steph's stuff: Project Life Creative Team

A present for all of us!

Andrew's 12th birthday was last week but I'm the one who got the present. Cathy Zielske's Project Life Value Kit is now available in the Project Life Digital Shop! Woot!

I've made no secret over the years about being Cathy's biggest fan. Being able to work with her designs while on the Designer Digitals CT was one of the best perks of that job and now having her designs in Becky's Project Life shop is just the best!

And now I have a present for you - Cathy's kit is on sale. ;)

I made a quick layout this weekend with her kit but it's just the beginning. I have a feeling that I'll be using her products all the time now. Love the colors, love the font, love the wood veneer embellishments, and really love the clean and simple design.

I'll be back in a day or two with a Beth update and with some fun college pics from a trip Emily and I took over spring break.

Happy Monday!

Related links:

InLinkz.com

April 13, 2015 at 03:29 PM in Project Life Creative Team | Permalink | Comments (0)

Project Life 2015 | Week 8

The kids are on Spring Break and I couldn't be happier! We really need a break from schedules and homework and stress. So here's to sleeping in, watching movies, reading books, and a 4-day roadtrip!

Week 8 was such a fun week to document, mainly because of the new Heidi Swapp Overlay Value Kit! I absolutely love that many of the new kits come with stickers and overlays, and word art. So much fun! This kit has a lot of fun colors in it but I focused on just the pink and black to make this layout more cohesive.

I added text to most of the photos this week. One of my favorite ways to document the week.

Happy Spring Break!!!

Related links:

InLinkz.com

April 03, 2015 at 09:15 AM in Project Life Creative Team | Permalink | Comments (0)

Project Life 2015 | Week 7

Looking back on these photos makes me so happy that our snow is gone! Just yesterday, the last little evidence of snow in our neighborhood disappeared and I'm very ready for warmer temps!

Week 7, though, was not warm and we had the worst whiteout conditions of the year. The house across the street wasn't visible at all. It was terrible so most of our week was spent inside.

I used a modified Design A double template. It's quickly becoming my go-to design.

Those of you who are on Facebook might remember my post about Andrew checking his temp every day in hopes that he'll be sick. I had to include a photo of that ritual.

And the photo of Em with the little boy she babysits is truly the best babysitting photo EVER!!! LOL!

The second page is more snow, ski club, and a few iphone photos of the week.

Related links:

InLinkz.com

April 02, 2015 at 09:13 AM in Project Life Creative Team | Permalink | Comments (1)

Project Life 2015 | Week 6

I have a few go-to layouts for my Project Life pages and this is the easiest. I made the template using the free Project Life starter pack and have it saved. All I have to do is drag and drop my photos, change the week on the title card, and change the journaling. Saves a ton of time!

This was the week of the Super Bowl and we also happened to have a relative ask if we wanted their fairly new TV. Ummmm....sure. Considering ours was old and small, we were happy to have it. We don't watch a ton of TV (although I'll admit to streaming a lot of Netflix on my iPad) but it was a great gift! "Finding Nemo" was the best way to break it in. :)

We also had a snow day this week and decided that it was time to get serious about getting me a new car. We'd been putting it off for over six months and, with Emily's activities ramping up this time of the year, it'd be nice to hand down the old van to her so we wouldn't have to share cars anymore.

This week was also one of those really tough weeks for a few of us. One of those weeks that makes it hard to scrapbook. I put some of the journaling behind a privacy screen and just kept it simple.

Hoping to find some more scrapbooking time this week!

Related links:

InLinkz.com

March 24, 2015 at 08:05 AM in Project Life Creative Team | Permalink | Comments (0)

Summer 2014 layouts

I'm still plugging away on my 2014 Project Life album but I'm not going in strict chronological order. My mind is dreaming of summer and Maine and so I decided to work on some photos from our trip to Maine last summer. It was a very quick trip but we visited some of my favorite towns so I'm doing several layouts from those little day trips.

This first layout was made with the Project Life App and the Dear Lizzy Day Dreamer Mini Kit. I am so in love with the app! And this kit is one of my favorites. Photos edited within the app and all done in under 10 minutes. Can't beat that!

I made this layout just this weekend in PSE using the digital Nautical Themed Cards. Love the navy. :)

This last layout is one of my absolute favorites! I actually made this months and months ago and used it as one of my submissions for the Project Life Creative Team.

The snow is finally melting here and I can't wait for the sun to come out. Until then, I'll keep making summer layouts. :)

March 10, 2015 at 09:30 AM in Project Life Creative Team | Permalink | Comments (1)

The cubing obsession continues

Andrew became obsessed with cubing last fall after he earned a free Rubik's cube at school for demonstrating kindness in the classroom. Which was totally cool!

