Project Life 2016: College Grad

I'm trying to finish up my 2016 Project Life, so I feel more relaxed working on this year's album. I think this year I'm going to do 6x12, like I did the first half of the year in 2016. I really enjoy working with this size.There are not any albums in 6x12 right now, but I can just cut down a 12x12 chipboard album to the right size like I've done before. But anyways. 

Here's a spread I completed of my college graduation last May. It was super quick to make this one because I just so happened to have bought a grab bag of Kelly Purkey journaling cards from Black Friday that included some cards that were my school's colors! Yay! I probably wouldn't have used those cards otherwise too, so that's even more of a plus! 

The best part about graduating college was getting a s'mores ice cream cake from DQ for the after party. And I'm realizing I didn't even include that on this spread, so I might just go back and put it on the back of that program cover I'm including in my album. That's important stuff, y'all! ;)

When I'm finished with my 2016 albums, would you be interested in seeing a flip-through video of them? Let me know in the comments! 

Wedding Wednesday: Details

I'm back with another wedding post for you! So let's get started! There's going to be a lot of writing, so hope you're ready to read it all! ;)

When I was pinning wedding stuff, I found this photo of a hand lettered sign that I just LOVED. It said "our adventure begins" and I knew I needed to make me one for the wedding. K told me numerous times while we were dating, "Just think of all the adventures we're going to have." (so cute, right?!) I didn't know where I was going to put it, but I knew I wanted in somewhere. This was probably my favorite hand lettered item I made for the wedding. It just went so well. I didn't mess it up and I totally love the outcome of it. 

To make the sign, I bought an old frame at a thrift store, spray painted the frame (with $0.25 spray paint I bought at a yard sale!), painted the backing board with some chalkboard paint we had on hand, and then used a white sharpie posterboard pen (also had on hand) to write on it. Pretty cheap decor if you ask me! :)

Also, the greenery. My mind's eye imagined lots of LIVE greenery at our wedding. At first we were going to try fake ivy, but man that looked WAAAAY fake. I didn't like it. So we priced the real stuff at a local floral warehouse. Turns out it was very cost effective to just buy bundles of silver dollar eucalyptus and seeded eucalyptus and make everything ourselves. Thank goodness my mom used to work at a flower shop and knew what she was doing! 

(right photo was taken by MarLeah.)

Flowers... oh, the flowers. I love flowers so much. The flowers were easily one of my favorite parts of the whole wedding. We had Whole Foods do all the flowers. If you're not familiar with Whole Foods, it's an organic grocery store. I know there's different kinds of these stores across the states. Well, Whole Foods has a GORGEOUS flower section, and Mom and I had read online that they do flower arranging for cost + 20%. Seriously?! It ended up being cost + 30%, but man. They were so affordable and turned out gorgeous. 

My bouquet had dark burgundy garden roses, blush spray roses, red football mums, white ranunculus (!!!!!), ruskus, and baby's breath. (and I have no idea what the leafy red things are... the florist told me, but I don't remember). The bridesmaids' bouquets were all burgundy (which looked just as GORGEOUS with their champagne dresses as I had imagined). I picked out some white lace to wrap the bridesmaids bouquets with and my bouquet had white satin ribbon. 

(this photo was taken by MarLeah... our photographer didn't get a photo like this, and I really like this picture.)

Here's some shots that our photographers got of some details. I love my Keds (more on that later)! Oh, and I designed our invitation. The invites were already pre-foiled and I just designed the typed portion and put them through our printer. I super love the gold glittery envelopes we got to send the invitations out in! I got the sets on clearance at Office Depot. Score!  

The pew ends turned out SO. Perfect. I wanted simplistic, elegant, and rustic. I think we achieved that. ;)

Here's the guest book table. I also had a clipboard on the table with pages that the guests could sign. That didn't make it into the photo for some reason. The gold frame with the see-through "Heather & Kevin" was from the thrift store. I bought two frames-- one didn't have a glass in it, but I liked the look of it. So I bought another one that had a glass in it so I could just switch it out. But turns out the frame that I liked was an odd shape and I had to get the glass trimmed to fit. Thankfully Hobby Lobby does stuff like that and I think it was only $1.00 to get it trimmed! Yay! 

