I made this week's Project Life layout extra easy on myself by sticking to just the Maggie Holmes Flea Market Project Life Mini Kit and a few coordinating embellishments from the Flea Market collection. My scrap room is a bit of a mess right now after pulling out an old kit to try to kill, a new kit to video, and working on a design team assignment for Simple Stories, and I didn't want to add a lot to that pile of stuff. I could have just used one of those collections/kits for this layout, I suppose, but I've had this mini kit for a while and not used it yet, and since the new Crate Paper items just arrived over the weekend and I'm sorting the last release into my stash now seemed as good a time as any to dig into them.

Tomorrow will be a cleanup day in my scrap room for sure, though!

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

The Flea Market collection includes lots of pinks, of course, but I decided to play up the yellows, aquas, and blues in the line and really downplay the pinks. In fact, the only reason that they appear on the page at all is because they were pre-printed on two of the journaling cards.

I used lots of gold as accents, including this vellum camera- there are just so many beautiful pieces in this collection!

Now that I've made a full layout with this mini kit, my plan is to split it up by color and file it with the rest of my Project Life cards. I love the way everything looks together, but I find that after the first layout or so, I'm really ready to mix a collection up with other things and sorting by color really helps me do that. If you want to see a great video on sorting and storing Project Life cards, I highly recommend this post on The Crafty Pickle!

Project Life 2013 - Week 50 with Pretty Little Studio

This week's Project Life layout comes with a video! It's also very Christmas-themed, which may at first seem out of place in January, but as I was preparing this post I started wondering why we only concentrate on Christmas crafting during November and December- the busiest time of the year when we more than likely don't actually have the time for it? I'll talk more about that at the end of the post, but for now, let's get to the Project Life portion of today.

When I guest designed for Lisa Wilkinson's December Life class last year, she asked if I would mind putting together a Project Life process video to share with the class. She also said I was free to share it on my blog, so here it is on my Vimeo channel.

Project Life Layout using the Woodland Christmas Kit from Melissa Stinson on Vimeo.
This was actually the last Project Life video I made last year- it was finished even after my Two Peas videos wrapped up- and I have to admit that I'm not totally in love with it or the layout. My own Christmas Project Life pages never quite look right to me, and I'm not sure if it's the odd mix of colors that happens at this time of year or the really busy holiday patterns, but my mojo just seems to go right out the window about halfway through them. I know that other scrappers do Christmas Project Life pages and they are lovely, so perhaps I need to spend a bit of time studying those to see where I'm going wrong. :)

So, about this whole Christmas crafting only at Christmas thing- I've decided that in 2014 I'm going to spread the joy out over the entire year instead of trying to pack it into one month. I've got plenty of Projects pinned on my Christmas Pinterest board, a few Christmas journals that need to be finished up, and I'll probably also go ahead and start making my 2014 Christmas journal while I'm at it. Because what better way to avoid the temptation to buy the pretty new Christmas lines that hit stores in the fall than to already have your December Daily foundation completed using your existing stash! One day a month I'm going to put on some Christmas music (our current favorite is the Choral Christmas station on Pandora) and spend the day playing in my craft room, and once a month I'll post the results here. I'm excited about it already, and I'm sure that when Christmas rolls around again I'll be happy to have several projects ticked off the list already.

If you'd like to join in each month and post your holiday crafting, I'll include a link list on each of my monthly posts so we can all inspire each other throughout the year. The first post will be sometime next week, but you'll have a month to link up your own creations, so there's not need to worry about getting anything ready right now.

And, yes, there's still more CHA coverage to come! I have Pink Paislee and a couple of others on the roster for today, so look for those posts a bit later.

Project Life 2013 Week 33 with Winnie + Walter

I'm really excited about this week's Project Life layout because I had the chance to work with an awesome new stamp company, Winnie + Walter! They have four new sets that will be debuting in their shop on January 15th, and with delightfully quirky names like "Big Bang Confetti" and "The Big The Bold And The Happy," I knew right away that this was going to be a company I would love working with.

I used their already-available digital + printable collection, The Daily Grind, mixed with Amy Tan's Cut & Paste Project Life mini kit and, of course, some of the new stamps to document Week 33 in my album.

I printed a few of the journaling card PDFs onto vellum using our color laser printer to give them a slightly softer feel. Luckily with a laser printer you don't have to worry about smudging, but I've read from many scrappers that they print on vellum with an inkjet printer and have great success, as long as they let it dry completely first.

When I stamp on Project Life layouts, I like to keep it simple for the most part. Most of the time I stick to a black ink pad, and I use the stamps to fill in little gaps here and there on my page instead of pulling out lots of embellishments. It makes a Project Life even quicker to put together when the only embellishments that I use are just a few enamel dots and a good stamp set or two!