But what's even more cool is how awesome he's become at solving cubes! His current record is 42 seconds for solving a 3x3 cube and 7 seconds for solving a 2x2 cube. He insists that those times are slow but I'm not buying it.

And you know I had to document it in a layout. :)

This layout uses the Ready, Set, Go Project Life Value Kit and it's currently on sale here!

March 05, 2015 at 07:52 AM in Kids, Project Life Creative Team | Permalink | Comments (0)

Project Life 2015 | Week 5

The dreary days of February are still here. Sigh. They get me every single year. But we've just started noticing that the sky is still light out around 6pm and that's almost something to celebrate! I'm dreaming about spring and summer and trying to talk my hubby into two getaways this summer - anything to keep my spirits up while we wait for spring to thaw us out.

In the meantime, I decided to take some of those spring thoughts and add a bit of color to a layout about a rather rough week in our house. Adding a bit of brightness to an otherwise downer of a week is my way of trying to stay positive. Not sure it totally worked but I'm going on the theory that attitude is everything. ;)

So week five of this year was a bummer. I journaled about a lot of it but I also wanted to make sure to focus on something, anything that was positive. I think I accomplished that with the top two cards on the right. Gratitude for the relationship that my girls have with each other and a couple of funny quotes from the kids this week! Andrew's sneeze comment is hilarious!!!

Here's to spring thoughts and a positive attitude for all of us!

February 26, 2015 at 09:32 AM in Project Life Creative Team | Permalink | Comments (0)

Project Life 2014 | Weeks 17, 18, and Prom

I'm almost halfway done with 2014's Project Life album and I love to see it all coming together. Here's a few more pages.

Week 17 brought Andrew's 5th-grade play - "Little Mermaid Jr." - and Andrew played the role of "King Triton." The neatest thing was that he was almost unrecognizable under his costume. The beard was so big that it wouldn't stay on his face so the director just had him wear it around his neck and between the enormous beard and huge wig, it was hard to tell who he was. I really didn't take many other photos this week so I simply used the story of his play for the layout.

I also included a special two-page layout for Emily's prom. These are the kinds of weeks - weeks with big events - that I like to focus on the event photos, rather than daily life. And p.s., this is not Emily's current boyfriend in case any of you are confused. This was almost a year ago. ;)

Week 18 brought some medical issues that I needed to keep private - Beth's story is already out there with her permission, but not all the photos so I covered up one of those. And yes, I still call her Libby in our albums. And she's okay with that. :)

All of the products used on my pages are from Becky Higgin's Digital Project Life products. If you ever have questions about how to find them or which kit they're from, just let me know. Some of the kits I used on these layouts include the Cinnamon edition (with recolored cards), the Free Starter Pack (one of my favorite kits!), and the Desktop kit.

Related links:

InLinkz.com

February 24, 2015 at 11:33 AM in Project Life Creative Team | Permalink | Comments (0)

Project Life 2015 | Birthday Layout

It's a snow day today and what better to do than scrapbook! I used Becky Higgins' new Golden Themed Cards for this layout about Emily's 17th birthday.

I didn't think the golden cards would suit me when I first saw them but I absolutely loved using them! I also used Becky's script font which adds a nice little touch to the photos.

Related links:

InLinkz.com

February 19, 2015 at 11:31 AM in Project Life Creative Team | Permalink | Comments (0)

Using digital kits in unexpected ways

One of the best things about being on the Project Life Creative Team is having access to all the new digi kits. A couple of new ones came out today - you can find them all here.

One of my favorites was the Maggie Holmes Full Collection. The collection features pastels, florals, birds, butterflies, and cameras. It's gorgeous and most people would immediately think spring or girl layouts. But I always love to look for minimalism in kits. I want the focus to be on my photos and the story and I want the products to simply back up those elements, not overwhelm them, even when I'm doing an assignment for a creative team. Lucky for me, Becky's philosophy of ultra-simplicity is the same. :)

When I looked closely at the kit, I knew exactly what I wanted to do! Look at the pale gold cards paired with the cards covered in text and musical notes. They're sophisticated, simple, and neutral.

And so I took those elements and turned them into this layout!

It's one of my favorite layouts this year! I used the Design F template and two elements (the arrow on the bottom left and the yellow circle border on the bottom right) from Becky Higgins' free starter kit to round it out.

Here's to minimalism and telling the stories of our lives!

Happy Monday!

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