Week In The Life//Friday

A few of my favorites from Friday. 

Hello morning.

Hello nourishing breakfast. 

Hello mid-afternoon snack and inspiration. 

Hello surprise (and fun!) package in the mail from my brother. 

Hello to changing out frames with new photos. 

Hello clean kitchen. 

Hello weekend. So happy to see you. 

Thanks for stopping by. Have a lovely weekend.  

Week In The Life//Thursday

Since I was feeling a tad under the weather yesterday, I didn't get many photos. I am bummed, but rolling with it. I still journaled though, so I'm happy about that.

Here are the few I took.

Turkey sandwich, chips, veggies and hummus for lunch.

Reading through a twitter interview with Josh Ritter and O magazine.

This for dinner.

Observations//
I have no problem remembering to take pictures of my food.
I'm looking forward to capturing my weekend in photos. Fun things planned.
I'm happy Oprah picked Josh Ritter's book for her summer reading list.

First Pedicures

I'm back again today to show you a layout I made for the Take Out Tuesday project on the Elle's Studio blog. Remember my Week In The Life post for Wednesday when I was trying to track down a package? Well, the package was full of Elle's Studio goodies, which is why I was so crazed to find it. This was my first order from Elle's Studio and it didn't disappoint. I got to work right away! These tags are so, so fun. Will definitely be playing again soon. 

Without further ado....the layout. 

Click on the picture to enlarge.

A couple close-ups.

I changed it up a bit by using three horizontal photos instead of three vertical like Melanie did on her page. But I kept the photos to the left and the journaling and embellishments to the right like she did. I always love when I find new places for inspiration and fun. 

SUPPLIES

Elle's Studio

Turquoise Pennants

Lil' Snippets: Summer

Lil' Snippets: Labeled, Red

Jillibean Soup

Watermelon Gazpacho Soup Paper

Blossom Soup Cardstock Stickers

Corrugated Frames

Sugar Pick

Echo Park

Dots and Stripes Paper

Alpha Stickers

October Afternoon

Authentique

Week In The Life//Wednesday

I'm still at it! Day three of the Week In The Life. I may have jinxed myself, though, when I said I had some momentum. How quickly things can change. After a sleepless night, trying to track down a lost package, and trying to convince a ginormous health insurance company that I'm worthy of coverage, I wasn't much in the mood to document today. But there were some definite highlights and I'm choosing to focus more on those.

Here they are:

A tasty breakfast, while reading one of my favorite magazines.

My happy skirt.

I fell off the healthy lifestyle wagon. But it was oh so good.

I finally found my lost package. Hooray!

Dessert after dinner.

Observations//
It's midweek and I'm still really enjoying this project. I'm surprised by this too, since I went into with a ho-hum attitude.
It's fun anticipating what I captured while I wait for the photos to download.
I'm really enjoying what others are seeing through their lenses.
I'm going to try and shoot broader looks of my surroundings tomorrow.

Week In The Life//Tuesday

A few of my favorite shots from Tuesday.

Up bright and early to sign up for ScrapFest workshops.

Breakfast.

A morning walk.

Errands.

A day brightener.

Lunch. (This was delicious!)

A favorite activity.

Playing with photo booth.

Observations//
Seeing my Monday schedule, I knew I had to peel myself away from the computer today. I took a wonderful morning walk that set the stage for a good day. Need to remember to do this more often.
I took more self portrait photos today.
Still fewer photos later in the day. I think it's because the lighting is so bad later in the day.
Today was much more fun than yesterday. I hope the momentum continues.

Week In The Life//Monday

This week, I'm participating in Ali Edwards' Week In The Life project. You can read more about it here. I've wanted to play along every year, because I think it's such a neat concept, but I could never get myself to do it. But this year, I'm in. Well, at least for this initial day anyway. I'm not quite sure yet how I'm going to document it all. For now, I'm keeping notes and taking photos. I'm also looking forward to seeing what everyone else comes up with.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from the day.

The morning light.

The morning juice. (My morning coffee.)

The morning cereal.

The big sorting/organizing project.

My favorite lunch.

