Project Life May 2013 continued

I really like how this week turned out. It includes Corey meeting Grumpy Cat, a pack walk, buying flowers for 2 of my favorite people, 2 students watering our class garden, Mad Men, Star Trek Into Darkness, a funny hat bike ride, and The Preakness Stakes.

A closer look...The Born in the USA thing came from the packaging Corey's flowers came in. I also wanted to note that Corey meets celebrities constantly at his job and rarely takes pictures of them for himself, but he couldn't resist when Grumpy Cat came to the station.

Another post card saved from advertising days used for finishing season 2 of Mad Men, mounted on a junk mail card:

Vellum and patterned paper:

Star Trek pic printed off the internet, and Liberty Market sign pic taken by me:

The sign pic goes with a bike ride my friend Stephanie organized with her bf. I added a sticker to the pics on the left and used part of their invitation for a caption on the pic on the right:

Here's the whole page, mostly about the bike ride but I fit the Preakness from the previous day in too:

Again I used the invitation as my background here. Saved me from journaling the who, what, when, where...

Coincidentally the canal we rode along was constructed exactly 100 years before. It says, "WATER FROM THE SALT RIVER RUNS THROUGH THE CITY":

This pic from the Preakness is from the newspaper. I just added journaling and a sticker:

Again, you can be creative with the materials you find around you to scrapbook with. The only traditional supplies I used were 3 stickers, 4 scraps of patterned paper, a post-it note, and a vellum die cut.

Project Life May 2013

It's been awhile since I shared my pages but I'm still doing Project Life and loving it. I'm almost done with November.

This week documents a card for Teacher Appreciation Day, watching Dbacks baseball, Survivor, and Mad Men, rereading The Great Gatsby, having a clean-a-thon in the bedroom, and Captain enjoying the backyard.

Angi remembers me on Teacher Appreciation Day every year with a card mailed to the school. So thoughtful. Glad I have this Project as a place to display this super cool card and remind me of one of the many special things she does for me.

The Dbacks logo on the base is from some junk mail, and the Survivor sticker came with a Buff we bought. Reduce, reuse, recycle!

I have a postcard book featuring women in advertising through the years. I tore out this ad from 1962 which is when this season of Mad Men took place. I'm more likely to look at it in here than in the postcard book.

I saved the Chipotle bag, cut out the talk bubble, filled it with brown cardstock, and filled in my own journaling from the night (a run-on sentence but really this is for me right?). More waste saved from the recycle bin!

Spoiler alert from 2 Survivor seasons ago! Cochran wins, and Corey and I were very happy about it. I printed this pic off the internet.

Captain Skippyjon Jones loves relaxing in the "creepy crawly" and it makes for a nice photo op, don't you think? I just added a little scrapbook paper at the bottom.

Just a reminder for people who say scrapbooking is too expensive...on this entire page I only used 3 scraps of scrapbook paper, a post it note, and some letter stickers. The rest of the materials are things I had on hand or scavenged from my life that week, + photographs. You can do it too!

golden

It's Fall Colors Week at Poppytalk, which inspires me to share cute things I've found on the internet.

When it comes to golden, I don't know anyone cuter and more golden than C3PO. Not the Droid is by Laura Kate. If you go to her blog you can download C3PO and your other favorites for free to use in your Project Life scrapbook. I also recommend checking out her Project Life pages.

Project Life March continued

This is my other favorite week (visually) from March:

It documents the girls ganging up on a cricket, a text from my nephew, watching Napoleon Dynamite, the first day of spring, and spring in our backyard.

Recently I started printing the pictures family and friends text me to include in this Project. This way I can include the people who live far away that are still a part of my life. This picture is of a card and Weekly Reader about Ireland I sent my nephew for St. Patrick's Day, which he texted as a thank you. Love that kid!

Napoleon Dynamite was on t.v. and we got sucked in. I saved this Napoleon Dynamite chapstick packaging when I got it a very long time ago, and my paper hoarding tendencies paid off. The journaling is on the back (see below).

My Favorite Season is from a Smash pad. I popped out the other seasons, put some patterned paper behind it, wrote some journaling, and stamped the date.

On the left you see Caprica Six guarding our backyard. I added the 24/7 sticker since we joke that she is always on duty. She takes her job very seriously.

On the right is a picture I took of an orange tree blossom. I love the smell of our citrus trees blooming. The quote I used came pre-printed on vellum. One of the nice things about this Project is that you don't have to figure out how to adhere your vellum without it showing. This time I just trimmed the quote and slid it in over my picture, no adhesive required!

