Project life 2013: week 12. Only 2 weeks behind now, finally catching up!

This week was all about completing projects! LOVE IT! A total of 3 projects finished, not to mention some painting around the house as well. It was such a feel good weekend for accomplishments and we even fitted in some pancakes for breakfast as well!

RECORDED: The best fool proof pancake recipe EVER and it is soooo tasty. It’s Jamie Oliver’s recipe. Try it! You won’t regret it. The best topping for these is butter and then lemon curd on top.

Nothing new for techniques this week but if you are interested in the three projects I finished, click on one of the links below.

• My crochet wool blanket finished here.
• The cow print tutorial here to learn how to turn your personal photos into works of art for your walls.
• How to repaint laminated furniture to revive it and use it as a new and current piece in your home here.

Project life was created by Becky Higgins. It’s a project designed to make journalling and memory keeping easier by having beautiful journalling cards ready for you to just add in with your photos.

Project Life 2013: Week 11……and still catching up! I’ll get there……slowly but surely.

This week was a relaxing week, lots of creative projects nearing completion, lots of walks on the beach in the early evening and the evenings felt longer and lighter, it was amazing. After a walk on the beach one night, we made a spur of the moment decision and had fish and chips on the beach to watch the sunset.

There were also a few new purchases for the house that week, a new rug for the lounge and a new duvet and duvet cover for our bed, all the way from the US of A. It was purchased from one of my favourite stores at the moment – West Elm. LOVE.

Nothing new this week for techniques. There was the stamping of photos again on ST PATTYS DAY. The tag from my duvet cover was stapled onto a journalling card and I some masking tape over the top so I could easily write over it.

My favourite part of this week’s layout is my sunset that was captured every few minutes. I loved seeing how quickly the sun went down and it really captured what was happening during the sunset picnic. Then when it got a bit cooler, the jacket covering my legs in the photo on the bottom right was exactly what I could see whilst lying down. This is definitely one of those moments that was worth capturing in photos.

Project life was created by Becky Higgins. It’s a project designed to make journalling and memory keeping easier by having beautiful journalling cards ready for you to just add in with your photos.

Project life 2013: Week 10. I’m still busy catching up on project life over here…..but I’m getting closer though!!

Week 10 included a LOT of crocheting to get my beautiful blanket finished, hubby completed the 8km round the bays run and we had ourselves a mexican fiesta with mojitos!

round the bays: I stamped on top of the photos again as I liked the effect so much last time.

touch wool: all the yellow flags that are stuck on the photos are from the seafoam edition of project life. I have simply cut the journalling card into strips; touch, see, smell and taste, I added my own writing onto the end of the word and then stapled it on to the photo or card. I LOVE how this looks. I will definitely use it again later down the project.

I used the quote card in the seafoam edition for a motivational quote and the words ‘motivation’ and ‘habit’ were from a mini moji stamp set which were a gift from my sister in law. Cute right?

The photos this week were all taken on an iPhone and the colours were so bold and vibrant. Hubby also took a few stunning shots on his run for me.

It’s not too late to start project life! Do it! You can work at your own speed and choose how you wish to tackle the project. Daily photos, weekly photos or even just capturing major events of your life. Read here for more on this project that Becky Higgins created.

I’m playing catchup with project life at the moment because I haven’t been very good with getting my photos printed each week! But better late than never.

This is Project life 2013: week 9 and it was an amazing week. These are the weeks that reminds me of why I do this project. Weeks in my life that I want to be able to remember, years down the track.

This was the week of our two year wedding anniversary so it was full of love, fun and yummy FOOD! It kickstarted off with the best and easiest pancake recipe ever by Jamie Oliver. Followed by even more food at Al Brown’s restaurant Depot in Auckland city. If you haven’t been, go! It was delicious. Small bite sized morsels of delight with lots of good beer and wine. AMAZING.

There was a bit of DIY which just made the week even better, where we painted the wall in the garage/laundry and then I was given an incredible present by my hubby which I never thought I would get to see – an Aerosmith concert in Dunedin. WOW. Now I know I probably don’t fit the typical mould of an Aerosmith fan, but hey. I will definitely be singing my lungs out to every song they play!

I haven’t used any new techniques this week, but I have added a couple of items that were a little different. The pink DEPOT in the bottom left slot is a menu from depot. They print their menus on large pieces of paper each day with the date, so they were happy for me to keep it as it had the date of our anniversary on it. The other is a paint colour chart in one of the 4×6 slots which was the palette that we chose our colours from.

New to project life? Project life was created by Becky Higgins. It’s a project designed to make journalling and memory keeping easier by having beautiful journalling cards ready for you to just add in with your photos.