The cakes. Oh, the cakes. If I had it to do over again, we would NOT do the cakes ourselves. WAY too much work and then half of them fell apart (I"m not kidding). Thank goodness there were still enough good cakes to make the wedding cake! :) The wedding cake topper is from Alexis Mattox Design and I just LOVE it! I think it was just perfect. :)

Mom made her amazing chocolate cake for the groom's cake (K loved chocolate!!) and she should have made more-- everyone loved the chocolate cake! 

I cut out about 200 hearts to make these heart strands for the backdrop behind the wedding cake. Turns out I made probably 100 too many-- we only used part of the strands that I had made! Oh well, valentine's day decor, coming right up! 

And our reception table settings... 

I bought the gold doilies off of etsy, and I just love the elegance it brought to the tables. Also if I were to do it over again, I'd probably use more eucalyptus on the tables... it looked a little sparse. BUT we stayed in budget. That's all that matters. LOL

One of the very first things we made for the wedding-- confetti!! We bought a confetti punch and a few small heart punches and MADE the confetti. Yes, we punched every single piece. Then we mixed the paper pieces with some tissue circles that we bought on clearance at Michael's and that helped stretch the confetti a bit. The tissue also made for a fantastic fluttery feel that was... perfect. Can't say "perfect" enough. Also, my blank chalkboard sign here... totally forgot my chalkboard pen at home and didn't get to write on it. Oh well! I think people knew what the confetti was for. :) 

Lastly, the kids table!! I knew there would be a lot of kids at the wedding, so I designed some coloring pages and then put crayons and also little packets of mini m&m's on the kraft-covered tables. 

I hope you've enjoyed this Wedding Wednesday post! Let me know what your favorite part of this post was. Do you like all the text explaining the photos? I'm just saying'-- it's a lot to type out! LOL

All photos unless stated otherwise are from Katie and Alec Photography. 

Hello Card

Hello!! 

I've noticed recently that my card making style is getting more simple. Less layers, less products. 

On this card, I literally used:

-cardstock

-stamps/ink

-mist

-diecut

-twine

-glue

That's it! I mean, half of that stuff is the basic card making supplies! I've made a few "hello" cards lately........ I need to actually send them out! Maybe I'll try to do that today. :) 

New photo prop-- our woodpile!! Haha! It worked really well with my white card! 

Thanks for stopping by! I have more to share this week, so stay tuned. 

LOVE Layout

I have a thing for Valentine's Day. It's always been my favorite holiday-- even when I didn't have Kevin. :) I just love doing little things for the ones I love, and it's not totally creep-o on Valentine's Day! Haha! 

The Valentine scrapbook collections are ALWAYS my faves (I love Crate Paper's releases!). I buy bits and pieces of each year's "love-ly" release. This year was no exception with the new Heart Day collection from Crate Paper. There are so many adorable elements in this collection and so when it came out in stores, I immediately put in my order to Paper Issues. Granted, this was back at Christmas time, and I didn't really want to be thinking of V-Day when Christmas hadn't even happened. BUT, I went ahead and bought some of the collection. I have learned the hard way that sometimes in the scrappy world, if you don't buy products that you realllllly want, sometimes they sell out and never restock. :\ So I wasn't going to let that happen with this collection. 

While we were home for Christmas, I made this layout. I even got to use my new sewing machine on it! Yay! 

I have seen so many cute layouts recently that use diecuts made with the Silhouette Cameo, so I wanted to dust off my ol' diecutting machine and use some cut-out elements on my page. I didn't have any on hand that I really liked, so I quickly made me some of my own with Ai. Just some scribbly hearts. 

I really LOVE how this turned out... I think the stitching makes it. :) Do you like Valentine's Day? 

Wedding Wednesday: Overview

Hi everyone! Ever since we got our wedding photos back from our photographers, I have wanted to share some details of our big day. So, from now until whenever, each Wednesday I'll be sharing some photos and stories from our wedding.

 Today is just an overview of some of my favorite photos. All photos were taken by Katie & Alec Photography. Katie and Alec did a phenomenal job on our photos and were super easy to work with. The photography was one of the things I was totally stressing out about because you never know if you're actually getting a good photographer or not! Thankfully, we had an awesome experience. Couldn't have asked for better people to work with. 

