Happy <3 Day

I have never been that big on celebrating Valentine's day, but I've realized it is a nice way to slow down and show the one you love some extra special attention! And any excuse to have a nice dinner out, glass of wine & dessert works for me!

For the card I was inspired by this card I pinned by Debby Hughes. 

I used the same circle die-cut from Papertrey Ink {here} and added various patterned paper circles.  The candy jar stamps are from Clear & Simple Stamps here and colored with Prismacolor markers.  The sentiment is from Love Songs stamp set by PTI. The ribbon was to cover up an oops! {some schmootz got on the front of card from workspace} I don't like when that happens, but I try to embrace the imperfection {like this post}so I added the ribbon and some rhinestones.  I like everything in 3's, so this card reflects that...3 jars, 3 types of pp, 3 rhinestones.

One thing I made for my sweetheart besides a card this year was this little folio where I wrote a poem.  I once was told to be a true Renaissance man {person}, not only do you have to be immersed in various arts and intellects, but you must have been the subject of someone else's love poem.  In talking with my significant other about the concept of Renaissance man he said no one had ever written a poem about him {at least that he knew?!}  So I decided I would do so and complete his title of a true Renaissance man!

For this project I used a folded 8.5x11 piece of cardstock {Papertrey Ink} and wrote my poem by hand on a piece of graph paper inserted at the fold.  I used my new Amy Tan roller stamp to add "love love love Feb 14 2013" at the bottom of the poem.  

On the left are letter stamps from Technique Tuesday and the graphic was created with Papertrey Ink's Heart Prints & All About You stamp sets. I also punched with a small heart punch {fiskars} and washi tape from Crafty Steals.

For the front cover I clustered various embellies from my stash---->Jolee's hearts, washi tape, rhinestones, American Crafts ribbon, striped die-cut transparencies from BasicGrey, and the cardstock sticker from Creative Imaginations Love Struck line found here.

Hope you all get to share in a lil love this Valentine's day!

Project Life 2013

^^This is what has been going on around here.  Was able to get out to get some pretty snow shots this past weekend.

Journal cards compliments of Cathy Zielske here

I have been attempting Project Life in my own way.  I never thought it would be something that I would like to do, but I find I am enjoying recording these stories, and day to day happenings.  I am using Simple Stories 6x8 format to keep it simple for now.  At first I thought I would just use one photo a week, but sometimes it requires more.  I'm trying not to get caught up in the embellishment and just do basic photos+words.

Because I wanted to use the page protector flipped I needed to seal the bottom slots somehow, so I used simple washi tape.  To keep with that, I used a small heart punch on the washi tape to add some heart confetti to the outside of the page protector over the photo of my nephew.  I didn't know if it would work {punching from tape} but it did!  

Mini hearts punched from washi tape, BasicGrey sticker alphas

Unfinished pages, but easy to keep up a little better with this format

Love an opportunity to add text to photos

I've thought about color themes for this album.  At first I decided to go with this gray/white/mint theme.  But I realize just sticking to this may not work, so then I thought well maybe I will use other bright colors to compliment the gray/white and let it represent different seasons.  Still thinking about this.  If I do that it will be yellow (spring), coral (summer), and gold (fall).  

I am trying to not have it be so planned out {besides the one size page protector that I'm using (& loving!)}  Also, I'm already "behind" which is no big deal.  I'm keeping track of the stories and working on the weekly journaling in a google docs file and putting photos into folders.

We will see how it goes.  Thanks for looking!