, but I took out the 2 bottom 4x6 slots and replicated the center line of 4 3x4 slots so that I could include more smaller photos and journal a bit more.

Supplies Used:

Becky Higgins Project Life Template Design A

Becky Higgins Cobalt Edition Journaling Cards

Echo Park Dots & Stripes Metropolitan Elements Pack 1

Pink Paislee Kraft Capers Paper Pack

SNF Journaling Font

SNF School Yard Font

Thanks for checking out my new venture in Project Life for this summer. Be sure to check back for more of my Project Life updates in both physical & digital form!