Project Life - March Part 2

Hi everyone!
À mes amis francophones, veuillez m'excuser pour un 2e billet sans traduction, mais on part pour la Floride après demain et j'ai encore tellement de choses à faire!!  Je me reprends au prochain billet!! Merci de votre compréhension. Et si vous avez des questions sur ce que vous voyez/lisez, n'hésitez pas à me laisser un commentaire. J'y répondrai. :)

Here's part 2 of March 2015. Enjoy!

This month's theme in Ali's "craft the story" kit is MAGIC. I could't love it more!!! I love the products, but even more than that, I love the reminder to look for little pieces of magic in our ordinary life. I found a lot this month.

I started this left page with a card from the kit and a picture of my parent's car in our driveway.

Here,s the story. I love to use full 4x6 cards to tell a "longer" (still relatively short) story.

I used some cute gold and silver metallic stars. (I should have covered the blue ADT sign with one of these stars.)

Remember my post about photos that showcase people's personality? This is a good example. The picture is far from being good, but at the same time, this picture is perfect!! Because it captures so very much my daughter who has a calendar for the first time and who is constantly asking and writing things on it. On the calendar card I circle the date my parents arrived to our house. It was THE BIG EVENT of the month. :)

This is a small picture of my mom who is walking home with my daughters from the bus pick up. Precious.

And this is Arielle at her soccer practice, giving everything because she is competitive, but also because grand-pa is watching tonight! :) I added a label with some details, a big golden glittery heart and a happy wood veneer.

Another perfectly imperfect photo. My parents, Arielle laughing and interacting with the coach. I love it!

Here I would like to have your attention on the colors. I used only warm colors on this spread (and a tiny touch of mint to pick up the blue wall on the left page) because the red dog was pretty dominant and I wanted to blend it in a little. So I used oranges, yellows, pinks…. the paler pinks are toning everything down a little. I also used neutral wood as a background for the dog and some glitter gold as a mat for my small photo of Maya and the dog.

Love these two cards next to each other. And look at the stitching on the lines of the sun burst. Do yo remember yesterday when i talked about stitching along the lines? That's a great example. A little stitching really goes a very long way!

Another word wood veneer here to repeat the one on the left page. And some warm gold foil on a cooler pale pink card. Notice also how I mixed the fonts and the texture of the fonts? One is cursive and lower case, the other one is a sans serif and all uppercase. One is rather bulky and the other is extra thin.  It's a great contrast. Remember, a little bit of contrast is good.

So, what do we do when we have white space? My scrapbook friend would tell you "don't touch it, I like to breathe". And I'll tell you "if you want, use it to write in it". :) Both ways are fine. Here again I mixed the font size and thickness of the lines.

For my last spread of the month, I'm documenting our easter party and I decided to go with the colors of the rainbow!! Starting with the orange, yellow and pink on the left and going into a green and blue palette on the right. I think that this is pretty cool! :)

Look at our white trees!! Gorgeous!! They go so well with our bunny. :)

On the warmer page, I added a golden glittery heart.

And to tie in with the gold I used a white card here with golden stars and I added gold and pink sequins and a pink label.

I love the pop of yellow brought by the journaling card and the arrow. Did you know that arrows are perfect to bring the eye of your viewer where you want ti to go? Here for instance I'm journaling about the tactic that daddy was explaining to little 4 year old. I thought it was pretty funny. :) Well the yellow arrow points toward the race, ...

And here another arrow points toward daddy giving the tips. It's good to use arrows when pictures are really busy like this one.

To the blues and greens I added some black here. It makes a neat contrast to all the white from the bunny and the trees.

A small embellishment cluster with some white and some blue.

And here some more gold. We need a balance throughout the spread. If yo have it on the left side, you'll want to have it also on the right side. At least a little bit of it.

Here there's a mix of textures: cork, enamel, foil. And again a little pinch of black.

Here the words that were showing around the picture of the bunny made no sense to the story so I decided to stitching over them.  And on the bleu card I used a tone on tone embellishment. It makes for a soft look.

I so love this card. It makes me happy. I love happy colors. :)

And here, one last little embellishment cluster and a pinch of orange that brings balance to my spread.

There you go!
I hope you enjoyed those 2 days of Project Life.

I'm very happy to be up-to-date because as we are ready to go celebrate spring break at Disney World, I'll be ready to start a new month, fresh from the beginning when I come back. With my new system, it seems like there's really no more "being late". That's AWESOME!!

Talk to you soon!!!

Marie

Project Life 2015 - March

Hi everyone!

The end of March is here, and so is my updated Project Life Album! :)
Couldn't wait to show you because I think it turned out great. Also, I tried another way for photographing it. I hope you like it. Here are the first 2 spreads. I'll show you the two others tomorrow as there were way too many photos for one single blog post. Here you go:

As you will notice by the blurred sections on this spread, I have to keep some secrets. Sorry about that, but you'll know them soon enough…and you'll be happy, I'm sure. :)

So I'm starting the month with my monthly home-made calendar that you are now used to see. I fill in the little spots in advance for what I know and from day to day as things are added to our schedule. I'm also not afraid to cross things out if plans change under way. You know, it does have to be cute, but I don't want to make it more complicated than it needs to be. I think I better do it and have some mistake than waiting 'till the end and forgetting things. It's my point of view. I am still undecided if I'm going to color the days that Pat is traveling….

