fall 2015 layouts

While I love some bright, summery layouts, there's something so visually pleasing about moody, fall colors. These layouts are from the last few months. Love me some fall!

Products used: Woodridge Journaling Cards, Agenda Journaling Cards, Woodridge 

Products used: Better Together 

Products used: Honeycrisp, Honeycrisp Journaling Cards

farewell to summer

You guys, as a serious blog reader for 7+ years, it always bugged me when bloggers wrote about blogging. But now, as a blogger, I understand the urge- you want to explain yourself, maybe apologize and explain the weaknesses of this platform. So I'll just say that consistent blogging is hard and I tip my hat to those that pull it off.

Ok, now that that's out of the way, let's get to the layout...

As a pocket scrapbooker, I mostly just do a weekly layouts, and for the most part, that's fine. But I wanted one page where my kids could look and remember all the fun things we did this past summer. So I used my go-to grid method and made an 8x10'' insert. On the back, I just listed the highlights of what we did.

I used Ali Edwards brush set, "So Long Summer"  

See this cute circle thing at the top? It's a brush set I stumbled upon at Pixels and Co and it's just $1 right now. 

Look at all the possibilities! It's fun, right?

the latest and greatest - one little bird edition

Summer layouts are so fun to make! They're light, airy, bright and colorful! They're also time consuming because we're doing so many fun things and all those things have to be documented! I've done more inserts this summer than ever before- inserts are my new jam (but that's for another post). Here are some full size summer layouts using One Little Bird products:

I love the color scheme for this collection called "Cabana"

This layout only has a few elements from the "Frolic" collection, but that's how I roll- lots of pictures, a few pretty things and call it good.

I LOVE a patriotic color scheme. I used red white and blue with a hint of mint to document our summer vacation in Utah. This kit, "Nosh" was meant to be all about food, but I went a different direction. 

Doesn't this scream summer? Our day at the state fair was a big deal to my little kids, so we had to make a whole layout documenting the fun. The kit, "Ready, Set, Go" is full of oranges and yellows that just really get me in that summer vibe. The journaling cards are some of my favorite, too.

why drop shadows are da bomb

Drop shadows are really big in the digital scrapbooking world. The shadows are the key to making something look 3D- making it look like it's not digital, but like there's a real element on the page. I didn't get into drop shadows until recently and I feel like it's a game changer. Now, I don't use a lot of elements typically like a traditional digital scrapbooker would. My pocket page style is very minimalist and empty of too many doo-dads. BUT, here's where drop shadows come in handy. I like to use a lot of white text or photoshop brushes on top of pictures or patterned paper, but sometimes the white is a bit tricky to see. This is where a subtle drop shadow comes in. This is the title card I am currently working on. I wanted to use this light tan color paper with a slight texture from the One Little Bird Suncatcher paper set with white text, but the text was a little bit lost:

So for each layer (the text and the box around it) I added a drop shadow- used the linear burn mode, and did a 15% opacity with a 3px distance and size. Just eyeball it until it looks right. I try to keep it nice and subtle.

So here you have the finished card. Clean, simple and slightly easier to read than the first version.

As an FYI, this font is called AW Conqueror Carved and I have been using it all the time because I love it so much. I set the tracking to 100 to space the letters out a little more. I like the look it gives. Happy scrapping and shadowing!

If you're looking for a detailed post on shadowing, check out THIS from the OLB blog.

OLB Creative Team Work

Hello! I've been in a creative funk lately. It comes and goes and it's pretty natural, so I don't worry. But I just finished a layout for One Little Bird and thought I'd share the last few I've created.

My style gravitates towards lots of pictures and white space and little patterns/embellishments BUT without those embellishments it wouldn't be scrapbooking, it'd just a be a photo album, right? So I'm trying to embrace the pretty stuff and be ok with not having 8 pictures on each page. The struggle is real, people! ;-)

(my first layout has 8 pictures on it! Oops!!)

One Little Bird's At Week's End Journal Cards

Ali Edwards Messy Daily Circles

Fete Digital Kit

One Little Bird's The Love List Journal Cards

Ali Edward's Story of My Life

One Little Bird's Postscript Journaling Cards

One Little Bird's Postscript Papers

Joining the Birdcage!

I'm delighted to announce that I've joined the digital creative team of One Little Bird Designs!

You may remember I guest blogged for OLB in December, and I am so thrilled to be a full-time member of the creative team for 2015. I KNOW this will get my creative juices flowing! ;-)

Stay tuned for some new layouts in the works with some lovely OLB products. The paper packs are my favorite. I just picked up the Suncatcher papers and the Fete kit to use in my 5 year olds' birthday party layout! Aren't these colors combinations perfect!? Can't wait to start creating with these pretty patterns.

One Little Bird Store

One Little Bird Website & Blog

From the Monitor to the Album - Printing Project Life at Home

I've been printing my Project Life layouts at home since I first started in January 2012. I've learned a LOT about printing photos since then and I'd love to share what I've learned. This should be useful for people who are beginners and maybe some tips for those who have already been doing this a while.

