New Adventure

Hello! I just wanted to update this blog to let everyone know that the best place to find me now is at www.alterediris.com. Would love to have you come and join me on my new adventure! 

Thank you! 

A Gift Album, last minute...

Happy Monday! Over the weekend my Dad celebrated his 60th birthday! I'd had this in the back of my brain for several months so it didn't completely sneak up on me, but I did put off the gift until (somewhat) last minute. In the past I've had this notion that I needed to plan *months* in advance and work for hours upon hours to make a meaningful mini album as a gift, well, this time I only had a month from the time I first decided that I wanted to make one... don't worry, no need to panic... it turned out fine! Once I rounded up some photos of my childhood and photos of my Dad and I, scanned a few in and reprinted them, and chose some product and found a few quotes to include it only took a couple of hours to put together! 

I used an 8x8 album with one photo on each page, a block of plain cardstock and a block of coordinating patterned paper (I used an older line from We R Memory Keepers called Coppered Out). Once I had all the pages put together I went back and stamped a round journaling stamp onto an ivory sheet of cardstock, wrote my journaling and added into the page where the 3 blocks meet. For the title page and closing page I did the same thing without a photo. So, see there you too can make a quick little mini album in a few hours, it doesn't have to be a masterpiece, just some photos and meaningful words written from your heart. And, if you get as lucky as I did, maybe you'll even make the recipient cry! ;) 

A New Love: Mixed Media Canvas Art!

So, a few weeks ago I finally did a project I'd been wanting to do for a while... 

Thanks to Christy Tomlinson's wonderful tutorial here I was able to create this little piece of art. I knew that I would really enjoy this type of project and I was so right. I've loved using paint and rub ons and collaging scraps on my scrapbooking layouts for a while and this seemed like such a natural thing to play around with. I love the process and the result and have been dreaming up other things I can make. And this weekend I had the perfect opportunity to make an original piece for my niece who turned 10 yesterday. Her parents gave her a room re-do for her birthday and so my sister-in-law sent me the link for her new bedding which was my inspiration for this wall art I made for her new room! 

Here's the bedding set she got from Pottery Barn: 

And here's the art I created for her new bedroom! 

A little closer up view: 

And the card I made to go along with it. 

I am happy to say she loved it! And I'm excited to make more art soon! :) 

Project Life | Week 12 & 13

Project Life update! Here's my week's 12 & 13, click to view larger. 

Spring is always a busy time of year for most, I think. I'm finding myself being a bit more flexible with this project, going more in the direction of a weekly overview instead of day by day. At first I was fighting this and now, I'm embracing it, realizing IT IS OK! :) Anywho, hope you enjoy and please do share how you're doing on your Project Life or a 365 or 52 project your working on! 

Project Life | Week 10 & 11

Hey everyone! Here's my week's 10 & 11 as promised! Whoo hoo! 

Week 10: You can see I'm missing a photo here on this layout, that's because I forgot my phone and had no way of taking pictures when we went out to an extended family dinner, so I'm waiting on photos from my sister-in-law to get this on fully completed. 

Sun- Tues photos

Wed - Sat photos

And another 6x12 insert with 6 photos from our weekend road trip to the lake/st. paddy's parade. 

Week 11:

A very sparse week in the way of words and somewhat even photos... definitely a challenging week... I'm starting to realize the true benefit of taking those few minutes each day to jot something down and have a photo in mind that I've taken that day or plan to take the next day. There's something to be said for not waiting until the end of the week (for me anyway). I know there will likely be more weeks like this one, but I'm feeling reenergized and refocused on this project. I stumbled upon a new resource over the weekend: captureyour365.com. Although I haven't taken time to explore the actual site too much, I  did sign up for the daily emails that give inspiration/ideas for your photo-a-day project. Very helpful if you are struggling with an idea for the day or you're just looking for a new idea, so check it out. 

Here's the left side of week 11 

and the right side of week 11. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Project Life | Catching Up

Hello! YES, I am still alive!!! My sincerest apologies for being the biggest blog slacker ever! The saddest part is that I have no decent excuse. The good news is that I have not been a Project Life slacker... I have been faithfully keeping up with it, just not done a good job at taking pictures and posting them. :( But, I am catching up with that today and will do my absolute best to keep up with it going forward... because I love sharing and inspiring you in your own Project Life or other creative journey! :) 

So, here is... Week 7 

In the bottom right photo spot, I usually put Tuesday's photo, but for this Tuesday I just wrote out a conversation between my son and I and didn't have a photo that went with it, and when I saw that the back side of that spot from week 6 was this, I liked the way it looked and just went with it. So, don't feel like you have to have something "significant" filling each spot if you don't have anything to put there, just "make something up", take the pressure off... 

I put in another 6x12 insert in this week. My daughter painted her hand and did this handprint all on her own... I loved how she did each finger a different color and new instantly it had to go in PL! I paired it with a photo of her being goofy and a strip of one of the sheets of patterned paper that came with the kit. 

On the back side of the 6 x12 I put in a portion of one of the 22 paintings Noelle did over that weekend. 

Week 8: 

A few weeks back I bought Ali's digital journaling blocks... one set of long journalers and one of the 4x6 sets. I was excited to use the 4x6 set this week and love how it adds into PL perfectly! Definitely looking forward to using more of these in the future. On this one I wrote our the kids' bedtime routine and put it next to the photo of Daddy reading them bedtime stories (part of the routine). 

Close up of Sun-Tues

Close up of Wed-Sat

Week 9: 

One thing I like to do sometimes if my photo turns out off lighting wise or even sometimes if it's blurry I'll turn it black and white which makes it more artsy-looking instead of looking like an obvious bad photo. So, now the secret's out... and you should try it to! ;) 

Close up of Sun-Tues

Close up of Wed-Sat 

Come back on Tuesday when I'll share week 10 & 11! 