Ha! That's a good news. :) And since Stacy wrote that openly on the forum, I think I can probably share. Nothing has started yet though. If you have a wish or an idea, please share. :) I'd be happy to give it some thoughts. :)

And now let's skip to the right page:

Those 4x6 cards are perfect to mat some IG photos or some photos that you just want to crop a little. Leave a white frame and back it and instantly you have a space to write your journaling.

Here I added a tiny gold label on which I wrote the beginning of the song we sing every night before she falls asleep.

This is a picture of my oldest who is waiting for me while little one falls asleep. Yeah, I have created that monster: waiting with the kids until they fall asleep. Little one takes only about 5 minutes so it's not a problem. Oldest is a little more complicated…. I also added some thoughts about being often home alone for several nights in a row.

Ha! Ha! This was the next evening…. she not only had the baby and the towel this time….she did a whole… I don't know…path? With all the toys she could possibly find it looks like. I had quite a shock when I came out of the room…!! And again, some more thoughts on being home alone at night.

This here is our snowman who is melting away. We had fun putting the face back day after day to take one last picture with him. :)

Look at the light in this picture!! Photography tip: do take close up shot, but also think about stepping back, way back!, to capture a little bit more of the environment. When I look at pictures of when I was young I catch myself trying to see the neighbors house instead of focusing on the person that is posing in the middle of our driveway. :) When we think about what we would like to have from the past, it's easier to know what to document right now.

Spread #2 for March. Remember, this is not week 2. It might be, but as I explained in a previous post, I'm documenting the month story by story instead of week by week. Up to now I'm pretty happy with the result. I feel like the albums will be much thicker at the end of the year and I like it!

Now, look at the color scheme. The pictures were mainly green (I am now officially a soccer mom and will have lots of green in my album :) ) and I added cards with contrasting colors: oranges, reds and pinks. This is a good tactic to add tension to the spread and to make it more interesting.

For this spread I went back into my old Studio Calico boxes and found some gems!! I took things form everywhere a little and I arranged them so that they would "fit" with each other.

You already know my love of labels to add some small details. And here I added 2 embellishments. Notice how I took 2 round embellishments.

Here another label. Same style but another color. On both labels I added a little bit of stitching and at least one embellishment. I like to add a detail several times to create unity.

Here again, the stitching. On the lines this time. I did this a little bit further in my month.

And here, to add a little something without it being too much, I simple added some black ink splatters.

You might be thinking now about how poor the quality of this photo, yet, I use it anyway. This picture believe it or not was taken in a pitch black room!! Yeah, you read that right!! And with my Pic-Tap-Go app I modified it to be looking like this! I like this photo as it shows not only my little girl but also her favorite toys. :)

Here I have cut several card from several kits and I attached them together with some stitching and some labels to blend the two cards. If you are doing a Project Life album like mine, you will want to write more often the date because I confess, it gets confusing.

On come picture, like on this one, I added a simple piece of wood. I really like to add pieces that already have their words on them. I see it as a subtitle.

Look at this picture. Isn't it amazing? My tips here is to get over the shyness and take that photo that you want to have. Once you have it, you'll see that it was totally worth every effort!

Look at this little cute card with the cloud!!!!! I'm in love with it! In fact, I was hoarding it. :) But now it's in my album and I can actually look at it! :)

I added two teeny tiny wooden rain drops! :) Cuteness: A+!

Here's my little girl with her umbrella and a big smile on!!

The journaling card is from one of Ali's past craft the story kit and the three stars are rub-ons!!

On this card I used some golden triangles that were left from my December Daily kit to accentuate small details like the date and title. They are blending perfectly on this beautiful card!

Here a single golden label with stitching works because the photo is already beautiful.

Another spread. I love this one with all the beautiful and happy colors!!!

Look at the tints of pink and purple mixed with the complementary yellow and a touch of red. It works perfectly! Notice where I have used red. It forms a diagonal from one corner to the other with my daughter's dress, the title on the card, the "precious" label, the rain drop and finally the little heart in the camera. When you pick your embellishment, not everything have to match, but think about where you put your accent color.

I'm in love with Ali's kit's chipboard pieces. They are tiny with a typewriter font. So very perfect for Project Life!

And here I also added a wooden banner that I stitched. What?!! Stitched? Sure! You can sew through wood veneer without a problem with your sewing machine. I backed the little whole with a tiny piece of pink paper.

Here you can see some stitching details. Again, stitching on the line. Beautiful!

And here's a close up of the rain drops. They are made out of plastic and are really cute. I simply inserted them in the pocket here. No sewing. As long as I don't turn my album upside down, they are staying in place perfectly.

Here another stitched label. With words this time.

Some cute little details.

The first picture on the left where I have blurred the journaling is talking about some issues the girls are having in their class. I like that on this photo I could capture them all happy.

These two pictures/elements belong to the top picture. It's just a little bit more journaling. I added some enamel dots to create some movement.  A little like it would be twirling in the wind.

This is a classmate's birthday party.

Look how I have cut the banner with an exact-o to be able to insert the picture underneath.

Remember: you don't have to embellish every photo. By leaving some as is, we are letting the rest.

And here's a little bit of embellishments all clustered together. They go together by their shape (round) but also by their color which is a warm tone on yellow.

There you go. Hope you liked it. :)
The rest will be online tomorrow. Don't miss it. :)

Marie