I did get slightly "fancy" with the stamping in one area and tried out an ombre technique with three shades of embossing powder (to make the shaded "happy" on the card above). The process is super easy, and I filmed a short video showing how it's done. In the video I mention my 6x8 Project Life album, and I'd originally intended to use these stamps on my first layout in that album but ran out of time to edit photos and print them. Luckily I had photos printed and on hand for my 2012 album, so please excuse my past self for being a bit over-ambitious. :)


Ombre Heat Embossing Tutorial from Melissa Stinson on Vimeo.
I happened to have these stamps out on my scrapping table during a time when I was going through lots of my stash and getting it organized, so when I ran across a set of blank fabric bags one day, I decided to try out a little stamping on them as well!

I tried two different types of ink- dye inks from the now-discontinued line by Jenni Bowlin, and pigment inks by Colorbox for Doodlebug. I preferred the pigment ink results by far and stamped a rainbow of the "happy" sentiments, following it up with "birthday" at the bottom. I used a gray ink (one of the Hero Arts Shadow Inks) to add in some dots from the Big Bang Confetti set.

Winnie + Walter has been celebrating the release of their new stamps for the past week or so on their blog with more to come, so be sure to hop on over to the Winnie + Walter blog to check it all out!

Project Life 2013 - Week 32 with Citrus Twist Kits

This year you'll be seeing a mix of Project Life layouts from me- some double-page 12x12 spreads as I finish up my 2013 album and continue to work on catching up my 2011 album (just a few weeks left!), and then some 6x8 layouts as 2014 gets rolling and I start getting photos edited and printed. Six days into the new year I'm not quite ready to do that yet, but I do have a 12x12 page set to go!

Week 32 in my 2013 album was right smack in the middle of a not particularly fun time at work for everyone in my company (thank you, government furloughs), but it was also a week where I bought tickets way in advance for Star Wars Celebration VII (ummm, it's not until April...of next year!), celebrated the release of the first Citrus Twist kit that contained Star & Bee products (while working on the order for the next- note the oh-so-chic laser glasses on the table), and got the tiniest of starts on what was to be my eventual scrap room table overhaul.

That picture of Tigger above? That could have been taken any day of the year. We call him our "crack kitty," a little because I rescued him out of a parking lot one day and he acts a bit like he's having a crazy trip every once in a while, but mostly because he sits on the crack between the couch cushions almost all the time. Does anyone else have a cat that does this? We cannot for the life of us figure this little furball out!

This week's layout was put together using the just-released January 2014 kits from Citrus Twist. They're built around the colors in Studio Calico's Print Shop collection, and I purposely left out most of the bolder hot pink hues when making this set of pages to show the less girly side of the kits. If you want to see more of the new releases, you can check them all out here!

Project Life 2013 - Week 51 with Elle's Studio

On Christmas Eve I had the fun honor of being the final Celebrate December guest designer for Elle's Studio. I normally have a bit of a hard time with Christmas-themed Project Life layouts because of all the bold colors + patterns that may or may not match the equally busy photos, but this one really worked for me, I think due to all of the neutrals in Elle's exclusive December tag kit (seriously I ::heart:: those little monthly kits!).

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

See? Neutrals. White space (even if it is filled with text). Room to breathe. I absolutely loved the mix of tags in the December kit, and they worked so well with papers from the Noel collection- which, by the way, is on sale for 50% off (papers, tags, stamps- everything!) right now at Two Peas in a Bucket.

I don't normally print photos right away for my Project Life pages, but I needed something Christmas-y and photos from the week where we wrapped gifts while watching my favorite Christmas movie (Die Hard), went to an early "Christmas Eve" service at church, and spent a little time taking in the festive glow of Bridge Street turned out to be simply perfect. My brother's birthday was also this week, meaning I got to sneak in a photo of him and adorable little Finnegan, too!

Now that Christmas is over, I'm enjoying the calm days between Christmas and New Year's- the perfect time to relax and spend a few hours here and here at the computer getting my photos edited and ready to print for the last part of 2013's Project Life layouts, just in time to start out on my 6x8 adventure in 2014!

Project Life 2013 - Week 30 - Citrus Twist Kits

Another Monday, another Project Life layout! This week's uses the December Pocket Life kit from Citrus Twist, and I love how the reds, greens, and aquas in the Glitz Finnley 6x6 pad worked with some of my summery photos!

Darren was away in Swaziland this week- he had just over two weeks at home between the end of our summer road trip vacation and leaving again to fly halfway around the world! While he was away I did my Melissa thing- I changed out the comforter on the bed, enjoyed the flowers, and worked on some projects in the scrap room. :)

I've been thinking a lot this month about how I want to continue Project Life in 2014. I think that the answer for me is going to be a bit of a change, including a switch to 6x8 albums with a looser format. Some weeks I might have just two 6x8 pages to hold everything, and others I might have 3-4 or more. I'll still finish my 2011 and 2013 (2012 is done- yay!) albums in 12x12 Design A format, but after that I'm looking forward to something new and exciting for me!