Project Life: 2014 Week 5

Today I'm so excited to share with you my week 6 layout!  I am just plugging along with playing catch-up and I am so pleased with myself.  I will be caught up before the year is over!

This layout is when I just decided to stop second guessing myself and really just go for it.  It was taking me way to long to complete layouts while trying to place everything perfectly and think things through ten times over.  With this layout, if I got an idea, I just went for it.  I wasn't too worried what the entire layout would end up looking like.  I just picked a few main colors, and took it one card at a time.  And I must say, I'm pretty happy with how this layout turned out!

This title card may be my favorite I've created so far.  I know I say that every time, but this time really is true.  I just love to bits every single part of this card!  I cut the letters and numbers for the date out using my Silhouette, then embellished using mostly printable embellishments and a few alpha stickers.  I'm really getting comfortable layering multiple items, and I'm just giddy with the result!

The first card of my layout shows where I ended up putting my Alex once I finally got it all assembled.  I didn't have a specific spot for it in mind when I bought it, since it an impulse buy that I had been resisting for a few years.  When I figured out that it would slide perfectly between my desk and dresser, I was just thrilled!

Since putting my Alex next to my desk, that meant I had a shoe organizer that was displaced.  I had been meaning to clear out my closet and get that organizer in there pretty much since we moved in, but this is what finally pushed me over the edge.  Unfortunately my closet wasn't big enough to allow both shoe organizers to be side by side, so I just made a little L shape, and put the shoes I pretty much never wear in harder to access slots.

Working on all these winter layouts really has me thankful all over again that winter is over!  I still can't believe we had snow here until April.  I'm not a winter girl, so I included a fun little countdown to the first day of spring on this card, since I know I was already itching for warmer weather in week 5.

I had to memorialize this dinner.  I do not cook.  As in, easy-mac-is-not-so-easy-for-me I don't cook.  So putting together a nice meal of spaghetti and meat sauce was one of my finer accomplishments!

I also love how this card turned out.  I was super excited when I hit 666 Instagram friends.  And no, I don't worship the devil, I just like repetition!  So I snapped a screen shot and put together this little layout.  I cut out the 'hello' title using my Silhouette, and added some additional embellishments and description with the help of some stamps and and a printable label.

This was my first door decoration working as an early education teacher.  I used my Silhouette to cut the 'Special Delivery' title out, and it was my first big project after I got my Silhouette.  I added a few 'frou-frou' embellishments when decorating this card, since this was an infant classroom door and the decorations were for Valentine's day.

This is the page where I pretty much threw color coordination out the window.  I just didn't care, and wanted to bang out some layouts!  I'm kind of digging the all-over-the-place vibe though, I feel like my eye can just jump from one memory to the next, all around the page.

I had a lot of fun with this layout.  Since getting Red Robin for dinner isn't a journaling-heavy topic, but I wanted this picture in this 4x6 slot, I just had fun with the rest of the blank card.  I had a bunch of circle cut-outs leftover from making my Studio Calico inspired bubble card, so I placed them randomly around the blank space of the card.  I then added fun embellishments on top of each white circle.  I love how fun this card turned out.

I finally was able to use my 'live creatively' stamp from Studio Calico for these cards.  I had been waiting for a reason to use it, and I thought it was a perfect fit to be paired with a Michael's Project Life haul.  I also added a tiny strip of decorative paper to the top of that card, which ended up really pulling the whole thing together.  Aside from that I just layered a bunch of printable labels and some chipboard embellishments.

This tax time card is another favorite of mine.  If I had had more time, I may have done a little more to it, but it told the story it needed to with just what was there, so I left it.  After seeing this layout I was just itching to do something similar.  And as luck would have it, the free shape of the week from Silhouette was a pie chart!  So I whipped up a fun little graphic to illustrate a not so fun activity.

Back in the beginning of the year, Melissa and I began shopping for a new bed.  We were just so done with having a double bed, and we knew that once we moved, we were upgrading to a queen.  Since mattresses can be an expensive investment, we really wanted to do our homework and make sure we were sure about our final purchase.  It really is funny how the most random things, like mattress shopping, can make you feel like you're "actually" an adult.

And even though I'm not the hugest sports fan, I did have to include a reference to the Super Bowl in my Project Life.

The left card I really didn't know what to do with, so I just had fun with some printable embellishments and used some stickers to display the year again.  People can't be reminded too often about what year it was, right?

Next to that card I shared my process of starting to fill up my Alex.  I knew this was going to be a "craft zone", so I started to slowly with the drawers with my embellishments and crafty things.  I used my Silhouette to cut out the 'important' label for this card, and backed the letters with some colored paper to make the word pop a little more.

Another new technique I wanted to experiment with in this layout was cutting out stamps.  I did this with a few stamps sprinkled around my pages, including the 'oh yes' on this card.  I simply stamped an image onto plain cardstock, and then trimmed around it to make my own custom embellishment.  I really think it gives the stamp a little something extra, rather than stamping right onto a card.

And there is my finished week 5!  I am thrilled to just be moving right along with these layouts, and I just hope I can keep this creative momentum going until I am at least almost caught up.  My goal is to be only a month behind in the next month or two.  A girl can dream!

What crafty things have you been up to?  Anyone throwing caution to the wind and just diving in on a project, fingers crossed it will all turn out ok?  Anyone trying new techniques just for the sake of trying them?  Let me know in the comments, I'm all ears!