Maybe I should post more of my pages because now I see I've made a mistake here: it's March not April. Off to fix it...

I'm back. Another beautiful Arizona sunset! I added a Home sticker and Thickers for the title.

The rest of the week documents my book club meeting to discuss Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, finishing Dragons of Winter Night, a family pack walk, playing Hangman with my class, a factoid about the moon, Survivor, a phone call from my sister, and getting the dogs nails trimmed.

I used a magazine ad and stamped it. Free and saved from the landfill!

The distance to the moon was mentioned in The Secret Life of Bees which I was reading that week so I wanted to include it. Luckily I went to the internet to double check the distance before I included it because it was wrong in the book. Actually I went to many websites that gave various distances so I finally settled on the one that had a range of distances since the moon gets closer and farther. That one made the most sense to me so that's what I went with. Hopefully it's right!

I used some scraps of patterned paper, letter stickers, and a sticker (couldn't believe I had a sticker with the moon on hand!). The patterned paper had a star already punched out of it so I highlighted it by rubbing some white stamp ink along the edges.

Finally we have an unfortunate victim of Survivor which I printed off the internet, and the back of the Napoleon Dynamite chapstick packaging (it's as cute as the front) where I added some paper flags for journaling. Free and saved from the landfill!

Project Life March

I'm currently working on June but I'm behind on my posting. Here is another favorite week of mine, but I had to cover a lot of it to share on the internet because I have a lot of pictures of kids from my school.

This week documents a student earning a Happy Meal for completing all of his timed tests in math, my tutoring kids, giving Strega Nona her medicine, the new pope getting elected, a field trip to the Arizona Science Center (best field trip ever!), spelling with Play-Doh, and finding some clips from my Amazon wishlist in Target.

I used a felt blue star border for my math star, and Lego letters for my tutoring kids. I used packaging from the Sparrow Clips to share the story of coveting the clips for so many years.

My friend Alana gave me a guinea pig calendar from Etsy a few years ago when she was my secret santa. I saved it and cut out all the cute guinea pig pics at the end of the year. I got those out to document Strega Nona getting her medicine and found the one of a pope guinea pig. Coincidentally this was the same week the pope was voted in so I had to use it. I don't know why I followed the story so closely on NPR all week, being an agnostic, but it was interesting to learn about the special shoes and all that stuff. However, Corey and I had a little off-color joke about it which is why it's covered for you. We are pretty PC people but sometimes we can't help ourselves.

Here's the rest of the week which documents the boys basketball team winning the championship, watching The Fighter and Property Brothers, and having lunch at Jimmy John's on St. Patrick's Day.

I printed The Fighter movie poster from the internet but The Property Brothers came from a magazine ad. I had a marathon and graded a lot of papers that night. Probably something I normally wouldn't deem interesting enough to share but with their picture from the ad I had to do it.

When we go to Jimmy John's I try to save the tape that holds my sandwich closed for this Project. I'm sure they had a whole team of people working on that tape design which saves me some crafting time. The St. Patrick's Day card came from an old Creating Keepsakes magazine insert. I cut it out and painted the letters with watercolor paint. It feels good to bust out the paint every now and then.

There's also an 8.5x11 insert this week. I made a collage pic from the multitude of exciting pictures I took on our field trip. It's a great way to get up to 20 pictures on one page which is why I mention it, but of course I can't share it because of all the innocent little faces on there. I get my collage prints from Walgreens but you can also make one yourself using Photoshop and help from The Nerd Nest.

Project Life March

This weekend documents getting a card from Corey, the books I purchased at the VNSA book sale, a knitting night with my friend Audrey, and picking weeds in the front yard.

Usually I remember to snap a pic of Audrey with her knitting project when we get together, but this time I forgot. Instead I used a picture of a giant ball of yarn I had saved from a magazine on the left side. On the right side I put my journaling on the packaging from some clothespins I purchased on a Target run we made together. The packaging was so cute that I had to save it from the recycle bin! My favorite part is at the top where I wrote the new knitting moves/pattern I learned that night: k2, yo, sl1, k2tog, psso, yo, k1.

The 3 spaces next to Saturday are devoted to Sunday.

First I used a letter from the HOA as my journaling space. They left a space for comments so I commented! We decided on our own that we needed to pick weeds on that Sunday. Later in the week I finally got around to opening what I thought was junk mail, but it was the HOA letter which coincidentally set that Sunday as the deadline to get our weeds taken care of! Phew.

While picking weeds I noticed we have a friend nesting in our mesquite tree. Birds love that tree and I wonder if it's the same one that nested there last year.

