Tuesday, April 30, 2013

May Counterfeit Kit

Hi everyone -

Sorry to be a dud at the end of the hop, but I'm not able to post a kit today. Life happens :). I hope you all enjoyed today's hop! Remember to go back to the Counterfeit Kit blog to add your own kits and projects to this month's Mr Linky.

And in case I don't get back to posts this weekend, happy National Scrapbook Day! Watch the Counterfeit blog for NSD posts and fun this weekend, too.

I'll be back as soon as I can.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Counterfeit Kit Challenge Hop

Welcome to the Counterfeit Kit hop! If you are hopping with us, here is some navigation info, for your reference:

Where you were: Lesley     http://ohblogitifyoucantbeatthem.blogspot.co.uk/
Where you are: Rebecca   http://howiburb.blogspot.com/
Where you will go: Lisa E http://lisae-design.blogspot.com


Using April's challenge #1, we're all showing projects inspired by this picture:

                                            
And here's my project:


So, I knew there was nothing in my kit to use as a direct interpretation of the picture, so I started looking for other angles.  I sort of saw the picture in quadrants and that made me think to use four 6x6s as my background 12x12.  And if you flip the tree to the other side, that's sort of how I arranged my page, with one side filled and the other side partially open. 

I'm enjoying these unlayered looks and have a Pinterest board with some collected inspiration pages.  I didn't directly scraplift a single page, but I definitely took pieces of several recently added pages on my pin board, including pages from Debbie Hodge, Jen Jockisch and others.  It's a fun look, and I'm having fun playing with the unlayered arrangement.


To understand the title, you have to know The Blogess and her Beyonce the Giant Metal Chicken story. When we took a trip to Amish Country last fall and saw this metal chicken in a garden at one of our stops, we had to get a picture - It's Beyonce in simpler times, and she won't ever need electricity or a telephone.  And I've left room for the full title, which I will add later now that I've taken the pictures :), because it's an oft used phrase around here.


I added a few little things that weren't in my original kit. I was just having fun adding random shiny bits! 

And these washi tapes are new, too. I had a moment of weakness and bought a deal for 12 rolls of MME tapes. It arrived on my doorstep earlier this week as I was working on this page and they just sort of creeped onto my work space.


I knew I wanted to get away from my little Project Life pages and back into some regular pages, so I'm glad I could start on these pictures.  I'll have several more pages to do for this trip, and maybe that will keep me busy in the near future.
Alright, next stop is Lisa at http://lisae-design.blogspot.com - don't miss her project and the rest of the group on the second half of the hop.  Here's the full hop order, in case you hit a bump along the way.   Be sure to visit all the stops!

CKCB              http://www.counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com/
Lisa H             http://lisahausmann.blogspot.com 
Leslie             http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com/
Lisa E             http://lisae-design.blogspot.com

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Scrapping Weekends Ahead!

Just want to note a couple of upcoming weekend blog events:



First, National Scrapbooking Day is May 4th, 2013.  There's just something uplifting and motivating about celebrating a holiday - really an International holiday - around our hobby, at least for me! I see all sorts of celebration events planned for that weekend, and the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog has you covered, too. Details are still in the works, and I don't think anything has been officially announced, so I don't want to ruin any surprises.  But watch for details as the dates get closer.

Our regular kit reveal will still occur on May 1st, so watch for that monthly hop, too.


Second, Jennifer Grace, one of the other Master Forgers, is hosting a blog event on Friday, May 10-Sunday, May 12th, 2013.  You can find more details about her Onwards and Upwards! event and an announcement about the event and giveaways here. It looks like a packed weekend of activities, I know I'm looking forward to it!

So as if we need more reasons to look forward to weekends, there are some great upcoming activities for us.   Hope to see some of you at each of these events in the coming weeks!

Project Life: March 18-24

A quick note about this week's schedule.  Tomorrow I'm taking a break from PL posts to participate in the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog hop. Come hop with us! You can start from the main blog at CounterfeitKitChallenge.blogspot.com.


But for today, it's time for another Project Life catch-up week, March 18-24.


This is another week where I used the Hey Boy pieces from my April Counterfeit Kit, and it is one of my favorite weeks of the book so far.  I just love those orange and natural colors that are used here.


