My favorite Project Life ingredients

In yesterday’s post I covered the tools that I love first and foremost because they ensure a smooth work flow  for Project Life.

Today I want to continue that theme with some of my other favorite Project Life “ingredients” that I love, but that don’t necessarily stand out because of their practicality!

 

1. 6x6 Paper Pads.

I almost exclusively use these smaller paper pads for my Project Life.

 

 

Not only is the pattern smaller, which works much better for the smaller “layouts” and cards, but cutting those papers is quick and easy. I tend to go about it in much the same way every time.

Line up my 6x6 paper at the 4 inch mark of my Fiskars paper cutter to cut a 6x4. Then I have a 2” strip of that paper left to make a border on another card. If I need 3x4 cards, I cut the 6x4 in half.

 

 

If I look through my stash of papers, I find that I mostly have My Mind’s eye papers, closely followed by Studio Calico and some Teresa Collins pads. I find that most of the My Mind’s eye papers coordinate throughout collections and it helps with the cohesiveness throughout the album! AND I love their colors and patterns!

 

2. Mini Alpha Stickers.

I love to use a variety of chipboard stickers and alphas on my Project Life inserts, but my current favorites are the Basic Grey Micro Mono Alpha Stickers. I only just found them recently and I have since gotten them in every color I can find available. They are the perfect size for the smaller size cards!

 

3. Wood Veneer Embellishments.

Uhm, yes, well I have confessed to an ever so slight (ha!) obsession with Wood Veneer Embellishments before. I just love, love, love them! I could put one or more of those on pretty much every photo or card I put in my album (I do restrain myself from doing that though!) But yes,  I have a LOT of those and I love them. Have I mentioned that I love them?!

 

 

4. Office products.

Yes, I like to use office products too. They are easily accessible, usually inexpensive and they are a great thing to use in Project Life.

For example, Return Address Labels.

Love them for adding one sentence journaling to photos! Sometimes I use them plain, in the typewriter, or I first run them through my printer and print a faint grid pattern on them and then type or write on them! It’s also fairly easy to print other thing on the labels, like borders, icons etc. by using the corresponding template (I use Avery) that is available on the web. Easy customization, for not a lot of money considering that those labels go a LONG way!

 

Large Shipping Labels work really well too for the strip journaling that I love to do! I bought a pack of these many years ago for shipping purposes for my business and I’m still using them now!

 

 

Parcel tags.

Love using parcel tags, as you can see! They are quick and easy and add little (or larger depending on what size you use) areas for photos, journaling, stamping or embellishments. I tend to use the this size and this size the most.

 

Index cards.

Another quick and easy card for journaling can be made out of index cards, be they gridded or lined. They are inexpensive, easily available and also tend to go a long way! The only draw back that I have found for index cards is that the line or grid pattern is usually a lot stronger than I would like, which works for some things, but not as well for others. But I do have both on hand and use them regularly!

 

5. A few assorted punches.

As many of you are well aware, I have a Silhouette Craft Cutter, so why would I need punches?

Well, as awesome as the Craft Cutter is, sometimes I’m left with a little square of something and it’s just a LOT easier to punch a quick circle out of it, rather than design it in the software, align everything just right (which can be tricky) and then have the machine cut it. So, I have an assortment of circle, label and corner punches to make things easier!

 

5. Silhouette Craft Cutter.

Ah yes, I love that little machine . It’s great to be able to cut just about anything I might want or need for my project Life! What can I say - it’s an awesome machine and not just for project life, for all sorts of arts and crafts projects!

 

 

6. Sewing Machine.

 

 

A lot of my journaling cards have machine sewing on them. It is usually very simple, just a straight line here and there. That’s how I like it best. Sometimes I like to branch out a little with some more involved decorative stitching, but I like simple the best. Not only does it finish off the cards in my opinion, it also helps with adhering things, so it’s a dual benefit!

 

 

7. Various Shapes and Sizes of Photo Pocket Pages.

Last, but by no means least, I LOVE to mix up different shapes and sizes of Photo Pocket Pages in my album. It makes the whole thing a little bit more interactive and fun, AND it gives you more possibilities of fitting your cards and photos in just the right size and orientation slots that you need!

 

I also love the big envelope pages in the back of my album to collect special kid’s drawings, report cards, assorted school stuff, rewards and all the other things that I want to keep in the original and that are too large or too many to fit into the album itself!

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Project Life - Catching Up! (December)

 

And here I am with the December Spread. Since I was very much behind on Project Life throughout the 3 months or so prior, I thought it might be fun to make an effort to do something every day for December.

Since I love Advent anyway and there is actually a lot to record around this time of year it seemed the perfect month to do it! Hence the December Daily.

On this spread I seemed to have a pretty good balance of pictures and journaling - wish that would always work out that well. The only thing that is maybe different, is the journaling behind the doily. It folds open when you pull out the card to reveal all the journaling.

 

As you can see I finally used up the rest of the journaling cards I made way back when. I wrote about them here.

 

 

 

Love it when the kiddos contribute drawings or their stories!

 

 

 

A cutout filler card I cut with the Silhouette.

 

 

 

 

On this next spread I have actually a lot of journaling going on, but it’s mostly hidden behind the photos. All of them pull out and either have a card type layout that folds open or have  a long piece of paper taped to the back to reveal the journaling, which is then folded up accordion style.

 

 

At the bottom left I sewed a vellum pocket on the card with some silver thread. The folded up paper that tucks  inside  the vellum pocket, lists the gifts each of us got for Christmas!

 

 

As you can see, I’m still missing the journaling to summarize Christmas Day events. I have written a fair bit about it already in other places of the album, but I wanted this as a quick summary.

