Project Life 2013 Week 22-The End! (Finally)

Procrastination is my strongest talent! It's so sad. Anyways, here's the last couple weeks of my 2013 album. Still catching up majorly on 2014!

Project Life Weeks 14-22

I have completely rescinded on my vow to keep up with this.  I was doing so well!  And then life happened...
Better late than never I guess...

{Favorite Things From Week 14} My ridiculous family with their creepy wig portraits stolen from Facebook.  This is why I love fb.  I get to see what everyone is up to.  Even if they're up to crazy things!

{Favorite Things from Week 15} The picture of my family giving the finger at dinner. Yay family table (-__-)

The red striped washi tape i found at DOLLAR TREE that I used to attach the movie tickets.

{Favorite Things from Week 16}The bird washi tape I decorated the blue polka dot card with.  Another Dollar Tree find!  The picture of my dad wearing a pipe cleaner crown made by my brother.  (Note: he was having a serious conversation with us here..)

{Week 17 Favorites} The picture of my brother with the creepy halloween decor.  He is so strange!  The "Me and You" sticker I used on the pic of M and I at the pumpkin patch.

{Week 18 Favorites} The mini October calendar printable I found for free online a long time ago (love it when I finally find use for what I have lying around).  The mustache- cut from a 3x4 Kraft card.

{Week 19} Somehow I lost the full pic of week 19!  But that's okay because the title card was my favorite anyway.  That was a plain wood cut-out of an owl that I colored with marker.  I also ran out of "E" stickers of that style but figured "HULLO" would be cute!

{Week 20 Favorites} Love the multicolored bunting flag stickers.  Anytime I see a package in the Michael's clearance section I snatch em up.  I've used these all over my album.

{Week 21 Favorites} Love the Hello on the title card made from chipboard letters I got on sale at Big Lots for a little over a dollar! Also in love with the app Instaweather which allows you to add a description of the current weather conditions to your photos.  A lite version is available for free, but the upgrade is just $1.99 and offers many more options in terms of sharing photos and display style.  I think its worth it.

{Week 22} Still a work in progress...along with 23-25 currently.  Any suggestions for finishing it up?  Here's what I've got so far.  I'm hoping to finish this album up and then plow through January and February for my new album once I'm on Spring Break in two weeks.  Wish me luck!

Note: All pictures were taken with my super awesome new Coolpix P520 my wonderful boyfriend gifted me for my birthday a month ago!

Another Note: I'm still getting the hang of exposures/effects/camera nonsense.  Be gentle!

Happy scrappin' everybody!

-A 

And now I'm only three weeks behind!

As I knew it would, school has interfered with all the things I actually enjoy doing...project life included. After sorting through and selecting and printing around 50 photos and creating all the filler/journal cards I finally bring you weeks 10-13!

I decided to try journaling on top of the actual photos this time around so I picked up a package of white gel ink pens from Jo-ann's.  I really love the way it looks however the gel is not the best medium.  I had to go over a lot of my words and many look streaky.  So I am now on a hunt for the right type of pen.  Any suggestions?
My favorite element from week 10 is the connecting NY to FL hearts.  I free-handed an outline of each state on basic notebook paper, cut them out and pasted them to 3x4 brown filler cards.  The hearts were also drawn and cut out and then I used the gel pen to make the dashed lines.  That picture in the middle is one of my cousin's house being newly built.  We're all very excited for her but she's just so far away! We miss her!  She also creates awesome candles and soaps and such, which I'm hoping to feature here soon!

Week 11- the last one of summer! BOOOO... Anyways, nothing too wild about this week.  Got a lot of use out of my favorite little flag-pennant things, though! They've definitely been the golden find thus far.

And now for the big week! There was just so much happening here I needed a four page layout.  First of course was the arrival of my b-e-a-utiful new baby cousin Alivia!  The girl we've all been waiting for.  She got her own page altogether because I just could not stop taking pictures!  Or collecting all the ones that family took and posted to FB!

