Spring has finally decided to make an appearance here in Huntsville! This week I've been able to experience the joys of running outdoors without freezing my tail off, driving without the need for heated seats (though I'm still eternally grateful to Darren for that particular Christmas gift last year), and gardening. The Botanical Garden is having their annual Spring plant sale this weekend, and we went today and came home with a few choice bits of greenery to add to the gardens here at the house.

There's lots of green in the Project Life layout I'm posting today, too, including photos from a trip to the Gardens and flowers blooming in my front yard nearly two years ago. Some things will never change, thank goodness!

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

This layout was actually up on the Simple Stories blog a couple of weeks ago, and I turned the camera on and filmed while I was scrapping so I could put together a video of the process.


I simply adore Simple Stories' "A Charmed Life" collection, and as a St. Patrick's Day birthday girl it felt a little wrong to use it for something besides birthday photos the first time I cut into it. The greens, blues, and yellows were just perfect for these photos, though, and I'm sure I'll be using it again on St. Patrick's Day pictures before too long.

In a small and not-entirely-unrelated-to-my-recent-blog-silence bit of news, Darren (otherwise known as my husband and also as "he who installed the awesome heated seats that I mentioned above") has officially been accepted to medical school starting this fall! I'm thrilled for him since he's wanted this for a long, long time, but it's also brought on more than a few "so much to do and so little time" thoughts since the acceptance letter arrived. We have so many things we want to finish around the house, and basically only one summer left to do them all before he starts four years of school followed by four years of residency. The next three months are now or never time for getting those things done ourselves, and we'll definitely be staying busy!

Glitter, Stripes, and a Star Wars del Sol

Yes, I am indeed still alive, but, dude, what a week or so it's been since I last posted! After having an awesome birthday last Monday, I came home from work on Tuesday night with some flu-ish sort of virus. I say "ish" because it turned out to not be the actual flu, but it certainly felt like it for about a day! That little incident was directly followed by a sinus infection that took a while to diagnose since I thought it was simply the remnants of the flu-like mystery bug. I'm happily medicated now, though, and even happier to pop in today to share a couple of projects that I made for Crate Paper last week!

Last week's theme on the Crate blog was "Glitter and Stripes," and I went in two very different directions with it. First, I combined both the glitter and the stripes to make a pair of cards. I had just ordered Papertrey Ink's Center Stage cover plate die and was of course itching to use it. It cut through a piece of American Craft's Pow! glitter paper like butter, and I used the full cutout on the card above and a few of the individual chevrons on the card below.

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

The rest of the supplies are all from the Styleboard collection by Maggie Holmes, including the little sentiments that came from one of the cut-apart sheets in the paper pack. I thought that they'd both work well for birthday cards, but I suspect that poor Darren isn't going to quite know what to do with them next time he raids the card box (which happens often). Perhaps I should go back and stamp a birthday greeting inside each card just to help him out a little bit. :)

My next project is definitely more geeky than girly and uses the Boy's Rule line.

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

This Star Wars themed Honda del Sol was one of the first things I spotted upon arriving at Star Wars Celebration VI, and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was going to be a good convention! Okay, so, yes, I knew that beforehand, but the car really sealed the deal! You see, I drive a del Sol and have for almost 12 years. Mine is actually a '93 model, has over 315,000 miles on it, and hardly ever gives me any trouble, meaning I'm in no hurry at all to replace it. I love it so much that I bought my cousin's del Sol (I actually scrapped a layout about she and I being "car twins" a couple of years ago) when she sold it, so now I have two of them! I suppose I could have a newer car if I wanted, but I've had the chance to drive a few dozen different models as rentals during all of my work travels, and there's just nothing that fits me like this one! It's a good thing that Darren, who is somewhat confused by birthday cards that omit the word "birthday" is MacGyver when it comes to fixing cars and...well...anything!

I turned on the camera while I was making this layout, so you can see how it came together if you like.


I'd actually intended to use the striped paper that you see at the very beginning of the video as a border around the whole page, but as soon as I pulled out that striped transparency from the photo overlay pack I changed course and used it for my "stripes" instead. After that, the entire layout literally fell into place, and I was very grateful for that since I'd literally spent 30 minutes off camera before filming trying to come up with a photo arrangement I liked! In the end I didn't use anything that I came up with during that session and even ended up changing page sizes. And, wow, I'm always so amazed at how fast an 8.5x11 canvas fills up!

I've got another couple of videos filmed and either uploaded or in the editing queue, so I'll be sharing those soon! The lighter blogging schedule means that I have a little more time for things like that now, though I don't intend to let it be another week before posting again!

March Kit Layouts for Citrus Twist

I'm settling into a new blogging non-routine over here nicely, and while I don't intend to make it the norm to go for long stretches between posts, I've been putting the extra time to good use in my craft room! I've got paint drying on a layout as I type, and I'm about to go all kung-fu with a craft knife once this is posted and start in on an altered book for the April Citrus Twist gallery.

Speaking of Citrus Twist, I still have my March kit layouts to share! The new kits went live in the shop last week, and in the spirit of being a kinder, gentler blogging task-master to myself, I'm going back to sharing all of the layouts in one post again. :)

I didn't realize until after I'd finished my first layout (using just the main kit) just how many photos I have of my niece, Sophie, reading with someone in our family! There's this page I scrapped of her and Darren, one from January of her getting in a little story time with her Poppy, and in today's layout she's reading gardening magazine with my Mom- her Noni. I'm pretty sure that there's a photo of me reading a My Little Pony book to her floating around my Lightroom library, too, so I may have to scrap that one soon to add to the collection. And, total aside, but My Little Pony has changed a lot since I played with them as a kid!