On the left page - a box of fortune cookies for an event at work, and a picture of Crystal driving away with my cell phone.  As I've become better about taking day to day pictures for this project, this one sticks out in my head.  The picture isn't from the day of the story, but it could have been.  I think I snapped the pic to show how it was getting lighter in the mornings right before the time change.  But it was the perfect picture to go with the story from a few days later: Crystal dropped me off, and as I started to walk away, I realized my phone was still in the car.  I tried to catch her and run after the car, but she just wasn't looking back and didn't hear me yell.  So I spent the day without my phone, which is difficult when you're not used to it!  I'm glad I snapped this picture some other day, so I had a picture to match the story.


Then another car/traffic story - perfect space for the picture and the story on this pre-printed card. 

On the right, I used the 2x8 space for journaling again.  I used a piece of 6x6 paper, which left it 2" short - so I used a couple of sticker elements to fill the space.  Added the date and lines for journaling, and it made a good spot for notes about the weekend.  I used a dog park picture for the InstaWeather overlay, and does anyone recognize that scrapbook celebrity there in the bottom corner?  That was a picture from the Memories Expo that weekend in Columbus.


I did have one more piece of information for that week, but I didn't want/need it right out in the open.  So I tucked it behind that Tim Holtz picture.  I used that tab as a pull and titled it "Not My Drama," since....well, it's not my drama. But I've read along as everyone else went through the drama, so I somehow feel connected :).


And here was the drama - a little 2Ps message board scuff up that sparked the creation of a new message board that makes me happy.  I wrote those notes on the back of a screen capture that I printed as a 4x4 picture.

I'll be back with the final week of March catch-up posts on Thursday.  I can't believe I was able to post it all within 3 weeks, and now I need to get the April weeks posted before the month completely passes us by.  I covered most of my 2012 weeks with posts here on the blog, but I think I missed a few.  In order to get everything up to date, I will probably have a few posts for those pages in the near future, too.  And in the not too distant future I'll get my December Daily project completed.  Then I will really be able to say that my July 2012 - June 2013 Project Life is all wrapped up with a bow :).  Until then, watch for more real-time weekly posts for the next couple of months.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Project Life: March 11-17

Almost there.....I'm catching up on 2013 Project Life weeks, and I'm up to the week of March 11th. If you're interested in seeing more pages, scroll back through all my April posts.  You'll find weeks worth of pages.  I do still owe a couple of posts on current weeks, so I can show I'm now keeping up with the project.  I do have pages done, I'm just not ready to post them.  I'll keep trying to get that step done, hopefully later this week.


March 11-17 was the week of St. Patrick's Day, which I don't really celebrate at all.  But combined with some pictures this week, green just seemed to be a theme.  So I pulled out some greens from the Basic Grey Hey Boy papers and used that collection (from my April Counterfeit Kit) again here this week.


This was a week without many pictures again, so I filled in with some screen captures: a picture of my triumphant defeat of the infamous Level 65 on Candy Crush....


.....and a funny comic to go along with a story of my accidental celebration of "Pie Day."


I used a page insert for a info sheet for our new furniture.  We went shopping for that furniture on that weekend.  It won't be delivered for a few weeks, so I took that page to remind myself of what we actually picked out.



The page on the right is just a couple of random pictures of the week. I'm finding the lack of space a real challenge - sometimes that makes me happy, and sometimes it just feels limiting!  The lack of space makes it a challenge to find ways to embellish.  Here I just used space on my pictures to add borders, small journal stickers or a thin border of pattern paper.  A paper bag tucked behind the 4x6 picture gave me another space to add the furniture info (promo and business cards from the store).

Short and sweet this week.  Sometimes it all just comes together, doesn't it.  

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Feb. 18- March 3 (Includes Vacation Week)

Vacation week!  Oh, how I miss you and your colors and sunshine and happiness.....


As I mentioned earlier this week, I look at this project as a place for summary, not big details.  I will do some regular scrapping of this trip - I love chances to scrap vacations - so what I did here was just a summary of the week.  Maybe it will help me later when I want to get to the scrapbooking project, too.


Left page - just some favorite 3x4 pictures.  The "vacation" stickers are on top of the plastic. 


On the right is a 6x6 insert where I used another weekly calendar for some brief notes of the week.


On the back of the insert is a picture of us, with me holding a spider monkey.  Actually, it was more that the spider monkey was holding me.  I did a brief post about it here.  Moment of a lifetime, I tell ya.  Anyway, I used the WordFoto app to add a word overlay on that picture before printing it, just for an extra fun look. 


