Sweetheart Card

Just popping in from finishing up my college work to show you a card I made yesterday! I used the sketch from the Studio Calico sketch challenge to make it super simple and easy to finish this card record time. :)

March Project Life Pages

More Project Life Pages! Here's March's.

DOCUMENTED: One weekend in March... the first one. We travelled all night Friday to be in Missouri for a wedding on Saturday. Then of course we turned right back around and went home on Sunday. Living so far away involves taking a LOT of trips like that- traveling all night. :/ This was, like, the best trip ever though. Lots of good times and memories. :)

PRODUCTS USED: Elle's Studio month marker card, Elle's Studio stamps, Project Life cards from Studio Calico's Park Ave., The Underground, and Bluegrass Farms PL kits.

DOCUMENTED: Every day life (left page) and me having a picnic with my dad (right page)! 

PRODUCTS USED: me & my BIG ideas cards and also random Studio Calico cards I had in my stash.

DOCUMENTED: Weekend fun- going to Tannehill. Also random Starbuck's day. Also, the guy I have a crush on works at Chick-fil-A and I found out he was leaving so that HAD to be documented. :( Sadness. I've only seen him once since that day, and it's been a month. I'm having withdrawals! LOL Actually I'm doing fine. ;) 

PRODUCTS USED: Studio Calico "Cirque" Project Life kit-- mainly just this kit.

DOCUMENTED: Spring Break. This spread also goes into April. 

PRODUCTS USED: PL cards from Fancy Pants "Office Suite", Heidi Swapp, and Studio Calico. Random Studio Calico embellishments.

February Project Life Pages

I'm so behind on sharing all of my Project Life spreads, so please bear with me! I think I will separate them into monthly pages posts. So here are February's! At least the latter part of February. All of my photos are scrambled up and I had just edited these, so these are the ones I'm gonna share. ;)

DOCUMENTED: I won a huge giveaway on Instagram from Paige Evans. It was one of those "There's now way I'm going to win this, but I'm going to enter anyway." And I WON! I know it's a totally random pick of the winner, but it still makes me feel special. Also documented is the fact that I have a job again! I'm back at the daycare that I worked at two years ago when I was in high school. And also homework. I had a lot of homework to do at this particular time in Feb. 

DOCUMENTED: Sunday night pizza night. Always the best. BBQ lovers pizza from Pizza Hut is the bomb-dot-com. We also like having family game night every now and then so that's why Van Gogh is on my PL spread. ;) SNOW came Feb 26, so I documented that here too! Sometimes it's so hard picking just a couple of photos to use in your PL because there are so many to choose from one event (like getting snow!). 

DOCUMENTED: My crush! :) LOL There's more journaling if you take out the card and open it. It's a folded PL card from Becky Higgens/ Midnight Project Life edition. I could talk for hours about him. But I will spare your ears. ;) Also documented is the fact that my friend Katelyn came to visit me! Drove all the way from Missouri to Alabama to just come hang out. :) We had a lot of fun together! 

So there it is! February is in the books! 

Graphic Design World

I thought I'd show you today a little bit of what I get to do at college! I love learning new things in my graphic design classes, and this was one of our exercises a couple weeks ago. 

We had to take a picture and add pattern or texture to parts of a photo. I have always wanted to see what a patterned wall would look like in my room. Since I have recently put up an art gallery wall above my bed, I thought it would be neat to use a photo of my room to conceptualize in Photoshop. 

My original photo:

My original idea was to put handwriting on the wall. This is definitely a little large, so it doesn't look as realistic. But it's still cool! ;)

I added several different patterns, so tell me which one is your favorite! The stripes is definitely my personal fave. :)

mambi HAPPY PLANNER™ spread

I'm excited to share this new HAPPY PLANNER™ spread for this current week!

(And if you didn't know already, the planners are now available in the me & my BIG ideas shop HERE! Yay! There are so many fun embellishments in ADDITION to the awesome planner itself!)

I didn't have a lot of to-do's to put in the latter days of this week, so I added a watercolored quote to fill up the space. It is by no means perfect, but I love it! Reading it just makes me happy. :)



Another small quote on the left page:

"YOU GOT THIS!" Yes, I put that on my work schedule. Sometimes I need that little encouragement! HA!

 

And I didn't know if you knew this or not, but the inside of the rings are little hearts! How CUTE is that?! I noticed that first thing when I got my HAPPY PLANNER™ and that is one of my favorite details of the planner system.

Thanks for stopping by to see my planner spread! Be sure to visit me & my BIG ideas HERE! :)

Be Happy Mini Album {me & my BIG ideas}

Hello! Happy Thursday! I'm so happy you stopped by today. I have a new mambi project to show you! 

I made these cute little mini albums out of POCKET PAGES™ cards and some paper (wow, right?!). Plus of course I added some stickers and stitching to the paper. BUT I kept it super sweet and simple. I also made a YouTube video to show you how I made it! Check that out HERE. I found out making this tutorial that I'm awful at explaining what I'm doing. LOL I'd rather just show you. Let me know if you can understand what I'm actually saying! This is such an easy album to make. I need to make, like, 10 million of them (ok maybe not that many). ;) But for real, you'll see how easy they are in the video.

And that perfect backdrop pattern is a mambi paper. [insert heart eyes] I need to use that paper. Like, now. 