My next layout was for one of the sketch challenges over at Citrus Twist, and I got all inky and glitter splatter-y with this one! Glitter splatters are really easy to make- just water down some plain white glue, load it up on a paintbrush, and splatter it across the page just like mist, except you cover it in glitter afterward.

I filmed a music-only (no voiceover) video of this layout since it's actually pretty easy for me to flip on the video camera that always stands over my work table. It still takes a bit of time to edit, but it really is so much faster than doing voiceovers, so hopefully you enjoy it! For those who subscribe to my blog via email, you can watch the video here on YouTube.


I must have been wishing for spring while working with these kits. Actually, I still am- it's cold here today! This layout mixes together pretty much all of the kits, and I started with a loose grid-style arrangement for my photos and then did my usual thing filling in the gals between them with papers, stickers, and other embellishments. It's pretty much my favorite way to make a page!

My last layout with the April kits is a Project Life page from my 2011 album, which is I think only 6-7 weeks away from being completed now! Since I've stepped back from blogging a bitI now have more time for photo editing, and I'm working on getting the rest of my photos caught up and printed. It helps that I've finally made friends with VSCO keys for Lightroom. There's definitely a learning curve, but I can edit so much more quickly now!

And today? It's my birthday! We've done the usual stuff- getting the birthday Starbucks treat and sushi for lunch- along with a few new things like picking up more oxalis (shamrocks) for the gardens and a new batch of succulents for my desk. I'll write up the full account of our adventures over on my personal blog once the day is over and I've processed the photos. I've already printed a few to scrap as I lift one of Wilna Furstenburg's layouts, including the one of some of my new plants below!

The Breakup + The 6x8 Project Life Plan

Last week I decided to break up...with my daily blog schedule.

Oh, it was nice and structured and ensured that new content appeared here every day, but lately I'd started to realize that it no longer inspired me. I'm a one-chick show here, and, since I have a full-time job, blogging is simply a hobby. It's a hobby that grew out of my love for photography and scrapbooking (and of course, Star Wars!), but lately it's been threatening to take over all of the above. I have a tiny window of time each day for my hobbies, and over the last few months I've noticed that I would want to scrapbook a layout or play with paints or any number of crafty things...and then I'd stop and remember that I needed to write a new blog post for the day. By the time that post was finished, guess what? My crafty time would either be very short or gone altogether- not good!

So on Thursday I made a decision to simply not post Friday Favorites the next day or Geek Girl on Sunday (and really, to just not worry about posting on my blog at all), just to see how things went for me with that little bit of reclaimed hobby time. Almost immediately, I knew I'd made the right call. And I mean the right call! I was on fire getting things done this weekend, both in the house (dude, my attic is looking awesome!) and in the scrap room. And, instead of scrapbooking just so I'd have something to blog, I found myself scrapbooking just for fun (which is the point of it, afterall!) without worrying about how I would frame it in a post.

I also found myself snapping photos for Instagram more than usual, pinning on Pinterest a little more, and, wouldn't you know it, I even felt like recording a video last night. One of the projects that I started this weekend was to finally nail down a process for my 6x8 Project Life album for 2014 (it's only March, right?), and, when I started to put it together, I had no intention of blogging or sharing it. When I was finished, though, I started to think that it would make a fun, short video, and that simply flipping on the camera to share my new process would be a lot easier than taking gobs of photos, editing them, uploading, and then trying to format them into a post.

)
Supplies:

InLinkz.com

And thus the new "online me." is born. I'm abandoning my daily blog schedule from now on for the sake of my sanity creativity. I'll still be posting here, but less frequently and only as I'm inspired to do so (or need to for a design team). Instead of letting a blog schedule drive my content, I'm reversing things and going back to a time when I was posting projects I made instead of making projects to post. I'll probably be using some other social media sites a little more, and if you like you can follow me on my Instagram account and over on Pinterest, which will hopefully help take the place of Friday Favorites (I've even got a Geeky board for those who loved the Geek Girl posts).

I'm not sure what form this blog will take in the future- I'm thinking maybe some of the usual scrapbooking content sprinkled with the occasional roundup post of my favorite recent pins on Pinterest, photos from Instagram, etc., but I don't want to commit to anything remotely resembling a schedule. My only plan right now is to not have a plan because, to be honest, my last plan had me considering simply shutting my blog down altogether last week- I was that stressed about it. For me, right now, freedom is key, and that's what I'm getting back to!

Project Life at Two Peas - December 2013

This past Saturday was my week to host the Project Life video series over at Two Peas, and I decided to pull out a few new products that I purchased from a recent sale in the shop to make my layout. The Autumn Crisp collection by American Crafts had been calling my name for a while, and I matched it up with the new Printshop line plus just a touch of the Midnight Project Life core kit and a few pieces of the new Daily Flash products from October Afternoon. The result? A layout that uses some fall products but doesn't scream "autumn."

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

December's Project Life video is actually my last one for Two Peas since I've decided not to return for 2014. I was asked if I wanted to continue with the team for another term, but I just don't have another year of regular videos in me right now, especially with everything else that's going on in my life- good things for sure, but things that definitely keep me very busy! I know that Kristina has some exciting plans for Two Peas in 2014, and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the company this year (honestly, I'm still shocked that they ever asked me in the first place).

I'll still occasionally do videos for my blog and for my other design teams, but not with any regularity and most likely on Vimeo instead of YouTube. I'll be sure to post here whenever I have a new one up!