Project Life 2016: PTX

Happy Monday! I'm super excited because this week we get to GO HOME! Yay! It's so awesome getting to pull in to OUR driveway, go into OUR home, and sleep in OUR bed. I think my dreams are filled with being home. ;) 

I'm approaching Project Life differently this year... in more of a minimalist way. I'll share more on that later when I get it all started. But for now, here's a page that I made from April of last year of when Laura and I went to a Pentatonix concert. It was such a fantastic experience, and I've been keeping this spread till I had some special cards and products to use on it. Well, it ended up that the Scout Documenter kit from Studio Calico was PERFECT. There pops of that light fuchsia-purple color in the kit coincide with the bright lights in the photos perfectly! 

I kept this pretty simple and now I've got another page "in the books"! Haha. 

See ya Wednesday for another Wedding Wednesday post! :)

Paper Issues HAUL

I was totally drooling over all of the pretty new collections that have been released at CHA (or Creativation, as they now call it). When they went live in the Paper Issues shop, I made sure to get my order in SUPER fast. In turn, I got it SUPER fast in the mail, and now it's in my hands! Yippee!!

I made a quick walkthrough video of all the products I bought and uploaded it to YouTube. 

Click HERE to watch it! 

Paige Evans' Oh My Heart collection with Pink Paislee

Shimelle's Little by Little collection with American Crafts

Maggie Holmes' Chasing Dreams collection with Crate Paper

1Canoe2's Hazelwood collection with American Crafts

Dear Lizzy's Lovely Day collection with American Crafts

Crate Paper's Oasis collection

What's your favorite release this year? I like parts of all of them, as you can see! I didn't buy an entire collection of any ONE line. I've discovered that I like mixing bits and pieces of different collections on my pages. 

Wedding Wednesday: Outfits

Today's Wedding Wednesday post is all about the wedding attire! :)

First, the dress. I had sorta imagined what I wanted in a wedding dress. By no means had I decided exactly what I wanted. We didn't go dress shopping (which looking back, I wish we would have. It would have been fun.). I looked everywhere on the internet for a modest and affordable wedding gown. There's like ZERO out there of what I was wanting. Then I found this one on eBay of all places. It was gorgeous. Two problems though: #1- it was from China. Hmm... will it actually get here safely? LOL #2- there were only two photos of the dress. I liked what I saw, so I went ahead and bought it, not totally knowing what the dress would look like. BTW, it was a new dress... don't get confused by the fact that it was on eBay! lol

We had to make a few adjustments on it. The top was see through lace, so Mom filled it in with a stretchy shirt (that was actually oh-so-comfy when it was all said and done), shortened the sleeves, and actually lowered the neck. Oh-- I should add too that this was custom made to fit me. And it fit perfectly. If you know me, you know I'm obsessed with tulle skirts, so this dress was absolutely perfect. I loved it. And still do!

My wedding veil: we looked all over for a fingertip length wedding veil and couldn't find one anywhere that wasn't a) crazy expensive or b) one that looked like you dug it out of the 90's. So we made one! We bought the jeweled comb at Claire's for $14.50, so with the tulle, we spent under $20 on my veil. 

We found my bridesmaids' dresses at Dillard's. I had looked ALL over the internet for, again, MODEST and pretty bridesmaids dresses. Nada. Nothing I liked. So we went out on the hunt in physical stores. We went to SO many different stores. Also adding to the mix was that my friend Katelyn had just found out that she was pregnant and so we would needed to find a dress design that would accommodate her lil' growing belly. 

So we found a dress for Laura in the plus size section, and then realized it might be a deign that is ONLY in the plus size. Oops. So we looked and looked around and actually found the ones in the regular misses sizes! YAY! We had to order a couple of them, and mom had to hem most of them as well, but that's way easier than making the entire thing on your own! 

Oh-- and the SHOES! So I had seen photos before where the bride wore sparkly Keds and I just LOVED that idea. I debated and debated whether to buy some for our special day or not. The big hitch? Mom hated them. I think she thought that was the craziest idea ever. "Wearing tennis shoes on your wedding day???" "But they're sparkly, Mom!!" I ended up a pair of rose gold sparkly Keds with my own money (not included in the wedding budget) and I can happily say that I'm glad I did. I LOVED them. They added the perfect amount of fun to the day. 

My girls wore burgundy flats. I knew the minute that we bought the champagne dresses that I wanted red shoes to go with them. And I couldn't find what I wanted ANYWHERE. I looked and looked and looked. And then one day we were at Walmart picking up a few things, and wa-la! There were some flats the PERFECT color! And of course they were super cheap. 

My handsome man. :) We bought his suit, along with the groomsmen's outfits, at Belk. We got a super good deal on it all too. We went with just vests and slacks for the guys because it was cheaper than buying them all suit coats. Plus I love this look!!!

The guys' fun touch was their camo socks. K wasn't too sure about it, but I reassured him that it was totally ok to be wearing crazy socks on your wedding day. ;)

Caroline, our little flower girl! I had her dress custom made from a seller off Etsy, and I LOVE how it turned out! Caroline looked mighty cute in it. :) 

Little Callen's tuxedo was the CUTEST thing ever. He's 2 and a short little guy, so it looked even more adorable because of his size. :) 

Here's the whole crew! 

And one of my favorite photos! Only thing I don't like is that Brian is cut off on the right there. :/ Still love this shot though! 

If you haven't checked out the other wedding posts, you can see an overview of the wedding HERE and some details of the wedding HERE. 

Once again, all of these photos were taken by our awesome photographers, Katie & Alec Photography. 

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?