One Little Word 2nd Page

I am an art journaler!  Ok, that might be jumping the gun just a little bit, but I have now done 2 pages in a row for this OLW project with paint on them, without pictures, and with relatively thoughtful writing.  That's all it takes.  Right?  I'll be the first to admit that my pages aren't as messy and free flowing as most of the art journal pages that I see, but what can I say?  I'm a non-conformist...Actually, maybe I'm too much of a conformist to do anything like the lovely things that these people are creating.  So here's my second page

I might just be over using that butterfly punch, but I like it.  It doesn't look so great in the picture, but the journaling is on a white paper doily that was colored using distress ink followed by antique gold perfect pearls, so it has a sheen that you can't see in the picture.  

The journaling is about how difficult it is to focus on self improvement when I'm still only a few weeks postpartum.  It's not always easy to distinguish between when I'm engaging in meaningful introspection, and when I'm just beating myself up over things I can't change.  I added another journaling card behind this page with a string to pull it out.  I'm challenging myself to dwell on 3 of my favorite memories when I get caught in a destructive thought pattern: 1) My wedding ceremony: we laughed through the whole thing; 2) The first time Lilah said, "I love you;" and 3) Catching Michaela's first smile on camera.  How do you keep your thoughts positive, when you're not feeling the best about yourself?

Michaela's first smile.

My new Silhouette Portrait

I have been eyeing the Silhouette in all its manifestations since the original came out.  I already had a Cricut and several cartridges, so I couldn't justify the $300 buy in for the Silhouette.  Finally, last fall, I decided to sell my Cricut on Ebay so that I could pay for the Silhouette Cameo.  Well, the Cricut sold...with all of its cartriges, but I clearly am not a saleswoman.  My Cricut with 12 cartridges sold for less than $250.  I also underestimated the cost of shipping, so long story short, no Cameo for me, but also no Cricut!  This was a sad state of affairs.  I never bought letter stickers for my scrapbooking while I had my Cricut; I never realized just how expensive they were.  Suffice it to say, that my recent scrapbook pages have a lot more of my own hand on them.  I did buy a set of clear letter stamps, which is nice, but I still missed being able to cut my own dies on demand. I heard about the Silhouette Portrait around Thanksgiving, and was super excited...partially because at $100 less than the Cameo, it was a lot more reasonably priced, but also because my new scrap space in the basement is significantly smaller than my old space was and the smaller size would fit perfectly.  I thought I might get it for Christmas...No Dice, but I did work out a deal for my sister to buy it for me in exchange for babysitting services and since she didn't get around to getting me a Christmas present.

I'm pretty excited for my new machine to get here, and I'm sure I'll have a ton of things to say about it. Maybe I'll even do a review of it in comparison to the Cricut.  Maybe. In the mean time, here's my first attempt at playing with the software.  It's an 8x8 chevron background.  I have to be honest and say that I don't know if it will work.  I'll let you know when the machine gets here.  Download it here.

No more hoarding!

I have resolved to use my stash this year.  That isn't to say that I won't buy anything new at all, but scrapbooking often seems like a hoarders' hobby.  Kind of like Warhammer, but I digress.  Like every other scrapbooker out there, I have a bunch of beautiful papers that I've had for years because I just can't bring myself to use them for fear that I'll ruin them.  No more! I'm going to use all of this stuff I've got lying around.  That's what I bought it for after all...Isn't it?  Most of my pages last year were digital because I didn't have time or inclination to get out my supplies, but also because my craft room was next door to my daughter's bedroom. She just wouldn't sleep if I was in the next room working.  Now, my craft space is in the basement family room, so I can sit there and work while my husband is playing video games  or while my daughter is playing with her toys.  Another serious benefit is that I don't have to schlep supplies to the dining room anymore.  All my stuff can stay at my table, and I can leave projects out to work on until I'm done.  No more clearing up for dinner!  Well, not clearing up craft supplies anyway.  I made two more cards that I have to show you.  The first is the same design as the smile card from a few days ago.  I just swapped out the paper an stamp, an I wrote a different word.  Other than that, it's exactly the same, not having to think about the design meant that it only took 8 minutes. I know this because I recorded it, thinking I would post a video to youtube.  I'm not quite ready for video editing yet, I'm afraid.  The second card is a thank you card.  The butterfly tag is another one from the same BasicGrey element pack that I used before.  I did the scalloped border using my American Crafts knock outs border bunch.  Distress ink and letter die cuts and that's it. What do you think?  Any suggestions about what kind of card I should make next?

