Twisted Sketch 153 | Fur Children

Today over at the Twisted Sketches blog you will see sketch #153 where the twist is "white". You can see what the other members on the design team have created here.

Here is my take on the sketch.

I used the May kit, Picnic Blanket from Treasured Memories and added a bit of the
Crate Paper, Pretty Party paper stickers.

For the twist, I used white Bazzil paper and white stitching.

I hope you enjoyed this weeks sketch. Have a wonderful evening :)

WITL 2012 | Finished Album and Final Thoughts

I want to show you my finished WITL album, and then I will share some final thoughts and observations I made this year. I think it's important to reflect on the process it helps to identify what worked and what maybe could be done differently.

The first photo is the cover... I love how it turned out. You can see how I made the base of the album here. The cover was literally made with scraps of digital paper I had printed a couple years ago.

I bought a 6x6 Crate paper pack, various washi tapes, buttons, some Jillibean soup stickers, Jenni Bowlin stickers, and crafters workshop stencils to use on the album. I journaled directly onto the pages where ever I could and I added the time the photo was taken.

My original kit included Hambly transparencies and lace papers to use in addition to the new stuff. That little scrabble piece... I picked it up at TM, actually all the extra goodies I added to the album were bought at TM.

To save myself time, I tried to keep the pages as simple as humanly possible FOR me... not always a reality... but that's okay :) Another favourite find at TM was this vintage car stamp... you can see it in the upper right corner of that first page, I used it lots throughout the album.

I placed an envelope at the end of each day for the left over photos, ones I printed but they never made it in the album. I will put the printed daily sheets in them as well.

I love to mix papers and I had lots of fun doing that with this album, I kept it pretty simple by using fun, bright, and basic colors so it was easy enough to mix and match. Also, I know washi tape has been around for a while, but whew... I had never purchased any before... unimaginable eh? Well I made up for it... I played with lots of tape and think it's likely a staple now for me.

That's it for the photos... I think it gives you a good idea as to how it all turned out.

Now for my thoughts and observations...

• Love the finished product, working with paper is always fun and keeping it simple is the easiest way to ensure it gets finished.
• For these types of projects - it is extremely helpful to be prepared...  making the base of the album and having it ready for when I was finished with the photos was a bonus.
• Last year I was very excited about this project, but I was not as motivated this year. It's funny... I will admit Sunday night when I finished making the base of the album I was ready and looked forward to the week. The next morning... I thought, really?... Why am I doing this? The first day was not easy... however... after seeing what others had posted on Tuesday of what their Monday was like... it encouraged me to get my camera out. So... it is helpful to have others doing the project along with you, but that doesn't mean you should not or could not do it at a different time from when Ali plans it.
• Next year if I can... I really would like to try it digitally. I think at the end of the day... if I can get those photos into a digital template it will come together a lot faster.
• Next year I want to record a few of the same things everyday... I really loved what Helena documented on here WITL. She had fun things like what was on her playlist, the different blogs she read that day etc. I also really love the simplicity of her digital pages, and they would be simple enough to print off yourself.
• I wanted to mention what doing WITL was like while doing Project Life. It was not difficult at all. At least I didn't find it to be. If you think it would be, you might consider WITL as a recording of your daily routine, while everything else might be PL worthy. I did not exclude the routine items from my PL album.
• Although I mentioned I had a hard time motivating myself, I really appreciate the album. Last year my parents were here and I was on vacation, so it really wasn't a typical WITL. Ali has mentioned the next WITL will be in the Fall of 2013. I am good with that. In fact it excites me because Fall is my favorite time of year :)

Thanks for stopping by and having a look at my WITL album. What about you, have you completed yours? Or perhaps you are planning to do your WITL at another time this year?

Take care friends.

31 Things | Jewelry

There are lots of bloggers out there taking Ali Edwards new class at Big Picture Classes, 31 Things. I decided to take the class for a couple reasons, mostly to exercise my writing for which I hope will improve throughout the class, but also to capture more stories. I have been thoroughly impressed with the class so far. I wasn't sure if it would really capture my interest, but Ali's prompts are so easy to find a story for. Some are quite personal and I don't know that I will share all of them, but I will start with this one on jewelry.

Digital Kit can be found here.

I am using Ali's template as she has made it. I might print these off, but I'm not certain yet.

Have a great night everyone.

Postal Winners!

Thank you to all of you for leaving a comment on my Postal Giveaway which was inspired by Julie's "Going Postal" week over at Notes On Paper. Thanks to Julie for sharing her amazing projects and inspiration, and for encouraging us all to play along. If you would like to see what others have shared in participation of Going Postal... please have a look at the Pinterest Board

Big congrats to these three winners!

Louise - I will need your address, you can email me at ginbin70@hotmail.com.

Sian and Rinda I have your addresses and will send it off to you!

Thanks again everyone :)

Postal Giveaway

I finally finished my WITL album (more on that in an upcoming post)! In keeping with Julie's  Going Postal theme, I thought I would do a little giveaway.

When I was working on my WITL album at Treasured Memories, I saw some of these little vintage camera photos, KC & Chantel's dad made, and I fell in love with them.
 

