Project Life 2012 | Week Twelve

March 27, 2012 By

project life week 12

First of all, round of applause for me for sticking to this for twelve entire weeks. That is exactly eleven weeks and six days longer than I stuck to my I-swear-I’m-going-to-stick-to-this housekeeping routine.

Second of all, Jeff and I are speaking to one another, contrary to how it appears on this layout. I am unsure as to why I positioned the silhouettes facing apart instead of facing one another. I feel as though it may have had something to do with the fact that I was attempting to hurriedly affix all tiny elements to my page as my child ripped my beloved sheets of Making Memory Tiny Alphabets to shreds. To shreds, y’all.

Which is better than a few weeks ago when she ate a Tiny Alphabet sticker. Scarlette likes to sit in my lap while I scrapbook and hand me things. She also gave a hearty attempt at eating a sheet of Hambly Overlays. Apparently it’s not just Jeff that thinks they smell delicious. Nothing was ingested during this crafting session so I call that a win.

Scarlette is to my scrapbook supplies as Godzilla is to New York City. You are welcome for that fine example of analogous relationships. That right there is proof that yes, your SATs do matter and you will use them in real life. But they’re all lying to you about math. You’ll never use math. You’ll just use your iPhone.

I edited on of my favorite digital elements so that I could add a quote from the Hunger Games and then stapled our movie tickets on to it. The good news is that we really enjoyed the movie. The bad news is that I hope Scarlette doesn’t plan on pursuing a higher education because we had to empty her college fund to pay for popcorn.

I’ve kept the butterfly theme throughout and the bottom left corner is my favorite. But enough about scrapbooking. There are more pressing issues at hand. Such as: what did you think of The Hunger Games?

Project Life In Progress: Title Page, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12  (In case you are wondering, my pages that include too much personal information or nekkid baby photos don’t get posted online, which is why some weeks are missing!)

I’m linking up with Jess at The Mom Creative today – I’m hoping to catch up on commenting on everyone’s pages!

Here are the supplies I used (some affiliate links included)

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21 Comments Filed Under: Project Life, Scrapbooking

Project Life 2012 | Week Ten

March 14, 2012 By

project life 2012 kayla aimee week 10
What? Oh yes that is a photo of Ryan Gosling that just happens to be larger than any picture I included of my actual family members. What now, Project Life? What now? Knowing my love for Handmade Ryan Gosling my sister sent me that in a text message. I know. You wish you were my sister’s sister-> see: Text Message Picture War.

project life 2012 week 10 kayla aimee
I stayed pretty simple this week again. Hambly sent me some of their new line to play with and the mini overlays are perfectly sized for Project Life. I used one of them to layer over an email chain the girls and I were sending so that you can still see what it is but you can’t quite read it if you’re just flipping through the album. Which is useful because we have reputations to uphold. And by “we” I mean the three of them that don’t write this blog.  I’m pretty sure I’ve put way too much information about myself on the internet to salvage mine.

Jeff used to work with me at Scrap In Style TV so when I brought the package in, I told him it was a box from Hambly and he said “Bring that over here, I love the smell of that stuff.”  This is because Hambly uses vanilla in their screen printing process. It makes their papers smell delicious. Not because he just likes to sniff random boxes of scrapbooking paper. You should still probably pretend I didn’t tell you that though.

project life 2012 week 10 kayla aimee
I also found an awesome tutorial + print guide from Paislee Press on how to print directly on your Project Life cards. And okay, I continuously forgot to delete my guide layer but still, I love this because now I can use my faux typewriter font to my heart’s content. Go download it, it will change your life.

Project Life In Progress: Title Page, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10 (I’m linking up with Jess over at The Mom Creative today b/c I love seeing everyone’s pages!)

Here are the supplies I used (some affiliate links included):


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How To Get Published In Papercrafting

March 12, 2012 By

how to get published in papercraftingI wrote another e-book y’all. And this one is totally free. Seriously, it’s free.

See, once upon a time I started submitting some scrapbook pages that I made to various papercrafting magazines. And then some of them published the stuff that I sent them and paid me money for it. And I was like “SWEET!” because I was a poor college student living on ramen noodles. True story, morning glory.