My First One Little Word Page

I've decided that my One Little Word scrapbook this year is going to be something between a scrapbook and an art journal.  I love the idea of art journaling, but I don't consider myself an artist, and I get so tied up in knots worrying about it looking good that I can't start.  I figure that using one new to me technique on each  art journal type page.  I was watching this video at Two Peas in a Bucket, it seemed easy enough to do a painted background.  I have khaki acrylic paint, that I used to form the background for this page.  When the paint dried, I used an oil pastel pencil to write the verse directly on.  It smudged a little, but I'm trying to forgive myself for that.  Nothing's perfect the first time you try it.  What do you think?

Project Life 2012 Album

Last year I tried my hand at Project Life.  I wouldn't like to say that I failed because I do, in fact, have an album to show for my efforts.  The album encompasses the entire year, but it is far from the in-depth look at our lives that it was intended to be.  Part of that was because I was pregnant.  I am not ashamed to say that I don't do pregnancy well...Okay, I am ashamed to say it, but it is true (that's one of the many reasons I'm not planning to do it again).  As a result, the photo-a-day component of the project was far from complete.  To be honest, there wasn't even a photo every week sometimes.  It's difficult to scrapbook without pictures, and it's difficult to drum up the effort to do it when pregnant and tired.  Apologies aside, I do love the album I have, which is a general overview of our lives for the year. Here is a sampling of digital pages from the album.

I used the Wendyzine Photoshop Actions for the pocket page style designs. They are available at JessicaSprague.com  as templates.  I really haven't been good about keeping track of the supplies that I used for each layout.  You can ask me, if you're interested and I'll try my darnedest to figure it out.  I'm going to try really hard to be better at it this year. Around April (when morning sickness set in), I started  doing one layout a month, with a few extras thrown in there if I felt like it.  At the end of the year, I still had some catching up to do, so I used my pocket page actions with pictures and journaling cards, then I wrote in the blank spots after I had them printed.  To be quite honest, I had to go back and do June through November at the same time because I was that far behind.  The Studio Wendy actions make that pretty easy though, and since I didn't hold myself to doing the journaling before the pages were printed, I got all those pages done in under an hour.  The most time consuming part was deciding which pictures I would use.  You can get Wendyzine's scrap actions at scrapbookgraphics.com.  I love them!
I'll be using some form of Project Life this year.  I'll be using the 365 photo app on my phone again.  I really like how it's set up, and how easy it was to see which days were blank so I knew to look on my other cameras for them. However, I need to recognize that these projects are supposed to be fun, so I don't want to put the pressure on myself of having to take a picture every single day.  I'll consider it a success if I have a couple every week.  I think I will use dropbox this time to transfer photos onto my phone from my other cameras to make it easier to keep track of the photos.  I'll also be using the Photo Freedom sleeves for some of the paper layouts, I started using them at the end of the year last year and really liked them. I'm still aiming for 1 layout a week, but we'll see how that goes.  If I get behind again, it'll be back to the pocket pages for month-in-review layouts.

One Little Word

I've been reading about people doing Ali Edwards One Little Word project for a few years now.  I've always been intrigued about the idea that instead of making a specific new year's resolution that's practically impossible to achieve, you could designate a word for the year, keep that word in your heart and on your mind, and improve your life in subtle but important ways.  This year, my one little word is humble.  I think of myself as being pretty smart, and I know that I often underestimate the people around me.  I want to spend time this year trying to have more humility in my interactions with people.  I want to make sure that I'm appreciating the people around me in a way that I haven't before because I'm so busy interrupting with some anecdote of my own or rushing their stories along.  I'm going to try not to roll my eyes at my husband so much, and I'm going to try, try not to be so bossy. The goal is to write a post here once a month on how I'm doing and how focusing on the work humble has influenced my life.  Even if I'm not perfect by the end of the year, at least I'll be a little bit better.
Here  is the cover of my OLW album for the year.  I decided to make it a hybrid layout.

I printed the title directly onto my kraft background.  I used one of the pictures that my brother (No Blondes! Photography) took of me at my house while he was visiting for the holidays.  It probably isn't one of his favorites, but I like that he caught a candid moment of me concentrating on something.  I'm usually the one behind the camera at my house, so I don't have a lot of pictures of myself that aren't pretty well posed because I have to use a tripod and timer.  The embellishments are from the Fact & Fiction collection from BasicGrey.  The circle tag originally said "Enjoy the Journey," but I didn't really think that was appropriate, when my word is humble. I just wrote the word absorb on a scrap of cardstock and cut it to fit over the word enjoy.  the 2013 in the title was done using another one of my new favorite things, the picket fence distress marker by Tim Holtz.  It's so fun to watch the words develop as the ink dries, and it's great that I can use it to write on black cardstock.