Story Camp - Here I Come!

I made it! I made it! I made it!

That’s right there is me doing a happy dance!

A few weeks ago, Ali Edwards announced that she would be hosting Story Camp in October. I have long admired her work and her ability to tell great stories in her scrapbook pages, so I knew I wanted to try and get in. Tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. on June 27th and I knew they went in less then a minute for her first story camp earlier in the year and that there were only 35 tickets available, so the chances were slim to none. I was so excited leading up the 10 a.m. launch, I was shaking! But somehow I managed to snag two tickets before they sold out in a matter of seconds. So my friend Brenda and I will be headed to Eugene, Oregon in late October to attend Story Camp!

I am SOOOOOOO excited about this opportunity, I can’t even begin to express it. Thankfully, the other people attending have been posting the same sentiments about feeling like they won the lotto, so at lest I know I am not alone in my fan craze of all things Ali.

Part of that excitement has made me go back and revisit some of the online classes I have taken with her and even in a couple of weeks, I feel like it has really revolutionized my documenting process. I want to tell those stories! So at a crop yesterday, I actually got four layouts down with some pretty awesome stories. I decided to switch my micro-stories process up to 6x8 size and the process seems much more manageable. Simplifying the process and reducing my product choices to just Ali Edwards , Felicity Jane, and handful of letter stickers, helped me crank these four stories out yesterday and into an album.

My friend that attended the crop with me complimented the amount of journaling I had on my layouts and said she realized that she doesn’t do that enough. I told her I really want to make a mission of telling stories more. Don’t get me wrong, I love the pretty papers and getting photos and events into albums. I still love Project Life and getting the quotes and current favorites into albums too. But then I told her when I think about what I would like to see in an album if my mom or my grandma had ever scrapbooked, I know what I would want most is to hear their stories. To hear their voice in the narrative. To know what they thought and felt and what life was like for them. To know who they were, not just by images in the photos but by their words. I think about that often and feel a great sense of accomplishment when I do scrapbook a layout that is story centric. These are the layouts I pause on when I flip back through my albums and feel the most proud and excited about. So I am trying to keep that in mind sign forward. 

I am using Evernote to keep track of the stories I want to tell. I have it on my computer and my phone so it[s easily accessible and I can jump right into it if I have a moment to scrap. I am sure I will change up the size often, but for right now, 6x8 is working really well for me. 

So with a  smile still on my face for what I accomplished at the crop yesterday, here is what I was abel to finish

Brave - Using Ali Edwards acrylic word from the Brave Story Kit and word stickers and Felicity Jane Papers

This one is also Ali Edwards  and Felicity Jane. I wanted to capture a glimpse of my son right now and all of his favorites and the cute things he says. I just want to add a date at some point, maybe with a stamp. 

The You word and Life is Good element are Ali's. The paper and other elements are Felicity Jane. I cut the You Say, You Play, etc on my Silhouette Machine.

This one if a story from my youth. I had gone through some photos from my childhood and flagged a few that I wanted to journal about at some point, using the photo as a story spark! This one was the first photo I had written anything about.

This one is also Felicity Jane and the Good Times sticker is Simple Stories.I was given the acrylic word and heart in a grab bag so I am not sure where these originated from but I thought they worked really well in the "white space" provided on the photo.

And last but not least, The Many Faces of David. I knew I wanted to document what a character he is! These photos turned out to be the perfect opportunity! This one is all Felicity Jane papers and elements. The template was a resized Cathy Zielske Template No. 161

Now I off to create more!

New Layout - Tough

With my new found obsession of Project Life app scrapping last year, I was very on top of weekly Project Life scrapping, but I realized I think I only made a total of 3 traditional layouts last year. And those were all about my childhood and had nothing to do with current life. So I realized with putting this story/how much I miss it. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the app and love that I have a weekly snapshot of life, but there is definitely a part of me that wants to hold all the pretty paper and decorative stuff and create with it. So I am hoping for a better balance this year. Even if it is just one layout a month, I think I can manage that!

This one couldn't wait, though. It was a story I wrote down several months ago that really needed it;s own page. And the Tough Story kit by Ali Edwards was the perfect title to start with. From there, it all just came together!

I have also been totally in love with the Felicity Jane subscriptions and this was my first ever layout using their paper. I love this paper so much, I am totally guilty of hoarding it! But another realization I came to recently is that the whole point of spending all this money on supplies is to actually have a finished product to show for it. More on that in a later post....

But of now, here is my recent layout. Super simple, using Felicity Jane Papers and some of their word elements from their October kit. The acrylic title is from Ali's Tough Kit and the little "the story" tab is from an Ali Edwards kit as well, though I am not exactly sure which one it came from.

I did blur a bit of the journaling because it is just too personal but it doesn't seem necessary to at least get the gist of the story itself (hopefully).

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

I love fall! The weather, the colors, the joy, but mostly because it's the start of the holiday season. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas. The whole season is so full of joy for me. I have always loved it, but ever since 2008, when I started creating a December Daily album, it has brought a whole new meaning to the holidays for me.

I have made it a mission every year to make December full of activities. We pull out the advent calendar and I fill each day with something for us to do together as a family. I have to admit, I started that so that I could get pictures for my December Daily album.  I know! Once a scrapbooker, always a scrapbooker! But once I started that, the whole family really started looking forward to December and we have really grown together to love this project.

So as I prep for this season, I took a look back at December Daily of Past. Here is my 2008 album., the first year I did the project.

And here is my 2014 album. My stash has certainly grown! I utilized my Sihlouette for the first time with this album and was SO impressed that it did intricate cuts of the thick glitter paper! I approached this year with sitting down with limited supplies, used a lot of Ali's digital stamps and templates, pre-cutting some numbers and elements on the Silhouette, and using only one of two kits to fit a color scheme. Keeping it simple really helped me get through this pretty quickly. I love Ali's suggestions about prepping ahead of time. I plan to do that again this year.

A Day in the Life is Coming! A Day in the Life is Coming! EXTRA! EXTRA!

I have participated for a few years in the Week in the Life project with Ali Edwards but this was the first year I participated in the Day in the Life challenge. July 31st was the day earlier this year that was chosen and I had a super simple little inset for that week in my Project Life album with the details of that day.

Ali usually runs this project twice per year, so I am excited that the second one is coming up on October 27th. Will you be joining us????

Done and DONE! Week in the Life 2015

I did it! I did it! I completed a full mini-album documenting a full Week in the Life in our little household. Week in the Life was started by Ali Edwards several years ago in an effort to document the little details of everyday life each year. She chose a week in early August to document and a lot of the Facebook followers did as well, but I chose a week in September. The week in August that she chose was crazy busy for me with board meetings almost every night and my first month back in school over the weekend. Then I kept waiting for a "normal" week to start documenting and realized our weeks are almost always crazy busy and full of activities. So I just hunkered down and picked September. And here is the final result!


Almost everything I used was from the Ali Edwards Week in the Life kit, with some of Ali's monthly Stories kits for embellishments and a Mambi paper pack I picked up at Hobby Lobby that coordinated nicely with the kit. I cut some hearts and stars from the paper pack on Silhouette Cameo to add a little something extra to some of the pages. I really tried to keep it simple and it definitely helped me get it done!