So here are the inside pages. I made a long collage of the pictures, so you can just click on the photo to see them all if you like. 

See? So awesome and small and did I say awesome?! Be sure to visit the me & my BIG ideas blog HERE. Catch ya later! 

Origami Map Card

I love this Neat & Tangled stamp. I am so excited to use it on some different projects. When I got it, I knew that sometime I would have to make some cards with it because it's just so awesome. There are several sentiment stamps with the set and I used one of those to send a little "happy card" to my friend MarLeah. :)

I wanted to color in the geometric shapes inside the map design, but didn't want to use a lot of colors. So I chose hot pink, blue, and lime green and kinda bled them together as I was painting. I didn't want a "perfect" look. And I love how it turned out. I stamped with StazOn in so the image didn't smear once I put the watercolors on, and I used watercolor paper to stamp/paint/diecut. Using the watercolor paper made it so that the image didn't warp from the water.

The matching diecut gives the perfect amount of space around the map shape. I am so happy I bought that metal diecut (to use in my Cuttlebug). 

I am not a plain embellishing type person. At first when I placed only the map diecut on the card, I thought, "This is way too plain! I need to add something!" That something turned out to be the little word stickers from Studio Calico's "Wanderlust" collection. I have two packs of those words and I will be so sad when they're all gone. :'( I also added some more texture with the machine stitching. Always one of my standby techniques. 

Does anyone you know need a cheering up? Here is your sign-- go make them a card and give it to them. Let them know you're thinking of them. Spread some kindness. :)

Neat & Tangled + The Cut Shoppe

I am soooo excited to share this project with you today! The Cut Shoppe has teamed up with Neat & Tangled to bring you a week full of wonderful die cutting/stamping inspiration! 

Visit The Cut Shoppe blog HERE.

Visit the Neat & Tangled blog HERE.

In case you don't know, Neat & Tangled is an awesome stamp company that sells adorable designed stamps. I chose the "Origami Map" stamp set to play with. I just know I will use this stamp set over and over and over. Hopefully someday to document world travels. :) 

In addition to the stamp set, I used the "And I Quote" and "Here & There" cutfile sets from The Cut Shoppe. I just love how these diecuts look with the awesome map stamp. 

I used Amy Tangerine's new "Rise & Shine" collection from American Crafts. I really love this line. Such bright and fresh colors for Spring/ Summer. 

Also, I was pretty proud of myself for using that awesome map stamp on a page that really isn't about traveling. I will have lots of travel-themed projects in the future, I'm sure. :)

I also used some sequins from Neat & Tangled on this layout. The Pink Lemonade mix that I used are so pretty and SMALL! I love the size of these sequins. 

Be sure to visit The Cut Shoppe for more info about this page! I'm so happy you stopped by! 

This is Bliss: Project Life Spread {mambi}

I'm sharing one of my March me & my BIG ideas projects today. I made a Project Life spread using one of the new Frame & Craft Elements paper pads from mambi. These paper pads have patterned papers in them as well as phrase cards and large frame-worthy designs. I'm waiting to use some of the larger prints in this pad in my new scrapbook space once we get my brother moved out to his apartment in our new shop! :)

I kept this spread very simple, and I think my favorite part of this whole spread is the big "BLISS" sticker on the large photo on the left. Like I've said before, sometimes I just love silver. And I just realized I mixed gold and silver together on this spread. Hmm. Didn't think of that, but it totally works here. 

These photos are from our trip to the beach over Valentine's Day weekend. I was back-documenting. ;)

And this just shows you how the stickers are on the page protector and not on the actual photo. 

 I also wanted to add here that me & my BIG ideas is doing some BIG planner giveaways this month! Each day up until the planners are released, they're giving away a pack of planner embellishments to a lucky commenter from the mambi blog, Instagram, or Facebook. Read all the details HERE and don't forget to enter!! :)

Project Life Spread + New Video

Yep, it was just like I thought it would be. I didn't blog any over Spring Break! Oops! ;)

But I'm back at it today! I seriously only have 5 weeks left of this semester of college, and I'm pretty excited. That's even including finals week! I'm looking forward to being out of school for a while. I love college, but there's something fun about "being out of school for the summer" that is very appealing to me at the moment. Haha.

One thing I wanted to make sure I did over Spring Break was make another process video. So I did just that! You can click HERE to watch my process. :)

This time I used mainly the Studio Calico ODYSSEY Project Life kit for my Project Life spread. Of course I added other items in with the kit, but most of the cards came from that specific kit. 

Sometimes I think it's fun to get behind on Project Life. I know that sounds funny, but sometimes I just want to print out my photos and keep going on with life. I don't want to worry about scrapping the photos right after I take them (which is usually what I do when I do Project Life). While that seems like a good idea, it really isn't. I wasn't getting far behind at ALL (only a few weeks) and I was already freaking out. Being stressed takes the fun out of it. I caught back up over Spring Break, but seriously! I need to just get my scrapping bug out when I have it (usually when I print my photos) and not purposely wait till I have several weeks to get done at once. I find that when I take my time on the PL spreads, I end up liking them a lot better. 

Thanks for joining me today! My question for you today is this: do you get stressed about the stories/memories/photos that you want to document? Does it sometimes seem like too much to do? What is your solution? Let me know in the comments! :)