Project life 2013: week 8. Busy and chaotic start to the week but it ended with a Linkin Park concert and a relaxing trip away to Whangamata which made it all better….

I did more photo embellishing with paper this week which I’m LOVING at the moment. I like that it’s documenting a photo with a tag instead of writing lots of journalling cards. It’s letting the photos do the talking.

RECORDED: I cut this off one of the edges on a seafoam edition journalling card and stuck it onto my photo. It’s my favourite pair of pants at the moment and I’ve been wearing them everywhere! IKAT LOVE.

TICKET STUB: I stapled my Linkin Park ticket to the photo of the crowd which looked really effective.

LOVE TODAY: I cut out part of another journalling card and stapled it onto the TODAY card. I also stuck on LOVE from the American Craft thickers alphabets.

*YOU ARE HERE: I stamped onto the photo for the first time and it looks awesome. I will definitely do this again in the future.

MY PHOTOS: All my photos are taken with the iphone 5 and the quality is always amazing. I never take any photos with the flash on and I always have the HDR option turned on. It stands for high dynamic range and it works by taking 2 photos within a millisecond of each other at different exposures. The result is the option for you to choose the better photo out of the two! I would definitely recommend this to everyone who is using your iphone to take the majority of your photos.

Project life was created by Becky Higgins. It’s a project designed to make journalling and memory keeping easier by having beautiful journalling cards ready for you to just add in with your photos.

Project life 2013: week seven and it’s still a fun project I look forward to each week.

Last year when I tackled this project, I abandoned it at the start of April so I’m determined that as we go through the months to stick to this as I know that it will be so rewarding when I get to the end of the year.

Week seven was a sunny week, there was sunshine everyday in some form and it made me so happy. My stamp purchase from Elise’s shop finally arrived and it was sunshine in a bag. Go check it out her store here: shop ELISE JOY.

It was Valentine’s day on Thursday and even though we are not big on Valentine’s day, we always make sure we do something casual for dinner together. This year, we went to the beach and devoured our Burgerfuel takeaways. YUM!

With all the beautiful sunshine, we took hubby’s sister’s dog for a walk. As it’s a new neighbourhood for us, we ducked down some random streets to have a nosy around.

I MAKE STUFF: This was one of the cards that arrived inside Elise’s package. I loved the card so I stapled it onto a journalling card.

DIY: I stamped diy onto some kraft paper and stuck it onto the photo.

STUFF OF LIFE: This is from one of the journaling card in the seafoam edition of project life. I cut out the circle and stuck it to the photo. I’m really loving the embellishing of photos like this at the moment. It’s so easy but I think it looks great.

MEET ROCKY: A combination of American Crafts thickers stickers in the Amy Tangerine range and stamped letter on kraft paper. The stamp set is the Kaisercraft ‘Alpha’ range.

I have added in our receipt from our dinner on Valentine’s day. I stuck it onto a journalling card and cut around it just to strengthen it. I loved using all these little things this week such as the card and receipt to embellish my layout. The things that you would usually throw away are great momentos for project life!

project life 2013: week 6.

It was a colourful week this week, full of love, crafts and food! My favourite!

Mum and I made some cabbage and pork dumplings, there was a bit of diy valentine’s day crafting and then my hubby and I spent the weekend in beautiful matakana just an hour north of Auckland. We went to the saturday morning markets there and had amazing food and french pastries, followed by an hour of wandering around the craft markets. LOVE.

The wedding was in the late afternoon at a vineyard and it was just such a perfectly stunning day.

YOU ARE HERE: I stamped onto a journalling card, cut to size and then stuck it to the edge of the ‘you are here’ project life card. Stamped using the alpha typewriter kaisercraft stamps.

ME & YOU: The lettering is by Amercian Crafts thickers. They are metallic silver. Very cool.

&: This is stamped using my latest purchase, I just received it this week…. Elise Joy’s ‘&’ stamp. LOVE. She is the very creative mind behind the project life seafoam edition that I am using here. She is amazing, check out her blog. Elise Blaha :: enJOY it..

THIS IS WHAT LOVE LOOKS LIKE: I have stapled ‘LOVE’ on top of the card where it use to say ‘LIFE’. The word ‘LOVE was hand written.

TODAY IS ______: This is also another stamp that I just received from Elise Blaha’s shop. There is a space for whatever word you would like to write in.

THE BRIDE & GROOM: This has been handwritten onto a kraft coloured post it, cut out and then stuck on.

Project life was created by Becky Higgins. It’s a project designed to make journalling and memory keeping easier by having beautiful journalling cards ready for you to just add in with your photos.

Project life 2013: week 5 of our life this year.