Over time working in the papercrafting industry became my actual real-life job and so I picked up some tips and tricks along the way. I’m sharing those with you here because I’m a giver y’all. I’m a giver.

And also because I remember searching hard for information on how to submit my crafty projects to magazines and what I could do to have a better chance of them being published. Turns out, there was very little information out there on the topic. Which surprised me because when I googled “how to get a nail out of my garbage disposal” there were eighty four articles on just that topic alone.

So I decided to pull together what I’ve learned and write it up in this little e-book. Stuff like: how to photograph your layouts so they look really good in a submission email, how to write said submission email, how to find out where to send aforementioned email…

And other related topics such as: how to know what magazine editors are looking for, where to find submission calls for various publications and what to do if someone asks to publish your project.

Then I called up some people who have way more experience than I do and asked them to contribute their ideas. Like Susan Opel, the Creative Editor at Paper Crafts Magazine. And Kelly Goree, the design team coordinator for Basic Grey. Oh, and also Kathleen Summers, who designs for many manufacturers and has been published over a hundred times. Right. One hundred.

So overall, the ten chapters in this little 30 page e-book cover all of the basics plus some little known facts that will help you get started submitting your work! I originally wrote a few of these articles for a scrapbooking website and received many emails from people who had their first scrapbook pages picked up for publication after using some of my suggestions, so my hope is that this e-book encourages you to start submitting!

I will warn you in advance that you may encounter the lyrics to Jenny From The Block sprinkled liberally throughout the book. I simply can not help myself. Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got.

To download the free e-book, click the download link below!
ETA: some of y’all were getting a cart error- sorry about that! I was using the cart to email you the link so it didn’t overload my server, then I tried hosting it here and it DID overload my server. But now I have it hosted at my other site, THE DIY FILES so you can CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD HOW TO GET PUBLISHED IN PAPERCRAFTING

If for some reason it still doesn’t work for you, shoot me an email via the contact page and I’ll email you a copy :) Thanks for such an enthusiastic response!

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Project Life 2012 | Week Eight

February 28, 2012 By

project life 2012 week eight

Okay so this is now my new favorite page. I did half of it in photoshop which made it super easy. I used this digital kit  – on the bottom right page I just added drop shadows to the photos so they would look like I took the time to cut them out. But I didn’t actually cut them out because I have a toddler that tries to take off with my scissors. She also ate one of my tiny alphabet stickers. This is why we should all be digitally scrapbooking. For the safety of our children.

I just added all the text of what we did this week to one of the 6×4 cards in photoshop before I printed it. Then I stuck some random stickers all over the pictures and called this a scrapbook page.

All of the faux instagram prints lift up and have journaling underneath. Faux instagram because real instagram doesn’t work on my phone. You’re dead to me, android.

If you look really closely you’ll see that I ran out of S’s and that the J K & S at the top actually says J K & 8. Here’s a tip: if you run out of the letter S, just use a white gel pen to make your 8′s into S’s. No one ever even uses the number eight. Also? My aunt sent me a handwritten letter in the mail this week. I love it so much that I am determined to send some handwritten letters instead of emails this week.

Project Life In Progress: Title Page, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7

I’m linking up with Jess over at The Mom Creative today b/c I love seeing everyone’s pages. This project life post was brought to you by the number 8.

Here are the supplies I used:



(some affiliate links included)

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12 Comments Filed Under: Project Life, Scrapbooking

Project Life 2012 | Week Seven

February 21, 2012 By

Project Life 2012 Week Seven
This week I did another one-page layout but designed it so that it would coordinate with last week’s page since they face each other in my stack of layouts that are sitting on top of my desk album. Here is what it looks like with my week six page:
Project Life 2012 Two Page Spread

I stuck in Scarlette’s ziplock baggie painting from earlier in the week and just stuck some letter stickers right on top of it. Please note the photo of the homemade chicken pot pie, which, after five years of marriage Jeff declared the best thing I have ever cooked. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, she’s learning her way around the kitchen y’all.

Project Life In Progress: Title Page, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5

I’m linking up with Jess over at The Mom Creative today + I’d love to see your pages!

Here are the supplies I used (some affiliate links included):


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20 Comments Filed Under: Project Life, Scrapbooking
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