How did I not know about Traci Reed before now?

I believe I have found a new favorite - tracireeddesign.  She has journal cards, templates (with stitching, without stitching, with stitching and plastic overlays - seriously, where have these been all year for me?!  I'm going to have to go back and redo many of my pages with stitching!!!!) and embellishments that are really realistic.

Here is what I have done so far with several of her product lines.  She has a few "Get Artsy" collaborations over at Sweet Shoppe Designs that you will want to be sure to check out.  They make art journaling in the digital world not only easy, but FUN.

This first layout features cards, alphas and brushes from the Get Artsy: Love collaboration by Traci Reed and Jenn Barrette.  When I saw the pinks, I knew I had to have it to record the memory of my 6 year old's Christmas ballet performance.

Template/Overlay: Traci Reed 365Unscripted Plastic Stitched Grids

Cards, Paint, Embellishments/Overlay: Get Artsy: Love by Traci Reed and Jenn Barrette

And then, I found the Old Time Magic collection.  Oh.  My.  Word.  We are, as you may have guessed, a Disney people.  Late this year, our family bought annual passes to Walt Disney World.  Needless to say, let the scrapbooking ensue.  The layout below is a perfect marriage of Traci Reed's Old Time Magic collections with a little Project Mouse by Sahlin Studio thrown in for fun.

Template: 11November13 by Sahlin Studio

Cards/Elements/Brushes: Old Time Magic (various) by Traci Reed and Project Mouse (various) by Sahlin Studio

This final layout is true project life style, with the twist of an added overlay for the feel of using plastics on a physical layout.  Traci's Our Everyday collection has 2x2 and 4x4 square cards in addition to the more traditional 3x4 and 4x6 Project Life sizes.  I was first introduced to using these cards by Becky Higgins' Just Add Color core kit and am so excited to see other designers following suit with more cards and even more templates to use.  I'm always thrilled to find elements from one designer that work well with another, and the photo overlay from the Just Add Color kit worked perfectly with this set.  And the fact that there was a "Family" 4x4 card in the set to use with these pictures?  Priceless.

Template: 365Unscripted Slipins 5 by Traci Reed

Cards/Elements: 365Unscripted Our Everyday by Traci Reed, 365 Unscripted Oh Snap by Traci Reed

Overlay: Just Add Color by Becky Higgins/Digital Project Life

I can't wait to acquire more of the Get Artsy collection and play more with using the art journal style both within Project Life-style and traditional layouts!

Dabbling with Just Jaimee's products and art journaling

Recently, I have been introduced to a couple of new designers.  The first is Just Jaimee.
She has a unique collection of monthly themed kits called Storytellers.  Each kit contains everything needed to put together either project life style or traditional scrapbooking layouts.  I did both and had a great time doing so!

Template: inspired by Lori Whitlock

Cards/elements: November Storyteller Collection by Just Jaimee

Template: 11November13 by Sahlin Studio

Cards/elements: November Storyteller Collection by Just Jaimee

These templates were my first foray into very basic art journal style scrapbooking (think messy, gorgeous art - paint, spatters, layers of paper, etc).  Art and paint without the mess?  Yes please!

Look what's coming....

For the first time, I will be participating in December Daily scrapbooking.  I have always taken a ton of pictures during December and, well, not done a whole lot with them.  

After seeing the December Story Collection from SuzyQ Scraps (whose site is currently down - link to come), I opted to go with more subdued, neutral colors for the majority of this album.  And the concept of december daily really appealed to me.  I am going to attempt to take one picture per day in December (I know some days there will be many more, but for now, the goal is one.  Underpromise and overdeliver, right?) and document our family Advent and Christmas traditions.

Pleased to present the cover page... Here we go!

Disney.world! (take one)

We took off to Walt Disney World for a long weekend in October and I have just now completed the pages with those pictures.  I plan to put these in a separate 12x12 album (this one, to be exact) so that the girls can enjoy flipping through all of our 2013-2014 Disney adventures at once.

For these pages, I used a combination of Lori Whitlock-inspired templates, Just Add Color templates, the Becky Higgings Just Add Color Kit and various and assorted pieces and parts of Project Mouse Bundle No 1 and Fantasy kits.

Our cover page:

Pages specific to this trip:

Are we there yet?

Excited to ride the parking tram!

Animal Kingdom

More AK

Hakuna Matata

Amelia's first MK visit (yes, I cried)

It's a world of laughter...

See you real soon!

Anna's 6th birthday bash

It is hard to believe that our little girl is 6.  Her big gift was a new American Girl doll and we took a few friends to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory followed by a shopping trip to the American Girl store.  Fun times.

First, some random pictures...

And now, the unboxing of Saige.  The picture of Anna hugging her new doll was just so touching, it had to be big!

Next, lunch with giggly girls at the cheesecake factory...

And now, for the sparkliest (is that even a word?) pages I have created to date:

The above pages were created using Lori Whitlock and Project Life Templates, Journal card "halvsies" by Splendid Fiins and journal cards and papers from the February kit by Splendid Fiins.  The American girl pages were created using the "All American Girl" kit by Wyld Peas on Etsy.

