Project Life

Kellie Stamps: August ’17 Release

Hello everyone! I hope you are enjoying your last days of summer. Memes are starting to pop up on my feed of people ready for Fall/Halloween and Winter/Christmas, but I am all about the heat now that I live in a house with cental AC. Summer to me is having my son at home more so he can help me with my chores as I watch Ellen inside the house with the AC on. Tending to my garden by waving to it as I’m inside the house with the AC on. Watching my dogs play outside in my dreams as I nap inside the house with the AC on. And of course, my husband’s barbecue that I watch him cook from inside the house with the AC on. Ah yes, I will miss Summer!

Speaking of Summer, I was able to play with my Canon camera outside a lot these past couple of months. When my dog, Zoie, wasn’t running away from me, I used her as my model. The pictures happened to be perfect for Kellie Stamps August release!

20170824_084556

Even though that is not something Zoie and her sister hear often, the Good Dog set was an ideal match for my pictures. And don’t worry, there’s a set for you cat lovers too!

I made my own inserts with the digital stamps and used some pattern paper I had from an older Messy Box kit.

20170824_084550

I did a 6×8 layout for my next project and used the Hip Hip Hooray digital stamp set. I pulled out some PRETTY RECENT pictures of my thirtieth birthday party. And when I say recent, I mean like it was just yesterday we took these pics, cough… four years and a half ago… cough. Yeah, just like yesterday.

20170906_181540

Just like the last layout, I made my own inserts. Usually when I want to design my own inserts, I like to search typography/editorial design in Pinterest. This helps if I can’t find the “right” inserts for my layout or if I’m just in the “designing” mood (meaning I want to play on the computer). These cards were inspired by a business card pin but you can find my Design Inspiration Pinterest Board here.

20170906_134828

My favorite part of using these digital stamps is that you receive the JPEG and PNG files for each stamp and the PNGs come in black and white. This makes it so easy to use when I create an insert in Photoshop.

20170906_134836

And there you have it!

I hope you guys liked these new layouts. I know this is a quick conclusion but I need to go and enjoy my last days of Summer right now as I get caught up on my DVR inside the house with the AC on.

Project Life

Project Life: May ’17

Hi everyone! Guess who decided to finally turn off the TV, get off of her lazy butt, and go inside her craft room to make a layout?

giphy

So here I am, BARELY sharing my May layout but that just means I’m catching up!

For this layout I used the Color Cast Designs Good Times set and multiple Push Print Studio inserts.

20170812_140157

May is the month I bought my new Canon DSLR (I love saying “DSLR”, makes me feel like a real photographer) and luckily I took a lot of pictures of AJ and my nephew, Jake, playing. The “Good Times” acrylic was perfect for this picture of the two of them!

20170812_134747

I’m happy with how I was able to get matching inserts that consisted of blue, green, orange, and pink. These are normally not my go-to colors but I love how they came together along with the photos.

20170812_134750

May was actually a pretty good month and the reason I even remember it is because I documented a lot of it on my traveler’s notebook (refill 017). Because of this, I was able to do all the documenting for this layout pretty quickly. Yes, you guys, I need all the help I can get to remember things now (it doesn’t help that it takes me so long to do a layout)!

20170812_134755

Love, love, love all the pops of color on these pages! I’m hoping June and July’s layouts will come together just as easy!

Hope you enjoyed!

Mini Album · Project Life

Kellie Stamps: June ’17 Release

Hey guys! I know June is not over yet but I’m going to go ahead and say this has been a pretty successful month. “Why?”, you ask. Well, I don’t know if you’ve seen my Insta-stories but Mother Nature and I are vibing right now. I have actually grown, what will become, a tomato! I’m calling it my baby tomato. This might not seem like a big deal, but it actually is because not only have I grown an actual vegetable, something that nourishes the human race, but it is used to make salsa! Plus, this means I have proved my husband wrong, not all plants come to me to die! That, my friends, is why June is a pretty damn successful month!

Aside from my new awesome food-growing ability, I’m sharing a quick post today about Kellie Stamps release for June. These sets are very versatile and I think you’ll enjoy them whether you are into any form of memory keeping or are a planner person. But honestly, all of Kellie Stamps are perfect for either one, which is why I love them!

For my first project, I did a mini album layout. I had some pictures of me playing around with my new camera, and let’s just say I need a lot more practice! Even though some pictures came out grainy and some blurry, I was still able to use two of the pics for my mini. This is why I have a mini album, it’s great for those pictures that are kinda cool but I wouldn’t necessarily put in my Project Life album.

20170611_143341

I used two digital stamps from the Currently stamp set. Right now I’m loving the look of torn paper and pictures so I was happy to rip away to create this layout. The star stickers came in a recent Messy Box and I drew lines on them with a Copic Multiliner pen.20170611_143743

For my second project, I did a 6×8 pocket page layout. I had some random pictures from a recent week on my phone that just happened to go well together after some Lightroom editing. I LOVE the pops of yellow in this layout!