Also included in this week were apple-picking. My first week of school. Little bro's first day of first grade (excuse me while I go sob my eyes out).  Very very busy week!

Other things worth mentioning:

1. If you have multiple apple devices and don't use I-Cloud (or any devices and a shared storage space for that matter) DO IT!  I can't tell you how much time it saved me in all this.  I was originally taking all pictures with my I-phone and then emailing them to my I-pad to be edited and then printing them from there.   Now when I take one on my phone it's already on my tablet.  Ta-da!  I'm low on patience as it is so menial things like this are no good haha.

2. All the big numbers/letters you see in the title cards are the result of a super awesome bargain found at a barn thrift shop around here.  I got a big box of all kinds of letter and number stencils from the early 1950s (I love old things!) for like a dollar.  So I used them to trace onto coordinating papers and voila!  Now I don't have to spend an arm and a leg on alpha-stickers at craft stores.

3. For these weeks I played around with photo effects to give everything a little more of a uniform appearance.  I chose the Clyde effect from the I-pad photo editor app.  It made all the pcitures look old, which I liked of course, however they do look dull.  If you have pictures with really great color I'd suggest leaving them be.  Though I've noticed most of the photo effects mute the look of my pictures.  Maybe that's the point?  Or it's just me? Haha who knows.  I'm still learning here!

Are you all keeping up with your project life endeavors?

Project Life Weeks 8&9

{Oh my}...my procrastination is starting to catch up to me. These are not good habits to fall into with the beginning of school just two weeks away. In my defense, I've not just been putting it off. I've been busy with other projects! One of which was the revamping of these handy little wooden things in an attempt to organize my disastrous self.

From this...

To this...Tada!!!

Let me tell you. If you're not organized, get a system. Everything just goes much smoother! Got my weeks done in a snap, since I could see everything and grab it quickly.

Again...google plus screws with my editing and messes up my pictures. I so do not have the patience to figure out how to keep the cropping and what not so whatever. Here they are. Weeks 8 & 9...

I took a trip to Michael's for these weeks and found an awesome date roller stamp from Recollections, which I used all throughout my layout. Only $2.99! And I can use it until 2018...a worthy investment I think! I also scoured the clearance rack and found the adorable little flag banner things you see throughout. Only $1.29 for two sheets. I love love love them for labeling the days of the week. The letters I used are clear backed stickers from Making Memories I believe, which I got for two bucks. 

I dabbled with some new elements this time around.

A little word art...

A collage print...

And an old picture of my sister and I. I spent lots of time the last two Thursdays working on my Throwback album so I decided to throw it in there as a representation of that.

Hope I've inspired you to maybe add something different to your album! Thanks for reading.

Project Life Week 7

The middle of August already! Summer is winding down, and too quickly! Soon I'll be back to the suffering that is nursing school and I'll be all kinds of backed up with this project! Must stay focused and work on that time management issue I have...

For this week I challenged myself to use in my layout as much of the scrap paper and embellishments I have piling up in my craft boxes. And believe me I have quite a bit. Then I had the brilliant idea to cut up all that scrap into PL size cards!

I went from having this...

To this...

     

Now when I need filler or journal backing cards I can just flip through the pile. With each week I find a new way to tweak this thing to make it work for me. That's what I love the most. The versatility. The ability to make it completely my own.

And now for the layout. Again I give you some award-winning photography. My hands shake and I'm  too short to get above it enough. But whatev. You can still see the damn thing! I'll get the hang of it eventually. 

They were cropped and made nice...but google plus effed them up on me somehow. Oh well. Here it is. My project life week 7.

All of the filler/journaling cards were handcrafted by me. Apparently I've got some pretty good stuff. Just gotta get digging. 

My next project is to organize everything. I'm going to repurpose a cute little wood Melissa and Doug toy container. It's got a bunch of slots and such. Stay tuned!

What I've Been Up To...