It’s been a busy week this week so I’ve been feeling tired and not as motivated. However, as soon as I got my photos printed and started reliving the week that was week 5, I was feeling inspired again! The photos for this week are amazing and for the first time this year in my project life album, these were mostly taken on my sister in law’s awesome camera. Canon 550D. (It’s on my wish list!)

We had so much fun playing with all her different lenses, the photos came out AMAZING. I can’t wait to get one. It would be my very first SLR camera.

FEB: These are thickers stickers by Amy Tangerine for American Crafts. I love the faint crosshatch pattern on these. I have used these again on the word BAKING.

I can’t believe that Feb has come around so quickly….but I’m glad it’s here as this is one of my favourite months of the year. It is usually the warmest month for us in NZ so it’s great for picnics on the beach – my favourite! Also it is the month of my hubby and I’s wedding anniversary! We are still deciding on what we would like to do, but it will probably be something low key this year.

TODAY IS GOOD: journalling card from the Project life seafoam edition by Elise Blaha. I have cut the circle out and stuck it on my photo.

Only the 2 photos of our house were taken on my iPhone, the rest were taken with Canon 550D. My tip for getting amazing photos is to take as many as you possibly can so there are more options to choose from. Especially if you are a beginner like me, there’s bound to be one good shot in a few hundred!

Project life was created by Becky Higgins. It’s a project designed to make journalling and memory keeping easier by having beautiful journalling cards ready for you to just add in with your photos.

project life 2013: week 3.

I’m still inspired and loving this project! I’m also loving the fact that I’m tackling this with a weekly layout. It’s worked in well with days when I just don’t have time to think about a ‘photo of the day’.

THIS IS LIFE: I cut out the circle from one of the journalling cards and wrote ‘on a farm’ then stuck it onto the photo. I think it looks really effective and would be great on any photo where you may have excess space or for scenery shots. I have started to embellish on the photos and I love how this means that I can use less journalling cards. I also love how a caption looks on a photo as seen on: BERTIE THE FARM DOG. I will definitely continue using this technique.

These were all mostly photos from 2-3 days of the week when I went to the windy city of welly and I have headed my week as that on a 3×4 on the far left card.

project life 2013: week 4.

DAY 14: cherry tomatoes. This was done using masking tape and black permanent marker. I really like how it looks quite rustic from the torn edges of the tape. The masking tape is a bit transparent, which is nice for the photo to come through a bit. This was a really easy way of labelling a photo and I will definitely be using this through the rest of the album. You can see it again on the FOOTSTOOL: REVIVE IT photo.

LOVE OUR CATS: the ‘love’ is done using a thick white permanent market first and then I have traced around the edges with a black pen to make the word a bit more obvious. The ‘our cats’ is again the alpha typewriter stamp set from kaisercraft.

OUR BED ARRIVED: This is just kraft coloured paper stuck on with writing on it. Again, another quick and easy way to label your photos.

Over these two weeks, I have managed to get 10 photos into each week! I love the look of more photos, more photo labelling/embellishing and less journalling. It also gives me a chance in the coming weeks to fit in some sequence shots which I’m really excited about!

All of these photos were taken on my iphone.

Project life was created by Becky Higgins. It’s a project designed to make journalling and memory keeping easier by having beautiful journalling cards ready for you to just add in with your photos.

These are the first two weeks of my project life 2013. I am LOVING the seafoam edition!!!

I have decided that I will not be sticking to a uniform layout this year. i.e instead of always doing the tile card in the top left corner, it will now be dependent on how the page looks. I have started using the 3×4 cards to do week dates on them as well to mix it up a bit more whereas in the past, these were only saved for journalling cards.

Another restriction I’ve taken off this year is to take a photo a day. I tried to do a photo a day last year, but i didn’t end up completing it because on some days it was just too hard with work. I did project life for about 4 months and then eventually missed a few photos here and there. Hopefully with the new flexibility, it means there will be less pressure and it also enables me to use lots of beautiful photos from the same day if I want to as I struggled with choosing only ONE on some days last year. My week’s layout will be photos from that week, and I would like to try and do less journalling cards and more photos.

I love using the kraft coloured cards as the colours always work so well with my photos. I have used the kaisercraft ‘alpha’ typewriter font stamps for the dates and weeks – these are my favourite stamps at the moment as the size works well on these cards and the typewriter font is just so cool.

I have kept it all simple without any embellishments for these two weeks just for a change. I have printed all the photos with a white border and then corner punched them all with my creative memories punch.

It will be amazing to see how this project evolves now that I have more flexibility – I think it will make this project easier and more fun for me since I always struggle to finish my projects.

Project life was created by Becky Higgins. It’s a project designed to make journalling and memory keeping easier by having beautiful journalling cards ready for you to just add in with your photos.