 

 

And I’m also still missing some journaling here, as well as a photograph.

 

 

 

And this is pretty much December, once I caught up on the two missing items and journaling the New Year’s Eve photos.

Why am I showing you unfinished spreads? Because one of my next posts will be about catching up with Project Life. From mildly behind to totally, overwhelmingly behind!

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Embellished Journaling Cards

So, this weekend, instead of catching up on my Project Life week in terms of documenting, I ended up pre-making more journaling cards. I just had such fun doing them, it was hard to stop!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night was my “British indulgence” evening on PBS. Inspector Lewis and Morse back to back. I get a lot done while watching!

So, even though I haven’t documented this last week yet, I think my coming weeks might be a lot faster, having already made so many of the journaling cards! Now I just need to do some larger ones and I would have a nice little pile to choose from when it comes to documenting the weeks!

 

BTW for those in search of grid paper or grid journaling cards. Apparently they are going to be in stock soon again, so keep your eyes peeled on Becky Higgins’ blog, but when I started with Project Life, everything was sold out and I had to make it all myself. The one thing I couldn’t find was the grid cardstock. The other day I was going through my smash journal, that I thought was a good idea when I got it but then abandoned pretty quickly and it had many many pages of different colored grid paper in it! So if you have one of those laying around, you might be able to use a few pages from that and just cut them to journaling card size!

 

And for those of you who want to know what I have used to make these:

• Silhouette Craft Cutter (that’s how I cut the labels, tabs, tags and borders)
• Fiskars Surecut Deluxe Paper Trimmer
• Perma Tac Glue Glider (best I’ve ever had and I’ve tried so many! LOVE this one! No muss, no fuss, always works!)
• EK Success Corner Adorner Large Rounder Corner Punch (I round all my corners, but that’s just a preference of mine.)
• EK Success 1” Circle Punch (so handy for using up obscure little bits of scrap paper!)
• Glue Mini Dots (I use those on everything I don’t use the glue glider on!)
• My Mind’s Eye 6x6 paper pads:  Away We Go and Nostalgia and Kraft Fun Day (I have used mostly these papers throughout my Project Life Album, to keep a somewhat cohesive look.)
• Ruled Index Cards (Walgreens)
• Studio Calico Wood Veneers
• Papyrus Alphabet Stamp (It takes a while to do the words in mirror writing, but it’s so handy as you can spell out just about anything, including whole sentences, or numbers and even some punctuation!)
• K&CompanySmash Folio Pages
• Brother Sewing Machine
• Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher
• Some of my “washi” tape
• Some of my custom “flairs”

 

Linking to:

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Make your own custom “flairs” or brads

 

 

So, I’ve been getting into the world of paper scrapping/project life embellishments lately and since this is all new to me, I’m finding that I’m getting quite obsessed with little things that never really interested me that much when I was a digital scrapper.

 

Amongst them are flairs. Oh boy! The little button type ones, not the pins. I could go nuts in some of those Etsy shops. Unfortunately they are also quite expensive. I’m not saying that they are unreasonably expensive, because they are quite work intensive to make, but I really can’t justify spending about a dollar a piece, however cute they are. At least not at the rate I want to use them!

 

So I looked into making my own, but of course that didn’t pan out at all, as the machines are $300 and up and then there are the supplies, etc. Totally not an option unless I want to go into selling them, and well I’m not at this point in time!

 

There are some smaller, cheaper kits available, but apparently you can’t buy more supplies once you are through your kit, which makes them even more expensive than the cute ones on Etsy.

 

So, I thought I still have some of the mod podge  dimensional magic, so I thought I’d try and make my own buttons. Well, without boring you with too many details, it didn’t end well.  Smudging, bubbles, everything running all over the place and then once fully dried, the whole thing distorted and never laid flat again. Total fail on that one!

 

It did cross my mind to do what I did with some fridge magnets years ago - just use the clear glass pebbles for flower vases and such, but they are just too high for a project life folder and it would really bulge them and not look good at all.

 

So, I almost gave in and decided I was just going to get a couple of sets from Etsy and treat them like gold (read: hoard them in my stash and not use them) - when I came across these little beauties!

 

 

They are clear, 1” round bubble Epoxy Bubble Stickers! See how they are not too high at all?!

 

 

Perfect,  right! And they are self-adhesive, so any kind of issues of  ink jet printed pictures smudging are non-existent! And they don’t turn yellow and are therefor ideal for scrapbooking and crafting!

I got 200 of them for $14.90 + s/h and now can make my own “flair” buttons to my heart’s content! That’s 7 cents per “flair”/brad (as opposed to $1,) plus whatever paper or ink I use to print or add to it, but that is minimal!

I used my Silhouette Craft Cutter to make some buttons as a print & cut and then just attached to the bottom of the clear bubbles! Voila, custom “flairs”!

 

 

And these are super easy to make up on the spot too. You can add photos to it, anything you can print and punch or cut into a 1” circle. Or draw. Or stamp for that matter! Or any kind of scrap paper you want to use! You could even use the clear bubbles as they are and adhere them for emphasis on photos, layouts or journaling cards!

 

 

So needless to say, I am a happy scrapper right now! With about 200 flairs/brads/decorative buttons at my disposal! And not only is all this much cheaper, it is so much more versatile, which I totally love!

 

Chances are I am the last one to catch on to these epoxy stickers, but maybe there are a few others of you out there, who don’t know about them yet and would be as excited as I am, to have them in their stash!

 

After doing a search on Amazon, and have since found them even cheaper than the ones I purchased (5 cents a flair/brad) and in smaller quantities for the 1" round (50), square and oval (and a few other shapes) in case anyone is interested!

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