I also added this envelope within this week just to hold some cards from my birthday and Junior's boarding report cards (which, by the way, I don't believe for a second).

I have one more page that's empty and not pictured.  I think I'll just do a collage there, but I'm waiting until I fix the page in the other side of the protector - the left page of the next week:


The week after vacation: Possibly the most grey, boring week of the year. It looks about like I felt that week.  I have to say - this week was kind of a dud. I am committed to keeping this project a weekly project, and this week made me question that commitment. I had just 3 pictures - none of them that great - and nearly zero to say. But I managed to put together some notes and fill the pages, and I guess sometimes that's all that matters.

I didn't notice that my 5x7 print of Monday morning traffic was cut off at the bottom until I actually finished the page.  I plan to get a new print the next time I place an order.


I added the "back to reality" text with the Aviary app and placed it on a point on the picture that was dark and useless, so it was a great spot for the text.

 

A couple of notes for the week was all I could scrape together. I stole this grey card from my new Jade Project Life kit. I'm going to use that kit not for Project Life but for a project with Crystal's childhood pictures. It's something we have meant to do for years, and I really want to get it done this summer. The fun part of putting pictures in the divided protectors and making it pretty - that's what I'd like to dive into. But first we have to SCAN all those pictures. Yuck! Anyone have any tips on how to make that project less painful? Let me know!

This weekend I'll be back with two current Project Life weeks, and then next week I'll dive into the rest of March. Before this month is over, I'll have all of 2013 caught up and posted and can get started on some other projects like the one mentioned above. I'm ready!

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Project Life: March 4-10

In today's project life catch up post, I decided to go out of order and skip a couple of February weeks in favor of the first week of March.  I'll hop back to those February weeks within the next few days.
But for now I'm ready to move on to March 2013.  The first week of March was full of random things and a fun weekend trip, so I needed to find ways to maximize space.  I used Basic Grey Hey You and Hey Boy from my March and April Counterfeit Kits on this week's pages.



Last week's page left me with a page with two 3x4 and one 4x6 spots, not exactly what I needed for this week.  So I used one spot for the date card, one spot for a Candy Crush screen cap, and then printed a 4x4 PhotoGrid to combine some other random moments of the week.


That weekend I traveled to PA to visit friends and go to a family baby shower.  I used a Snap page with two 4x4 spots and made more PhotoGrids for each event.  The long 2x8 spot was a good place for an event ticket and some matching BINGO paper from the Hey Boy 6x6 pad.


The top spot has a 4x4 grid on the outside, and then a flap that opens to show another grid and some journaling for that visit with friends.

I did the same thing on the bottom 4x4 spot, this time for the baby shower.  Another grid and another flap gave me room to journal and include several pictures.


I used these tabs from the Hey You sticker sheet to mark the two events.

It was nice to cover so much territory in just two pages, without adding a bunch of inserts.  I've now done it both ways and I like both options. But I don't want to always fall back on "just add more pages," because I chose a small size album.  And working with the two-page/week layout will help keep the bulk of the book in check, too. 

That's it for today.  If you're enjoying my daily catch-up, follow me on Instagram or Twitter for a daily reminder. Just scroll back to the top of the page and click on one of those social media buttons on the right side of the page.

See you tomorrow!

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Project Life: Feb. 11-17

I'm working through my Project Life catch-up posts, and today it's Feb. 11-17.


This was a big week of getting ready for vacation, Valentine's Day, asteroids, and finally getting on a plane bound for Cancun. 


It started with snow and work, so I used the 4x4 spots for those sories.  The weather overlay is an app called InstaWeather, and I love the options available there.

The day of the week list is another notepad from the Target dollar spot.  I used other notepads here and here, too.  I found them all back in early January and thought they would be perfect for this book.  I used it for some week-in review notes here, even though I had to do it sideways.


The insert on the right is a funny Valentine I found on Tumblr's Edith With Googly Eyes.  It's a ridiculous website, but at that point in the year I was fully immersed in Downton Abbey, and this Valentine was quite funny!

On the other side of the insert I made a flap.......



                     

......So I could use two 5x7 pictures - first a picture of Junior at the Valentine's Day event, and then a collage of travel pictures.  I didn't want to devote a lot of space to vacation pictures, both because the next week was all vacation and because I want to do some full-size scrapbooking of our trip.  I look at this project as a summary, not for lots of details, especially if they will be covered elsewhere.