Getting ready... :)

I had seen some photos on Pinterest of the bride inside the chapel with the beautiful natural light streaming through the window, and Katie happily obliged in getting some similar shots before the ceremony. The chapel we got married in was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. There's a photo later where you can see some of its beauty. 

I loved the bridesmaids dresses we found. I think they looked stunning on all the girls and I'm so happy that Laura, Mecia, MarLeah, and Katelyn got to stand up with me! I'll share more on the journey to find the dresses later.

My handsome groom and his groomsmen! :) I thought they all looked mighty fine in their wedding duds! ;P

I absolutely LOVE this photo that our photographers got during the ceremony. I love picking people out of the crowd. Also, I just love the beauty of the church we chose. It was over 100 years old and had so many beautiful architectural details!

Callen, the sign holder (they said he tip toed all the way down the aisle! :P) and Caroline, our flower girl! Callen just kills me with his little tuxedo!! 

First look (awwww, Kevin!!). And then Kevin carried me out of the ceremony! And he didn't trip or drop me! Yay! 

A couple of couple's portraits. We got to drive away from the wedding in a 2016 Corvette. All the heart eyes for that awesome car!!

Probably my favorite photo of all. We had a confetti sendoff and wow, was it pretty! Plus this photo?? Totally worth all of that hand punching of cardstock to make all of those packets (yes, we made all of the confetti!).

I'll be back next Wednesday with another Wedding Wednesday post! Keep your eye out for it! 

Hello Card

I'm back again with a card that I made the other week. Lately, inspiration hasn't been my friend and that's totally not a good thing because I have so many projects swimming around in my head!

I remember the days when I just wanted PICTURES and MEMORIES to scrapbook. I remember asking people for photos or having specific photo shoots just so I could have photos to scrap. Now, it's quite the opposite. I'm like, "where do I even start??" For instance, I started a traveler's notebook about Kevin and my dating days, and I haven't even gotten near finishing it. Waaaah. And I have a terrible memory, so if I don't write something down, I basically forget all the fun details that I thought I would remember. So this is not good. Plus of course there's regular Project Life that I have totally slacked on (I think the last half of 2016 has photos printed, but nothing else) and a wedding album to do, and a honeymoon album to do.... [sigh]. 

The joy is in the journey though, right? [breathe, Heather, breathe] 

So back to my card. I dug around my stash for ANYTHING that would strike inspiration, and this "hello" diecut from my hello heather Here + There collection did the trick. I then had a brilliant card design idea of using a little dashed line stamp and making an ombre effect with the ink. It didn't turn out so ombre, but it's still cute if you ask me. After doing the stamping (I think I used something sitting on my desk as the inspiration for the colors... maybe a washi tape or something), I added the washi strips behind the "hello" and the little gold stars beneath the sentiment. 

Now all I need to do is write someone a note and send this baby out! :)

New Year, New Look

If you haven't noticed yet, I've been playing around with the look of my blog. I've always wanted a chic and sleek layout to my blog and never been able to achieve that until now. I've been playing with different things and I'm happy to introduce the "new" craftyscrapbooker.blogspot.com! 

Psssst... also my new header is a sneaky peek of my new collection with PLS. ;) I've been working on that this week, and I just HAD to include some of the florals in my header. I need to redo my writing in my header, but this will do for now. 

See you next week! 

Awesome + Happy

Happy Saturday, everyone! 

One of my "goals" for this year (I'm not going to call it a resolution because I feel like that's too much pressure...lol) is to share more of my work. On here, on Instagram, etc. Trying to get myself out there a little bit more and eventually promote the hello heather brand more. 

Since last October, when my term with me & my BIG ideas ran out, I have felt like I have had no guidance in my creating. I've been on design teams for years now and always had assignments to do, so that kind of helped me create stuff and share it. I don't feel like I have much direction with my creating anymore. YES, it's totally fun to create for myself, but I'm discovering more that I liked that motivation behind being on design teams. 

Now that I'm typing this, a couple of things are coming to mind that are hopefully coming to fruition this year (really exciting things, y'all). And that's making me happy. :) In addition to these secret, exciting things (I know, that's so mean, right??), I am set to have 3 collections come out this year in partnership with Pretty Little Studio. So maybe I do have a little bit of direction. I'm wanting to create more with my collections as well. I mean, my Summer Vibes collection is practically PERFECT for our Cancun honeymoon photos! 

