WEEK IN THE LIFE 2013: Title Pages

Using Ali Edwards' templates, I completed the title pages for each day of my Week In The Life 2013.  These will be 12x12 size and placed in my Project Life albums rather than a separate one.  I plan on adding flair buttons I was gifted at Dick Blick (pronounced B-uuuu-l-i-c-k for my dad) in the daily titles' arrows.

I think this picture is my favorite from the zoo b/c the colors are just gorgeous!!

 

Such a fun week and miss my family already, but was glad to see my pup!  Can't wait to finish the pages and add all my pictures. :)  Hope everyone had as great a week as I did.



DIY: Family Pallet

This week I went on vacation to my hometown Valley, NE.  There was a lot of celebrations to attend: nephew's baptism, dad's birthday and retirement. Plus my homecoming is celebration enough :)

Anyways, I wanted to make a special gift for both my dad and mom.  I got the idea from an Archivers advertisement. I texted my brother for the initial creation which was this....

I plotted out the design per the dimensions my brother gave me. 

Cut the stencils from my Silhouette.  

Laid out the design and painted the stencils with cheap acrylic black paint. Making sure to line up evenly using a t-bar ruler. 

Once finished, I erased the pencil marks (you can also sand off the marks). 

Using a wood stain, I coated the boards...then sanded various areas. I did is 3 times. 

Boards are then coated with a waterproof sealer. 

And this is the end result. 

My initial plan was to attach a door knob to the lower part with a photo frame hanging from it....however the design is up in the air ...waiting on my mom's final decision. If no photo is added, the boards will be cut a little to be appropriately proportioned. Since it most likely is going outdoors, the photo frame will be a no go. Yet...so many options to think of. 

Hope you enjoy and hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend!

DIY Iron-On Designs

 

Another gift I wanted to make was a baptism one for my godson, Brax. I have seen cute onesies made with various fabrics on various boards so I went with that idea. 

I selected a few fabrics and used Heat Bond to coat the backing. 

Next, I lined fabric up on the Silhouette cutting board based on the designs I purchased online (you can also create your own, if desired)

And one bye one, the silhouette cut out cute pieces of animals, ties, mustaches, bow ties, boats, etc. 

I bagged up most items for her to use at various stages of his life, but went ahead and got some onesies from Old Navy to start the collection (my sister isn't the most artsy person :)

My sister thinks he looks like a turtle when he makes certain facial expressions so I went with that idea plus added a cute lil tie onto another. 

The end result is simple and easy...and another way to use the silhouette. Plus it personalized a gift for a special lil baby boy. Love ya Brax. 

TRIP JOURNAL 2013: Nebraska

COME WHAT.....COME MAY! . . . . . .

So anxious to be going home in over a year.....so I threw together a quick daybook I had to jot random notes, sketches, mini pics from that week.  I plan on doing a "Week In The Life 2013" as well.  This will just be a little something extra to do at night and on the plane ride. (YAY!! FOR A DIRECT FLIGHT!!)

The cover took a while as I didn't know what to do and was playing around with a lot of ink/stamp features.  After tracing elements with a Paint pen and writing a saying, I sewed on Hambly overlays on.  (The cover wasn't doing the best job transporting so I wanted extra protection. Using embossing thread, I stitched the airplanes path.Used brad to hold a mini-pic of my parents' house and arrow overlay.  Other elements included washi tape, embossing - stamps, sequined heart.

I added some patterened paper, and a Prima stamp to the first inserts.  Again playing around with inks, UTEE, and stamps. The flower stamp was put on a page that had stickers so when heating the UTEE, the ink went through the paper....I LOVED the look, so repeated it on the back insert.

Next pages were stamped and stickered and washi taped :)

Luckily the map paper included all the cities of relatives to be in town, so I made sure to mark each with a stamp showing love.  (Unfortunately, my city was not on the map...East Coast was left out :( as well as Japan.)

More stickers.  Added a high heel paperclip to a tiny piece holding a few farm photos.

I got some new Mr. Misty stencils and wanted to play with them and vellum pages.  Didn't turn out the greatest but I made it work.  I reversed the stencil and painted gesso on top.  Then went back over with a neon red to show through.  Most worked, but I did end up outlining the "love" with a marker.

Used some Allison Kreft overlay "Love This" on a doily page.  Next pages just used more tape and stickers included in the daybook. I added a stitch detail around the doily's curve to hold the paper as well.

Another stamp saying "Love Yourself" with black UTEE.  I tried silver first and it didn't show up, so went over it with Black.  I believe this is a Suzi Blu stamp.

Center of book includes a map so I highlighted Denver, and Nebraska where more family is located.  And added a few other stamps...ladybugs.

I stitched a star, added tape to areas as it was not the easiest to do...paper was ripping where the holes were.  But it turned out.  The inside has a sequins bird that shows through the center of the star.  I plan on doing something to cover up the "mess" inside. 

...more stamps with a collage of photos.  I left the photo strip open in case I want to add any inserts inside.  The leftover overlay was put on the suitcase. 

Another stencil I played with. Bicylces....spray painted the white...then highlighted one with neon red marker. I used the sticker outline to cover the jagged edge insert.

Again more stamps....I used 2 of them to complete this element. (ducks w/ Love balloon & Keep Calm)..This little page also took a bit of time to complete... had to restamp and emboss several times.  I also then had to cover the insert with book paper and coat with gesso before trying again.  You can see one stamp bled through, but I like the way it turned out. 

Another page I used the same stencil and just used spray paint to create.  Again...a mess...spray paint doesn't stick well to velum paper.  Lesson learned...but I made it work ....and like the result.  I added a little piece of scrap paper to the page as well. 

Created a cover/opening page with a graphic I obtained from a website a while ago.  So it opens up....and I will probably put a picture inside. Opposit page has a stamped carrot and stickers.

More stamps and paper words.

Cut a piece of "A" letter scrap paper and glued over page ( I will probably fill in the circles with some little sketches.  And the last page was another great flower stamp on a sticker holder page coated this one with Dylusions spray.

Stamped the back cover "Grow where you are planted." 

And lastly, the back cover was layered with Hambly overlays, stickers, stitching,  some vellum details, markered elements, and a stamp that I ended up using Paint Markers on to show details better.  It is hard to get a stamp to work on overlays.

The book I hope took me a little longer to put together then it will to fill in the details.  I took the extra time, b/c I have a tendency to want what is in my head to be what the end product is (plus I kept finding supplies I hadn't used before and wanted to do it all in the book)  I was determined to make my mess look like art. :)