20170618_135007

For this project, I used the This Girl digital stamp set. I made a 3×4 insert using the Blah stamp and printed it on transparency paper. I stapled it on top of another insert that I printed from Push Print Studio. I trimmed down the striped insert a little smaller than 3×4 to try to give it a neat effect. It’s all about experimenting you guys!

20170618_135528

I also made a cute tag from kraft paper that was inspired from a tag that was attached to a new pair of jeans I recently bought. There’s inspiration everywhere! Also, random tip, don’t like a selfie you took? Chop off half your face!

Hope you guys enjoyed these projects! Thanks for stopping by!

Project Life

Project Life: April ’17

Hi there! I have a new Project Life layout to share with you today but first… I hope you guys can check out the latest issue of Jot Magazine, issue 18. You can see a couple of my layouts that I’ve already shared here on the blog on pages 184 and 185! How cool is that? I was so excited when I found out my layouts were going to appear in the magazine!

I will go ahead and spill the deets on April’s layout, I was not looking forward to it. I wasn’t. I took few photos and none matched, at all. So I thought to myself, “what do I do?” Just skip April or just throw something together and hurry and skip this page when I look through my album? Then I thought “having an all black and white layout would be kind of cool.” I mean, that is what I did with my WITL also and that’s one of my favorite layouts. So I started editing my photos and I was feeling content. Then I decided to look through Push Print Studios and find black and white inserts. Then I came across a couple of 3×4 inserts that were black and white, but also had other pretty colors. And voila! My April layout came together!

20170605_132552

Once I printed out the inserts I wanted, I added a couple of Color Cast Designs embellishments to add some dimension and more color. The “details” embellishment is from a past set, I don’t think it’s for sale anymore, but I love how it paired nicely with the striped insert and the two plastic tickets. You can find this ticket set on Studio Calico. Also from Color Cast Designs, is the Giant Ampersand in Caribbean.

20170605_132557

My Graphite Black Brilliance ink pad is quickly becoming one of my favorite things to use on layouts. I normallyy use Archival Ink, which I still love, but lately I’ve been using the Brilliance ink. The ink has this real nice matte finish that looks like it was printed on your photo. If you haven’t used this ink, I definitely recommend it! I did use my MISTI on my stamping though! The “you’re my favorite” stamp is from Kelly Purkey’s Favorite Things stamp set (sorry guys, I couldn’t find it on her site).

20170605_132603

I’m happy now with how it all turned out and I’m glad I didn’t just skip through to May, but now… I need to start May’s layout. Let’s see how that turns out!

Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

Mini Album · Project Life

Kellie Stamps: May ’17 Release

I don’t know about you but I’m having what I call my “dream Saturday morning” right now. This pretty much consists of a cup of coffee in hand, being fresh out of the shower, and catching up on my favorite crafty blogs while watching HGTV, that and knowing I have absolutely no other plans for the rest of the day! Yay for me!

Speaking of coffee, Kellie Stamps came out with a new coffe stamp set on May’s release called Coffee. I made all new pocket page inserts using the digital stamps on this set. I went with a gray and craft paper color scheme for this 6×8 layout. Craft paper is my fave!

20170519_124003

Below you can see my favorite insert I made for this layout with a little bit of journaling. Luckily Midland has a couple of neat spots around town and I was able to get some photos of one of our newer coffee shops, Brew St.

20170519_123948

For this next project, I created a mini-album page using the Funday Week digital stamp set. I wanted to make something simple to go with this black and white photo of my bored self.

20170519_183342

You know I will always try to add lyrics from The Cure anywhere I can so this was perfect. Who doesn’t love Friday I’m In Love? It’s an automatic mood booster.

20170519_182920

For fun, I thought I’d show you guys the before and after photo of me that I took of myself through the side mirror of my husband’s truck. I obviously took it with my phone (if you squint your eyes you can see my phone on the bottom mirror), and I edited the photo in Lightroom using the BlackMamba preset. You can download the preset for free! This has been my go-to black and white edit lately.

If you follow me on Instagram you heard about my big news, I completely forgot to post here on the blog, but I was a guest designer for Bella Blvd last month. You can read my post here! It was challenging yet rewarding to make layouts with different styled products I’m not normally accustomed to using. It definitely made me broaden my view on making layouts with more color and new types of embellishments! So a huge thank you to Bella Blvd for inviting me to their blog and giving me a chance to show my designs to their audience!

That is it for today! I hope you guys are having your “dream Saturday morning” like I am! Please let me know if you have any ideas for a Top 5 or other editing tips you’d like to see me cover here on The Lovely Pear!