Getting pages done...

I have newfound momentum to get these pages rolling.  My oldest daughter, who is now 6, asked me why we don't have a closet full of photo albums "like grandma and grandpa do".  I realized that I am the main memory keeper in our family and, as such, I need to get on it!  Two more pages between yesterday and today.  I'm pretty pleased with them!  

Some February pages:

Up next... Anna's American Girl girl of the year, Saige, birthday unboxing and her 6th birthday party!  Above pages done with elements from Splendid Fiins and the Miss Mint Life in Pictures collection.

Switched to monthly PL.... progress!

I decided that, since I was largely unable to keep up with my own personal pressure of finishing scrapbook pages as.soon.as.the.week.was.over (read: completely fell off the motivation wagon), I would try to accomplish a monthly spread of however many pages it would take.  It worked.  Not having to compartmentalize things by week proved to be just what the photoshop doctor ordered.  I have 6 pages, give or take, for January.  Here are 4 that are complete.  Things I am playing with:

• Framing photos.  Page 1 has framed photos.  I'm not sure whether this is necessary, but Jessica Sprague seems to think so.  I will see what they look like printed.
• Embellishments.  I am digging through my files to see what I've got that can work for the day to day.  I'd like for this to look more like a true scrapbook layout and less like an album that I just stuck pictures in, but at the same time, too much ribbon and glitter is too much. 
• Wacom bamboo tablet - loving using this for handwriting, but not confident that my writing is neat enough yet to journal with it.  Practice makes perfect, I hope!
• Background - right now it is grey.  I haven't figured out how to work with background images just yet.

So, here they are... 

page 1:

 page 2:

 page 3

 page 4

Please do let me know your thoughts... I'm working with different options for the last two pages, several unrelated, disjointed pictures but ones I really do wish to include in the album.  I may turn them into instagram templates/collages and see how they look and just use a page full of 4x6's.

Cheers.

Week 3, done! (I have not fallen off the face of the earth... yet)

We were faced with the tummy bug about a week ago, so I have fallen behind on my pages.  I did, however, complete the week that ended last Sunday... I am going to start where I am, so I will be working on current stuff and tackling the first two weeks of the year as I have time.

Particularly giddy about the insta-collage on the left page for this week...

Title page for PL 2013

Finally getting started on Project Life 2013 for our family.  Here is the title page... I am going to take two instagram pics of the dogs and put them on the polka dot card together.

Julia's Cover Page

Here is Julia's cover page.  We bought a DSLR a few months before Julia was born.  In spending time looking through and organizing pictures for this project, I was struck by just how much clearer the photo quality is between our old point and shoot and the SLR.  I was also surprised to realize that the camera is at least 4 years old (if not older, since it was the "floor model" at Costco!).

Anna's Cover Page

I put together two more baby book cover pages tonight.  It's amazingly easy to just drop pictures into place.

I do wonder if it is "cheating" just a little bit to create essentially the same book for all three girls.  The details, pictures and journaling/memories will be unique to each girl, so I'm guessing a completed book is better than no book at all, right?

As I find more elements to use on my pages, I may come back and change or add to these title pages.  This is what makes digital scrapbooking so... cool... being able to come back after the fact and completely alter the look of a page is a little harder to do with paper.  Not to mention if I were to bring out paper, the 5 year old would want to write a story with it, the 4 year old would  attack it with scissors and the 18 month old would want to throw it in the trash.  Such is my life.  Thank God for digital.

Here is Anna's cover page... Julia's will follow in another post.

Amelia's title page, take two.

After looking at that footprint photo again, I realized that I needed to capture the footsies on the paper in addition to her inky toes.  This is going to be fun... and look out when I get my PL Core edition download(s) on Monday.  How on earth am I going to be able to choose just one color scheme?

And I have to admit that I'm a little giddy that I have comments on my previous post.

First digital Project Life layout - Amelia's cover page

After reacquainting myself with PSE 11, I created the cover page for Amelia's first year book.  I will likely be changing this, but now that I have done one layout, as long as I am organized with photos and journaling, the process is fairly painless.

Constructive criticism welcome!

Project Life

Happy 2013!

The purpose of this blog, for now, will be for me to make sense, once again, of digital scrapbooking as I dive into something new... Project Life.  I have long been frustrated at my apparent lack of time/patience for scrapbooking and, in turn, frustrated that I fail to keep up with our family's memory keeping.  My Mom, God love her, has album upon album of pictures chronicling our family's growth and experiences through the years.  As it stands now, if my daughters were to come to me 20 years from now and ask about pictures, I'd have to hand them a disk.  Or a drive.  Or say, "Hmm, I wonder what happened to that old computer?"

I may decide to take on other topics, but at present I have no plans other than a place to easily post stuff once I create it.

I will be taking an online workshop over at www.jessicasprague.com starting on Monday.  Between now and then, the goal is to research, plan, and collect materials to start this project.  It'll be real.  It'll be fun.  Here's hoping it's real(ly) fun.