So on to the layout. I started making this layout while we were still at home for Christmas break. But I didn't have time to finish it (hello, I haven't even used my new sewing machine yet! :O). So I brought this page with me when we left this tour (that's what Kevin's job terms are called). Of course I have a lot more time to work on scrapbooking stuff when it's just me sitting around in the hotel room, so I finished this layout the other day. If I were to do this page over, I'd probably do some white painting under the title and maybe add some machine stitching in different places. But I'm not changing it now. :) 

I do like how this layout turned out. The photos are from when K & I went back to Alabama for Christmas and Laura and I took a little sisters' shopping trip. I love that girl. <3 I got to ride in her new car while we were there, too! FUN! Laura's just adorable. I miss her a lot. It kind of blows my mind thinking that she graduates this May (whaaaaaaa??). When we were on the phone the other day, she told me she had accepted her scholarship to UAH and so that's a big thing. Kind of hurts my heart knowing she's growing up and I'm not there. But we do talk on the phone a lot. That helps. :) 

     

So I'm realizing that my blog post is just getting longer and longer and I haven't said that much about the page. Oh well. The short version:

My friend Katie had sent me this polaroid stamp a while back and I stamped it on several Paige Evans "Take Me Away" 6x6 papers and then cut out each shape. I used a mix of embellishments on this page. I did remember to bring my black mist with me this time, so I don't feel so lost now when I make pages. 

Alright, I'll stop jabbering. Do you even read these long posts? If you do, leave me a comment! I've noticed I've gotten a lot of blog traffic lately, but no commenting. So please leave me a little comment telling me you're out there! :) 

Christmas JOY 2016

I don't have any projects to share at the moment, so I thought I'd sift through some Christmas photos that I took with my "big" camera and post them! :) 

Since I travel with K, we literally brought all the gifts home on Thursday night and needed them all wrapped by Sunday afternoon. And I've found that when we are home, we don't get much done. Mostly all of Kevin's family lives around where we do, so there's always people to go visit/ hang out with when we are home (aka our new niece!). Stuff doesn't get done NEAR as fast as I'm used to because we're just relaxing and enjoying being at home. I told Kevin, ya know, on people's days off, they go on vacation. On our days off, we go home. :P I guess that's what happens when you live on the road. I'm still trying to adjust myself to this schedule. It's so different because you don't really have weekends. K works the weekend, so it's just 10 solid days of shopping, meal planning, grocery shopping, and staying in a hotel room. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing... I've just got to get used to it all. We recently bought a camper though, and we're hoping to fix it up the next time we're home so we can take it on the road and have a "home away from home." 

I'm rambling.

Anyways. Back to Christmas. It took me forever, but I got all the wrapping done (I like taking my time with it because it's one of my favorite parts about Christmas.), but I love how they all turned out. 

I've always dreamed of getting to use real pine branches on my gift packaging. And we just so happen to have a big (REAL) Christmas tree in our front yard, so I had K cut off a couple of branches for me to use in decorating and on the gifts. I didn't realize how pokey those needles are!!!

No garland, just real pine branches. Yay!! 

My favorite spot in the house. Our mantle. :)

When we were getting groceries at Walmart on our way home for Christmas, I found these daisies for $3 in the floral section. And K so kindly bought them for me. :) I love fresh flowers, and even more so when I know they didn't cost much! I told Kevin he could just buy me bouquets from Walmart or Whole Foods (they have BEAUTIFUL flowers... they also did the flowers for our wedding! Pics coming soon!). He doesn't have to spend the $$$$ that he did when we were dating. These $3 ones make me just as happy. I set them on our dining room table and they looked so pretty sitting there. :) 

Oh- and we also got some SNOW after Christmas! K had a sick bug that day :( so I traipsed outside by myself to snap a few photos. But, I was a little late and it was already melting because the sun was out. Wah. I'll know to go out earlier if I want better photos next time. It was still fun seeing our little town covered in snow. 

How was your Christmas? I hope it was filled with JOY (one of my favorite words around this time of year). See ya soon!