Observations//
I definitely took more photos early on in the day.
I need to be better about getting self portrait shots.
I spend a lot of time at the computer (emailing, job searching, reading blogs, etc.)

I already have ideas for photos tomorrow, so that's a good sign!

Stay tuned...

Echo Park Fresh Faces Campaign

Hellloooooo Friday! I am so happy to see you. This has been a rough week, so I'm very much looking forward to relaxing and regrouping this weekend.

Today, I'm excited to be showcasing three layouts made with Echo Park collections. Echo Park is having a monthly design team call, which I think is a fantastic idea. It's difficult to "break" into this industry and offering this opportunity on a monthly basis is awesome. I am a huge fan of this company. Each collection is always full of awesome patterned papers and fun alphabet stickers. Two of my most favorite things!

My style tends to be linear, clean and structured. I enjoy mixing different patterned papers on my pages and Echo Park papers are always perfect for this. I'll be showing off two of their more recent collections, For The Record and Dots and Stripes--Candy Shoppe.

Layout No. 1 | Resting

You can definitely see my love for linear on this layout. And also my love of white space. I knew I wanted to use a lot of different bits of paper and embellishments, so an easy way to do this is to create a grid. This way I can put a bunch of goodness in each space. I used twine to make the grid. Then I used a square, circle and butterfly punch to punch out various pieces of patterned paper from the For The Record collection. I moved them around until I was happy with where everything was and ta dah, first layout done. Super simple page. 

Here's a close-up.

SUPPLIES
CARDSTOCK | Bazzill Basics
PATTERNED PAPER | Echo Park For The Record
EMBELLISHMENTS | Jillibean Soup
STICKERS | October Afternoon

Layout No. 2 | Things I'd Like To Tell My 18-Year-Old Self

I decided I wanted to make a layout from this blog post. I knew that I wanted an 18-year-old photo, a photo from today and all the journaling, so I built a background for it all to "sit" on.  Since red was common in both photos, I decided to play that color up. I took a big piece of fun patterned paper from For The Record and used it as my base. Then I took a subtler pattern and used a scallop punch to create a fun border. After this, I knew I needed a bit more color and more interest, so I used two different circle punches to create layered homes for an embellishment. I added a bit of washi tape, a few labels and called it done.

SUPPLIES

CARDSTOCK | Bazzill Basics

PATTERNED PAPER | Echo Park For The Record

EMBELLISHMENTS | The Girls' Paperie 

Layout No. 3 | You Love Ponies

I always start with my photos when constructing a page. I had these two of my niece playing with Pretty Ponies. I also knew I needed some space for journaling. I decided to create a base for the photos and then mirror that for the journaling. 

I used the Dots and Stripes collection. Since yellow and blue are worn by my nieces, I chose those two colors to use primarily. I cut a square sheet of the blue stripes a bit bigger than the two 4x6 photos and made a mat. I love yellow and I love dots, so I cut out a strip of this dot paper, but I'm also a hoarder, so I didn't want to use up the entire sheet! Below that I added a scalloped border sticker from the element sticker sheet. 

To add a bit of interest and create a visual triangle, I added a star banner from the sticker sheet to the top left. Then I added a series of banners cut from the patterned paper to the top right. To those, I added butterflies and a letter sticker from the sticker sheet. Lastly, I added half of a circle journaling spot from the element sticker sheet to the bottom middle, where I also added the date. 

Finally, I added my title and my journaling. I outlined "love" in brown ink to make it pop against the white background. Easy peasy. 

Here's a close-up.

SUPPLIES

CARDSTOCK | Bazzill Basics

PATTERNED PAPER | Echo Park Dots and Stripes

EMBELLISHMENTS | Echo Park Dots and Stripes Letter and Element Stickers 

ALPHABET STICKERS | October Afternoon

I'm looking forward to the releases from Summer CHA, especially Happy Days.

To see more of my layouts using Echo Park product, look here. 

Thanks for stopping by. Have a fabulous weekend.

Glimpse

Enjoying fresh flowers.

Reading. Always reading.

Thinking up new projects and ideas for layouts.

Staying active. I started running again!

Snacking on blueberries.