So this is what a layout looks like once I've designed all the "cards" and arranged them into my templates in Photoshop (FYI, I used to not bother laying them out in templates first- I just printed my photos and arranged them later. Either way works!):

Next, I open an 11 x 8.5" document in Photoshop and drag over one of my cards:

Now this is fine, but once I print it out, how will I know where to cut the lines? I USED to do a light gray background behind all the cards so I could see where to cut UNTIL a lovely Instagram friend shared with me a little trick. Select the layer of card you want outlined. Then click EDIT>STROKE and this box will pop up:

I add a 1 px light gray border to all of my cards. It looks like this (look closely, the line is faint!):

Then bring three more "cards" onto the document and do the same thing (you have to select the layer in the layers palette before you choose EDIT>STROKE)

I try to align the edges as much as possible to make paper cutting easier.

If you fit two 6x4 cards and two 3x4 cards onto a page, there's little waste and you just need two 8.5 x 11" pieces of photo paper per 12x12" layout.

I LOVE Costco Kirkland's Photo Paper and here's the post about where I buy printer ink for cheap.

Let me know if you have any questions or other methods of printing cards! I'm curious to hear how you do things!

Project Life - One Pagers

I can't stop singing the praises of a ONE page weekly layout. A lot of people are moving more towards a looser- monthly format, but I love sitting down each Sunday night and working on the previous week. So I do love weekly, but it IS a bit much some weeks. A lot of weeks we just do the same routine- eat out once or twice, go to the gym, go on bike rides, etc. Of course all of that is worth documenting, but not at the tune of two 12x12 pages each week. That's why a single page can often sum up the week without feeling like it's a task. Done is better than perfect.

Here are some of my favorite, recent one-page layouts.

 Supplies used: One Little Bird Weekly Edition Journaling Brush 

Ali Edwards Everyday Labels

Ali Edwards Prompts Digital

Supplies used: One Little Bird Weekly Edition Journaling Brush 

Ali Edwards Everyday Labels

Supplies used: One Little Bird Weekly Edition Journaling Brush 

Ali Edwards Hello Life Boxes

Ali Edwards What Today Looked Like

Latest AE Creative Team Layouts

Being on the AE Digital Creative Team is great - it keeps me going with (loose) deadlines and trying new things. I especially love how Ali's brushes add a handwritten feel to my layouts. Her brushes and handwriting just looks so effortless, right? Love it. Here are some of my latest creations I've submitted:

This layout uses the Hello Goals brushes 

This layout uses the Hello Life Boxes 2015 brushes

This layout uses the Daily Digital brushes and was used in my Week in the Life album (which is not yet finished!)

Calendaring - My First Love

This post is a long time coming. I love calendaring - but I'm pretty sure that's not even the right word for it. In a nutshell, I love using calendars to write down things AFTER they've happened. Sure, I write down what's going to happen, like appointments and such, but what I really love doing is writing down what has already happened. I can tell you with 90% accuracy every restaurant I've eaten at in the last 3 years because I write it down. (and who wouldn't want that information!?)

Let's backup. It started in high school. I've always been the organized, type-A pre-teen/teenager and I have notebooks to prove it. ;-) I would buy these ordinary planners from Office Max and decorate the front of them with magazine cutouts. Then use packing tape to "laminate" the cover.

Kind of embarrassing to see Paul Walker (RIP) taped onto the front of my planner, but it is what it is.

I brought my planner to school with me every day and filled in the blanks when I got bored in class. Apparently I got really bored in class because I also colored and added quotes, etc. Check out 16 year old Emily's life:

I know this isn't a substitute for old-fashioned journaling about your feelings, etc. but this is even better, in some ways. This gives me a peek into the life of 16-year-old Emily. I can see how often she worked (I had 3 jobs at one point), who she studied with, who she baked cookies for (who the heck was Shane!?), when she accidentally skipped class, etc. All of these little facts help paint the picture of what my life was like at this time. This is like a mini time capsule and I LOVE it.

I continued this method through college and once I got married and had kids, I started doing the same things, but with wall calendars:

I've got 2010 - 2014 all together in a nearby drawer. You know what's a fun game? Getting all of them out then ask, what were we doing on this day last year? And the year before that? And the year before that? Ok, only fun for nerds like me.

For 2015, I'm heading back to my high school days with this spiral-bound planner. I realized when the calendar is hanging on the wall it's less convenient to write what's going on, so, duh, why not use a desk planner.

At the end of the year, you can know, with pretty good accuracy how many dates you went on, how many times your kids got sick, your favorite restaurants (based on frequency), what movies you saw in the theaters, how often you visited your dentist, how many days you went to the gym, etc. I love knowing this stuff! Is that weird? If it's wrong, I won't want to be right. ;-)

What do you guys think? Do you use your calendar to record what happens?

Hop On It!

Ali Edwards brush from the "Hello Goals" set

January feels so good, doesn't it? So much possibility. So much potential. It's obviously psychological since there's no real difference between December 29 and January 3, but it just feels good to feel like this year can be different. This year I can be better, do better.

Last week I was telling my husband about my new philosophy on dealing with little things that bother me. I told him that when a light bulb goes out, I'm going to replace it immediately. When something has been on the garage floor that needs to go up on a big shelf, I'm just going to do it. No waiting for things to magically happen all the while cursing whatever that thing is. I explained my new philosophy in way too many words, and Jeremy said, "Yeah, hop on it." And I'm like YES- HOP ON IT! And my 2015 motto was born. I chipped my front tooth (minorly) and instead of waiting weeks and complaining about it, I called the dentist and got it fixed the next day. I was sick of seeing my master bathroom unpainted, so I painted it! Get my drift? Make it happen. Fix the things that drive you crazy including unsubscribing from every email list that takes you away from things you really want to be doing. Hop on it. It's already working magic in my life and maybe it will in yours, too.