The page on the right had four 3x4 spots.  That's Junior looking at me with his "I know I'm going to boarding tomorrow and I'm sad about it."  I think it's the suitcases that put him on alert. 


In other news, I took a screen capture of my Facebook for the asteroid story. I need to start including more "news of the day" stories in my pages. 


And I found the LOVE maze on Pinterest (I have it pinned here), saved it as a jpeg, and printed it in 3x4, just because I thought it would make a nice Valentine embellishment.

That takes us up to our vacation week.  I'll be happy to relive it tomorrow!

Monday, April 15, 2013

Project Life: Feb. 4-10

Welcome back! If you missed last week, I am in the process of posting all my Project Life weeks for the year, and today I'm starting with February.

I planned to post a more recent week over this past weekend, but life got in the way. And in the end, it wasn't a very exciting week.  I'll probably do two April weeks next weekend. Deal? Deal.


This first week of February was the first week where I used just Snap protectors - a four-spot on the left and another 4x4 combo page on the right.  And somehow this week came together as "red week."  The journal card, the Currently card, and some accents in the photos themselves were red, so I went ahead and used a scrap of red paper for the 2x8 journaling spot, too.


These Currently cards are from Rukristin, who I found on Instagram.  The cards are easy to print and just what I was looking for (without knowing I would find it right when I needed it!).  So thanks, Kristin - great cards!

At this point in the year, I was really getting into using photo apps.  I posted here about some favorites. Here I used the PhotoGrid app to get four pictures from a Chinese New Year event into a 4x4 square.  I can print them directly from my phone to WalGreen using the Printicular app, and they're ready in an hour.  Can't beat it, especially since they're only about 30 cents/print.  Of course the Saki deserved its own big picture.


When I look back at how all my pages came together, I think this week was one of my favs. I love the accidental red theme, and I liked the pictures I ended up with for the week.  And I liked using the Snap protectors instead of the other pages I was using, because I spent less time trimming and shrinking things to fit.  This was an easy week to pull together.

See you tomorrow for another week in February!

Friday, April 12, 2013

April Challenge 2 @ CKCB

I planned to post another Project Life week today, but I decided to take a break and delay that post until tomorrow. In the meantime, hop over to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge to see this month's 2nd challenge.

Have a great weekend!

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Project Life: Jan. 28-Feb. 3

I'm wrapping up a week of Project Life catch up, and today we've reached the end of January.  As I've looked back through these weeks, I'm very glad I only have to relive the memory not the actual weeks - how do we make it through all that crappy weather every year?!



Anyway, this week actually brought some sunshine and warmer temps, so I decided to highlight that fact with some sunny papers.  I used some new Jillibean Chilled Cucumber Soup that I picked up from the Memories Expo last month.  I like how it worked here.


I had spots for a date card and some journaling on the left, and then a spot for one 4x6.  I used the days of the week card for my date card - I just stamped the date after each day of the week using one of my roller date stamps.  I decided to highlight this picture of my office building and the time/date/temp outside that day.  I played with the Pixl-r-omatic app to add some highlights and graffiti to the picture.  Funny enough, I wasn't even at work that day; I was home sick but had to go to campus to pick up Crystal, so I still got the chance to take a picture on a nice day.



Screen captures have been a lifesaver for some weeks.  I took this screen cap of watching puppies being born. The things you learn on 2Ps.  Anyway, it was something that sucked up a lot of time while I was busy being sick on the couch that week, so I wanted to have a way of including it. And I didn't notice it until now, but the tab at the top of the page that says "Palladium?" That's the message board for our resort in Mexico.  I didn't even realize I captured that little bit of life. Vacation planning was definitely in full force during this week.



One of those Jillibean cards, to highlight the sunshine, along with a fabric brad on top.  Whenever I use something really dimensional in my book, I've been putting it on top of the page protector.  In this case, I put the brad through the protector and the cards, so it's very secure.



We were on full vacation planning mode, so I had to get a picture of my new short fins in there! The empty space at the top of the photo was a perfect place for writing on the photo.  I've been using my Slickwriter quite a bit for that purpose.

That wraps up January.  Tomorrow I'm going to switch to post a current week.  I'm very excited to see this project actually growing into something I can manage, and I feel like I can start posting the most current weeks as I go along.  We'll see how it goes!