Friday, April 12, 2013

Project Life Celebratory Blog Hop

Today I am part of the Project Life Celebratory Blog Hop organized by Margie from Nihao, Cupcake! blog. Thanks for including me, Margie!

Today we are celebrating personal Project Life milestones, some of us for getting through 25% of 2013. I wish it would be the case for me as well, but I am still not there. Nevertheless I love this project and proud of every week I am able to document and add to my album. 

Today I am going to share with you my week 13 (last week of March) and to talk a little about my process. First - the finished page. Very simple this week, no inserts at all. 
   


I use Picasa for photo management and light editing. I store my pictures sorted by year, month and event (if they are event pictures). This year I added another level - week. When I am ready to work on Project Life, first I make sure that I downloaded all pictures from my phone to the computer. I go over the pictures from the week and decide what do I want to include and what size I need to print. To help me I draw a page sketch on a piece of paper and write down where I want the pictures, where the journaling will go and all other details that have to be decided before I print the pictures. If there are any inserts for this week I sketch them out as well. I know there are nice printable templates available but I found that a simple piece of paper and a pencil work best for me.

After the decisions are made I crop the 3x4 pictures and create collages with two 3x4 pictures on one 4x6 canvas. This week I decided to put three 4x2 pictures on one 4x6 and use in in 4x6 pocket as is. I adjust the colors, add the pictures to a new Picasa album (look at the screenshot above) and send them for printing (usually at Costco).


Here they are - week 13 printed pictures and my page sketch.


All my page protectors are in the album with random title cards in the left top pocket. I keep the memorabilia from the week in 8.5x11 page protector as a temporary insert. For week 13 I only had our movie tickets.


Time to cut the collages in half, round the corners and add the pictures to their pockets. At this time I look at the pictures and decide if I want to use the title card that is already there or I want another color.

New title card is chosen and the title is cut. 


I follow the same format for all title cards. Name of the month cut with Silhouette Cameo, Lilybee number stickers and two strips of washi tape. This week I used gold washi tape from Darice and American Crafts glitter tape.


On Monday we celebrated Passover Eve. The whole left side is devoted to Passover. I cut 3x4 piece from the Passover paper from Crafting Jewish Style collection, rounded the corners and stitched around three words with golf thread. I wrote down our Passover menu on 4x6 journaling card and added few small embellishments.


Left side all done.


Later in the week we went to watch a movie, all five of us. I didn't take any pictures, instead I found a picture of the movie poster and printed it at home. I added it to one of the title cards together with the movie tickets and two pieces of Tim Holtz film strip ribbon.
 



Here is the right page. This one is more embellished. I used Simple Stories and Basic Grey labels and letter stickers. The Celebrate card is by Recollections from Michael's. It comes as part of a 4x6 pad. I trimmed it a little and rounded the corners. The labels on the pictures next to the Celebrate card are one printable label from Studio Calico cut in half.  After I finished spelling Where is Spring I noticed that Simple Stories letter stickers don't have question mark. I will have to go through my brown letter stickers and find a question mark to add. Otherwise it looks strange.

That's all for week 13 and my post. Now go see what fabulous Michelle from Table for Five has is store for you.

Oh wait, since I was late with the post and I feel bad about it, I decided that giveaway is in order. I have 60 3x4 journaling cards from brand new Jade kit that I will send to one random winner. Leave me a comment to enter the drawing. I will draw a winner next Friday, April 17th.

Thanks for stopping by!


List of blog hop participants:
-------------------> Maya        http://mayadahan.blogspot.com  <---- you are here
Katina        www.lovinglifeslittleblessings.com
Nicole       http://nicolemann.blogspot.ca
Brooke       www.graceandlight.typepad.com
Kelli        http://whimsikel.blogspot.com
Shay         http://sbookinshay29.blogspot.com

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Samantha Walker Creative Team April Blog Hop


Welcome to Samantha Walker Creative Team Blog Hop! This month's theme is Spring!
You should have arrived here from Susie's blog.
If this is your first stop, be sure to head over to Samantha Walker's blog to start at the beginning!
This month one lucky winner will receive Butterly Magic Spellbinders™ Expandable Patterns Die Set

AND be sure to look extra closely at Step #4 to learn how you can get this FREE SVG and Silhouette Studio file:
How cute is this little guy?
To enter, just leave a comment on  Samantha's blog  by Sunday, 04/14 at 11:59pm MDT. The winner will be announced on Samantha's Facebook page on Monday, 04/15.
For additional entries:
1. Receive an additional entry for commenting on each of the other blogs in the blog hop.
2. Go here and follow Samantha Walker's blog 
3. Follow her on Facebook

4. Sign up for an e-mail subscription to Samantha's blog and you will automatically receive a link to a free SVG cutting file that you can download and use on your personal electronic cutter. If you are already a subscriber, just enter in your information in the secure form on Samantha's blog!  The free files will be e-mailed early next week!