Soccer Star

I love Studio Calico. I love their design team. I love their member gallery. It's a really supportive community. And best of all, there's tons of inspiration. I'd love to be able to get their monthly kits, but I'm not in a place where I can afford that right now. But, thankfully, they sell some papers separately and I recently bought some from the Countryside and State Fair collections. I love their papers; awesome patterns, colors and quality. I decided to play along with their Sunday Sketch.

Here's my take.

I had a lot of fun making this page. It was fun to choose a bunch of different patterns to serve as my frame. I also added a few splats of mist, which always make me happy. Besides Studio Calico, I also used Jillibean Soup and October Afternoon.

Here's a close-up.

You can see more of my work in the Studio Calico gallery. The link is over there on the right hand column of my blog under My Scrap Pages.

Thanks for stopping by!

Ten on Tuesday

1| Sadly, last week was fairly blah. There's not too much to report, but I'll do my best to keep this interesting. Nice way to start, huh?

2| I've been working out consistently for a little over a week. I know it's just a week, but I celebrate the little victories. I continue to really enjoy yoga. I need to get out and take more walks though.

3| I'm looking forward to all the new product coming out at CHA Chicago. A lot of great, new partnerships. I can't wait for the product to hit the stores.

4| The humidity and high temps have finally broken. Thank goodness. That combo strips me of much of my energy.

5| I ran into a fellow colleague the other day and she said she's almost finished with a scrap project. She has visited a city in MN starting with each letter of the alphabet and she's making a book out of it. How cool is that?! My sister was surprised I hadn't thought to do it.

6| Every summer my family gets together for a week. Every year I think up crafty projects for the kids to do. I've started to think of projects for this year and I'm having a ball.

7| I finished Josh Ritter's new book, Bright's Passage. I'm not surprised that it was a fantastic novel. He's a fantastic songwriter and he transferred this talent to writing a book. I'm in awe of this guy's talent. He's amazing. You can read the first chapter here.

8| I'm looking forward to eating this this weekend.

9| And let's face it, I'm really looking forward to having this.

10| Finding that cupcake recipe has reminded me that one of the things on my 33 list is to go on a cupcake tour. I have to get on that!

Here's to a productive week!

Getting Messy

Recently, I felt like mixing it up a bit. Sometimes I get in a rut with my usual style and it feels good to do something different. Since I typically have a cleaner, more linear style, I decided to do something messy. I got out a Jenni Bowlin paint dauber. These are really cool. Much easier than getting out paints and brushes, etc. I used a template with a bunch of little circles on it and dabbed the paint randomly. I also did a bit of doodling and used some scraps. The page came together quite easily. It is now one of my favorite layouts.

Here's a close-up.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a lovely weekend.

Thankful Thought No. 3

I'm so thankful that my niece has started to show interest in playing tennis. We have had fun hitting the ball in the great summer sun. I hope we get to play many more times this summer.

I'm playing along with Ali Edwards' Thankful Thought series. You can download the photo overlays on her blog for free.

Spotlight On The City|Pianos On Parade

Today, I'm debuting a new occasional series called Spotlight On The City. Since I've been unemployed, I've had to get creative with how I spend my time and money. I adore this city and I didn't want to crawl under a rock during this time. I wanted to stay positive and continue to enjoy life. So, I plan to share the free and/or affordable ways to take advantage of this great place I call home.

First up is Pianos On Parade. A joint venture between Keys 4/4 Kids and Mayor Coleman's Office. Pianos on Parade brings 20 pianos, each transformed by local artists, to the community to play and enjoy. The pianos are placed all over the city; in parks, on street corners, in neighborhoods, and anyone can play them. I think this is such a brilliant idea. I strongly believe that celebrating the arts (in all forms) adds to the health and vitality of a community.

My two nieces are excellent piano players, so I knew this would make an excellent adventure that they, my sister and I could go on. I mapped out our adventure, determining the best way to see the most pianos. We had a beautiful day to explore the city, people watch, and add a little music to the streets. Many of the pianos were in very public places and my nieces had no problem sitting down and starting to play. This will definitely be a day I will remember.