And a "before" shot of our yard. Notice the patterned paper I used in the back. Probably one of the first pieces I ever bought and when I think about using it for a traditional scrapbook page I see why I still have it. However, I think it works great for this kind of Project.

Project Life February part 4

This is one of my favorite pages so far! It covers one weekend: volleyball practice on Friday, a trip to the Musical Instrument Museum on Saturday, and the VNSA Book Sale on Sunday.

I think the spirit of Louis Armstrong was with me when I made my Musical Instrument Museum collage. I used 2 photos, 1 brochure, 1 scrap of patterned paper, and 1 greeting card to create it. The brochure is in the top left and bottom right slots. The photos are in the top left and right slots. The greeting card is in the top right and bottom right slots.

If you've never been to the Musical Instrument Museum you should definitely go. I think I could go 2 more times and still not see everything!

Project Life February part 3

This week documents a Youtube video that made me laugh, a birthday bulletin I made for the break room at work, 2 pack walks, and working the scoreboard at the boy's basketball game at school.

This video was the highlight of my day so I had to document it. Of course when I googled Sesame Street Sure Shot I was able to find images from the video which I printed out at home. My favorite part was Grover playing the flute. I added a sticky note shaped like a talk bubble and wrote in some lyrics that tickle me: I've got more rhymes than I've got gray hairs! And that's a lot because I've got my share! True dat.

I was in charge of making the birthday bulletin for February. Since Arizona's birthday is in February I decided to forgo the traditional pink and red and instead created a giant paper Arizona state flag. This picture shows how I did it, by finding the flag on the computer, projecting it on my Smartboard, taping paper on top and tracing. It was a lot of work but I got a lot of compliments so it was worth it.

Finally I wanted to document that I watched the State of the Union address. I could have written my own recap but I let the newspaper do it for me. I just slipped the section into a 12x12 protector. I bet that will be fun to pull out and read again in later years. Although it wasn't free I did save it from the recycle bin.

Project Life February continued

Here's another page I really like. It only covers 3 days of the week but it's chock full of information.

Here's a bit of Arizona humor (but Corey and I may be the only ones who find me funny). Corey did a story about the border and texted me these 2 pics while he was away. When the story aired I laughed at the wacky Is the border secure? graphic the station added for hype. Thinking of that graphic while looking at the 2 pics he sent of a giant fence and some cows I feel like we have our answer.

This shows another reason why I've switched to a Project Life style of scrapbooking. I had an incredible dream that I was riding my old horse Thunder through these crowds of people in a stadium. I was looking for the staging area of a parade we were supposed to be in. Just like when I used to ride her in the old days, people kept admiring her and giving me compliments about her. This gave me an excuse to dig out an old picture of us in a parade that never got scrapbooked. I get to include my dearly missed friend in a scrapbook while documenting a dream, and I also scanned the picture before including it.

I love Chipotle and they put your food in the best bags. Now I have a great factoid about the earth while saving a piece of the bag from the landfill (although I recycled the rest). Is anyone getting sick of me saying "Free and saved from the landfill" yet? When I tell people I love scrapbooking they almost always say, "It's so expensive!" I just want to point out that it doesn't have to be. You can find materials to use all around you. The important thing is getting your memories documented.

May the fourth be with you!

Happy National Scrapbook Day and Happy Kentucky Derby Day! I had fun getting 13 slots done for Project Life while watching Orb win the Derby. I was rooting for Palace Malice, Oxbow, and Charming Kitten.

P.S. Singing in the rain Storm Trooper came from Wtfeck Pictures.

Project Life February

This is the weekend side of one of my pages. The Superbowl picture came from the newspaper (free and saved from the landfill!).

I finished reading an amazing book called Satchmo: The Wonderful World and Art of Louis Armstrong by Steven Brower. Did you know he used to make collages and scrapbook?! The picture I used of Louis is a greeting card.

Using the Nerd Nest's Photoshop help I printed the cover of a book I bought online with a gift card. Gift card included with print out of book cover and journaling.

We also walked the dogs with our friends and their giant puppies. Stickers are from Angi.

Almost revealed my secret pirate lair address, then took another picture with an arrow clothespin covering it. I used this Netflix envelope piece to demonstrate how long we held onto this movie...it's a Christmas envelope and we watched it in February. Oops. I read 1408, a short story by Stephen King which is super scary, before watching the movie. We liked the movie until the cheesy twist which is when Corey left to play video games. I wish the movie had stayed true to the story. And the Netflix envelope was free and saved from the landfill.