 

Daryl Benson is a photographer and he happens to make some very cool things us scrappy people like to use.

When Julie announced her Going Postal week, I thought of these sheets and went to pick some up the other day... I thought you might like to use them on your creations and so I am doing 3 draws. If you would like to be considered in the draw, then leave a comment telling me what you would use them for... they are 8.5 X 11 sheets...

Treasured Memories does have an online store in case you are interested in any of these sheets (they have different ones than these too).

I will pick the winners on Monday evening (8 PM - MST)!

Good Luck!

Mail Art

I want to thank all of you who signed up for the Mail Art Exchange, and many of you have already sent out your Mail Art. This post is dedicated to the fun of sending something off to someone and giving them a Happy Mail Day!

This week Julie is "Going Postal" and I thought I would hook you up to her blog so you can see all the fun and interesting postal creations she has, not to mention all the giveaways!

So I want to share with you how I created my mail art. If you have been following my Project Life posts, you might remember seeing this photo....

You will notice the colorful mix of stamped and stenciled images on that paper under the tickets. Now I will say I did get this wonderful idea from my friend Lisa. I did not want to put the pretty paper to waste... so I decided to use it. I traced out the envelope onto the paper and then glued it to the envelope.

The theme for the exchange this year was "Words" so I stamped a couple of inspirational phrases and quotes.

and so there it is...

Have a great weekend everyone!

Hello Pajama Party

Welcome to Twisted Sketch 151 where the twist was "buttons". You will be able to follow the Twisted Sketches now on Pinterest here

For National Scrapbooking Day, my friends and I went to Treasured Memories for a weekend crop and the theme was Pajama Party... we had lots of fun wearing our jammies and some people dressed in nightgowns and had curlers in their hair! More on this in another post. Here is a photo of Brenda and me wearing our night gear and puckering up for our photo-op!

We had lots of fun... not to mention it sure was comfy!

Thanks for looking at our Twisted Sketches. If you would like to play along, visit the website.

What Spring Means...

Fall has always been my favorite time of year, and I never really thought what my second favorite season is... not until now. I noticed distinctly this year how quickly Spring changes from trees that are completely bare and streets that are dusty, to incredible green buds and colorful flowers. I despise that ugly brown and desolate look of our landscape which seems to take so long to come alive.

Perhaps doing WITL has me noticing how quick the progression really is. Had I not taken photos a couple weeks ago during our ugly brown phase, I may not have noticed these changes as greatly as I do now and maybe I would not be as appreciative of Spring.

One thing is certain, there is a desire to be outside... to be among the life that is blooming before our eyes and to celebrate every bit of it.

Many of  you in the Northern Hemisphere experiencing Spring will be much farther along... This coming weekend is a long one, we call it the Victoria Day weekend in celebration of Queen Victoria. It's funny how we place parameters on dates... you see the typical gardener (in Alberta and Saskatchewan) will not plant anything until after Victoria Day because the rule of thumb is it is less likely to freeze after this date. And with that, I plan to purchase my bedding plants on Friday to plant on Victoria Day.

I am curious, does your planting of annuals depend on a date? Or do you prefer to get a jump on your gardening and leave it to mother nature?

Project Life | Week 16 & 17

Hello Friends! I'm a bit behind with a few things, but such is life right? No worries though I hope to be back on track very soon. I am so thrilled the weather is cooperating and now that we have greenery I am more apt to be outside to celebrate it and not to mention the longer days make for more energy. Yesterday I actually did some gardening and I may have even enjoyed it :)

I made it through National Scrapbooking Day weekend and will share how that went soon, also I am still working on my WITL book - yeeshk! (more on this in another post).

The two weeks you will see here have very little embellishing. That is the beauty of Project Life - you can do as much as you like or as little as you have time for!

Week 16

Week 17
Some of the photos I did not use in my WITL album, I placed here.

It was easy enough to do Project Life and WITL as far as the two projects being different and what some may think as a great amount of work. I did not take photos with the thought that this photo would be for one and not the other. So it can be done for sure, in case there are some of you out there wondering if it would be too difficult.

So there it is!

Enjoy your Sunday :)

Happy Mother's Day

Source: night-onthe-run.tumblr.com via Ginger on Pinterest

A bouquet to all you moms out there! Happy Mother's Day!

Happiness | Twisted Sketch 149

Well hello there :) How are you doing on this wonderful evening? It's been a busy few days, although I have been taking a bit of a break and I'm still working at getting my photos ready for this weekend's crop. I thought I would share the layout I made for this weeks Twisted Sketch over at the Twisted Sketches blog. Did you know there are card sketches as well? You can see them on Saturdays.

This weeks twist is "distress".... and here is my take on the sketch!

Supplies:  SEI, Basic Grey, MME - Paper; Basic Grey - Lace; Sassafrass Lass - Alphabet Stickers; Ranger Distress pads; flowers - unknown; Crate Paper - red flower button; other buttons unknown.

Well that's it - you might not see me for several days as I prepare for National Scrapbooking Weekend at Treasured Memories! I just noticed Friday night is Pajama Party night!! Guess I best get those ready :) Whoop!