To receive the additional entries and get the free files, mention in your comment on Samantha's blog that you have done so! 

And now let me show you what I made!
It is not easy to get into spring mood when we still have snow in our backyard. It is slowly melting away, too slow if you ask me! Meanwhile I love looking at my indoor plants including the newest addition - small fairy garden with fairy house.
I picked Samantha's beautiful bird houses Love Bird Mailbox and made some small changes. 
- I deleted the mail slot opening and the opening for the perch.  
- I duplicated the heart shaped window on the front and added it to three other walls.
- I reduced the dimensions of the original heart on the front and moved it a little higher, closer to the roof
- I added the rectangular for the door

That's how the modified shape looked like in my Silhouette Studio.  


I cut the house and the roof from different papers from Samantha Walker Traditions collection.


I cut four pieces of transparency slightly bigger that the window openings and added ribbon "curtains" to three large windows by stapling the ribbon to the transparency.


Fairies also need some privacy.


Time for assembly. The best part is that no glue is needed. I found it easier to close the bottom first, than the side flaps and the top.


I only used adhesive to add the roof.


Small button for the door handle and the fairy house is ready to welcome new inhabitants.


This can be a great project to to share with children. They would love to decorate the house and add small trinkets to the garden.


My daughter loved our fairy garden. I can see her spending hours arranging the pebbles, making tiny clay mushrooms and garden decorations and looking for just the perfect fairy that will live in the garden.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you were inspired to try these or any other beautiful cut files from Samantha Walker Silhouette Store
You made it to the end of the blog hop! Click on the image below to head over to Samantha Walker Facebook page!

Saturday, April 6, 2013

New card and Silhouette tutorial


Today is my turn to post at Samantha Walker blog. I chose to work with one of her gorgeous doilies. Stop by the blog to see how I modified the cut file to have a solid center.

Supplies: patterned paper and stickers(Samantha Walker for Carta Bella), cut file (Samantha Walker), stamp (Samantha Walker for Just Rite), distress ink (Ranger), ink (CTMH), jewels (Doodlebug), Silhouette Cameo

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Two layouts and a card


What can be better than a great sale, brand new goodies, cute picture to go with the papers and a challenge for extra motivation? The stars aligned last night for me and this layout was born. My baby girls almost 10 years ago, sleeping together in my parents apartment, tired from a long summer day. In August 2003 we spent few weeks with my parents, waiting for our flight to US.

Supplies: patterned paper, stickers (Echo Park), photo corners (Heidi Swapp), thickers (American Crafts), washi tape (Freckled Fawn), stickles (Ranger), gold thread (DMC)

I took an advantage of the great sale at My Scraps & More last week and bought Echo Park Sisters Mini kit. I got it yesterday and realized that the colors fit perfectly the color challenge at "Yotzot mehakavim" blog. I went through my storage albums and found this picture of the girls. Lila is almost 5 here and Ella just turned 2.

I cut out the chevrons from the patterned paper, adhered them to the background paper and hand stitched with gold thread.

I was happy to find 4 Heidi Swapp photo corners in my stash. Who knew they will come handy after all these years? :) I added glitter glue to four little hearts and the quote card.

The birds came from the sticker sheet in the kit. I wanted more dimension so I removed the stickiness by rubbing them on my jeans and added them to the page with dimensional adhesive.

For this layout I used a sketch by Lisa Moen that she made for My Scraps & More message board.  Here is another layout I made for My Scraps & More. This one is based on a sketch by Tracy Rhodes.


Supplies: cardstock  (Bazzill Basics), patterned paper (American Crafts), letter stickers (Simple Stories), border sticker (Doodlebug), sequins (Doodlebug), heart (Heidi Swapp), ribbon (unknown)



The last one for today is a card based on a sketch made by Bev Code. Simple and cute - my kind of card!

Supplies: patterned paper (American Crafts, Martha Stewart), border punch (Fiskars), die and diecut machine (Lifestyle Crafts), brads (Amercian Crafts), sticker (American Crafts)

 I have few more layouts to share but that will have to wait till next time.