{Project Life Week 6}

So I've discovered that I am wildly productive in the very early hours of the morning.  I finished this week faster than any other (I am so loving these page protectors-how much easier they make the project!), so now I can focus on enjoying week 7-which is kinda the point, right?

Here's what I've done with this week... {FYI, these pictures are not great...what do you expect at 2am?!}

I was on a search this past week to find a new photo printing method-library laser printing was just not cutting it anymore.  I was thrilled to discover the awesome app that is {Picstitch}.
I was able to put two 3x4 pictures (perfect size for my PL pages) on a 4x6 frame and it let me edit and adjust the position of the photos all WITHIN the app.  It also has a super convenient (at least for me) "Print to Walgreen's" option!  I picked up my pictures last night and I was absolutely amazed by what high quality prints they were.  The colors are portrayed beautifully and there is no bluriness/graininess.  Of course these pictures don't do them justice! You'll have to take my word for it and try it out for yourself.  This will definitely be my go to method from now on; you won't be disappointed!

Here's a useful piece of info that took me some web-surfing to find.  Once you've selected the side by side option, seen here...

you must select the little "aspect" tab at the bottom of the screen and select the 6x4 option...

Otherwise, your photos will be cut off and fitted into a 4x4 or 8x8 print.

My only complaint about the app is that I was unable to remove the white border around the pictures.  They do provide a nice uniform look when the pictures remains a 4x6 print, but if you are cutting them in half-as I did-they are not even on both sides. And I have "evenness" issues!  Will update if I find a way to get rid of them.  Overall though, Picstitch was definitely the most awesome find!

Project Life Week Five!

And now I am officially caught up and ready for week 6...and it's only 2 A.M.! I got this one up much faster than I expected to....because I caved and bought some pocket pages! Excellent investment!

Made my life a million times easier. Didn't have to set aside two hours to hand sew the damn pages (and believe me, my hands are thankful). They carry this pack of twelve-among others- at my local Michael's now for $6.99. That's not exactly breaking the bank and I had a coupon so I figured why the hell not?!

So anyway....this week was pretty light on photos. I was very busy with the blog, which left me cooped up in my house instead of out making picture worthy memories. Ah well, definitely making up for it with week 6!

So, here's week five.  Had to do a bit more embellishing and journaling to fill in for the lack of pictures, but I am really quite happy with the way it turned out.  Love the colors especially.

Project Life Week Four--Finally.

This has taken way too damn long to get up. I've been working mostly on the blog and letting everything else fall to the wayside. Of course that's not my only excuse. To be perfectly honest I've been flat out lazy.

I dedicated half of week four to Talia Joy Castellano who I mentioned in an earlier post. It is all too rare that the world gets to have a person like her in it.  And so, in honor of her memory, I did three things on her bucket list. I gave flowers to strangers, got a tattoo, and covered my sister's car in sticky notes. And I'm thinking of doing a new one each week. Life is already too short. Let alone to die at just fourteen.
Her passing, and even more so her outlook while she was still alive, have reminded me to celebrate even the littlelest things in life, which is of course the intention of this whole project. It's so important not to lose sight of everything life has to offer, the people you love, and how little time each of us really has. So thank you, beautiful girl, for reminding me of these things and for renewing my inspiration for this project.

So here it is. Week four...

Project life week 3

Finally finished last week. Took me long enough. This week's looking a little different than the last two. The pages are much brighter in honor of summer and all the summer-ish (summer-ish?) things I did this week.

I was really excited to find cheap journaling/filler cards by "Me and My Big Ideas" while perusing Michael's for embellishments and such. Only 5.99 for 72 of them.

The summer printables (sunshine days, lazy hazy, splish splash) I stole from the lovely onevelvetmorning.com. I love what they bring to the page so thank you kindly for offering them!

This week I learned that if you look hard enough you can find some pretty sweet stuff and end up with a project that looks really good.

And so here it is...week 3