Project Life | Week 6

Welcome to Project Life Week 6! Yippee! It's late, but it's here so better late than never, right!?! My little boy celebrated his 3rd birthday on Saturday, so much of the week I focused on things about him, things he likes, little quirks, etc... I am wanting to also include an insert with more details about him at this point in time. I purchased volume 1 of Ali's long journalers and am hoping to get some time this week/weekend to put one of those together to add! 

Here's a look at Sun-Tues... the far right journaling block is Parker's stamping artwork that he did while I was working on writing some journaling! :) 

and Wed-Sat... 

Project Life | Week 5

Here's my Project Life Week 5! 

Sun-Tues... We got even MORE snow this week! The top right photo is of our under cabinet TV in our kitchen showing the blizzard warning, the bottom right is of my dear, sweet, hard working husband who spent nearly 24 hours solid out plowing the white stuff! 

Wed-Sat... A few of the things we did/enjoyed the 2nd half of the week... while we had cabin fever (minus Friday when we finally got out to go to the store!) :) 

I also did a little insert page from a photo I took of my 2 kiddos that turned out well and a journal entry I put into my Momento iPhone app on Friday. 

On the back side I slid in a family portrait Noelle drew at church. The big guy with 6 arms is Daddy, the one to the right is Mommy with the crazy hair, Noelle is on the other side of Daddy & that's little brother Parker with the long arms! :) 

Linking to:

PS. How do you like my new little blog button over there ----> "Be Intentional" found here. Thought it quite appropriate and a good reminder since Intentional is my One Little Word this year! :)

Project Life | Week 4

Project Life Week 4!!! Wow, I can hardly believe it! This year is flying by already! 

One of the things that I think is essential for this project is having a camera with you at all times, whether that be a little point and shoot you keep in your purse or your cell phone, without something portable that you can have with you all the time, you won't be able to capture spur of the moment shots. 6 of my 7 photos this week were taken with my iPhone, including photos taken at the library, in our car and inside Target. It's so fun to be able to capture those little things of everyday life that often get overlooked or may seem unimportant at the time, but it's those little things that are what take up the majority of our days and moments and are so worthy of documenting! So, here's a look at week 4! 

Because I included Wednesday & Thursday's journaling on one block & I didn't have a photo or any memorabilia I wanted to put there, I used an extra filler card on the 2nd half of the week. 

Sunday - Tuesday

Wednesday - Saturday

For my Wednesday shot I used an idea from Becky's Blog about using Google Maps to map where you live. I then just took a photo of the screen with my iPhone to get this POTD! Thanks Becky!

And thank you for stopping by today! I'm linking up to Project Life Tuesday on The Mom Creative.

Twisted Sketches #86

Here's my layout for sketch #86 for Twisted Sketches. This is my final assignment as a Twisted Sister, it's been such a fun and rewarding experience to be on such a great team and have the opportunity to share my work! 

Products Used: Patterned Paper - Sassafrass, American Crafts, October Afternoon; Stickers - October Afternoon (label), Cosmo Cricket & Sassafrass (alphas); Rhinestones

Project Life | Week 3

Project Life... week 3! Yippee... still LOVING this project, more and more as I go I think! There are some days I think "What in the world am I going to capture today and then at some point later on something happens and I'll think "aha!" this can be my POTD! :) I'm wondering if this is going to get easier or harder as the year goes on... although I am sure that some weeks will be easier than others (like this week was). Such a great & doable project and the great thing is you don't have to do a photo a day, there are SO many fabulous different ways you can use this album! For lots of ideas visit Becky's site.

So here is the first part of week 3. 

We've gotten a lot of snow the past couple of weeks and I've taken quite a few photos, so I decided to insert an American Crafts 6x12 page protector with some of those additional photos & a journaling block I made out of some lined paper I had in my stash.

And here is the 2nd page of week 3. On the bottom left 4x6 block I slipped in part of the hot chocolate packet that says "Making Warm Chocolatey Memories". I loved it and knew that it needed to be included... how fun is it going to be to look back at that in 10-20 years (or more) and see how the graphics and things have changed over time. I also included a ticket from the arcade/play place we went to on Saturday for a birthday party... loving including these little bits!

Just a side note: If you happen to look closely & you notice the stamped dates look a bit odd, well that's because  I somehow got confused on what date it was! ;) I had to go back and "fix" them so they showed the correct dates with the correct days. Ooops! 

Linking to: 

2011 Goals | Read More

So, one of my goals for 2011 is to read more. In the past I get eager about reading but rarely, if ever finish a book. It's sad, but true... but this year that's going to change! Hubby and I have both set out to read more, which should help, since we can help keep each other accountable and remind each other. So, our goal is 12 books this year (1 book a month)... secretly I am hoping to read more like 15-16... but, I don't want to get in over my head. :) 

Right now I am reading this book. I'm over half way and my goal to finish is 1/31... totally doable! :) Next on my list is this book. And what I'm so excited for about this one, is the community that I'll be reading along with. The club reading will start on February 7th and will discuss a chapter a week. One of the coolest things is that the author will be discussing with us in the weekly videos! How cool! I am so excited to be joining this community as well as reading this book! I hope that if you've set out to read more this year you'll consider joining the (in)courage community! The book is on sale for $10 on Dayspring through Monday, so hurry and get your book and join in! :)

Project Life | Week 2

Hello! I'm here to share my Project Life Week 2 with you! This week I included a few "bits of life" rather than just photos/journaling blocks. I included the card that came with the flowers my hubby surprised me with and our receipt from the grocery store. 

Sunday's photo spot was actually a sheet of paper my daughter was practicing writing on. 

On Wednesday I took a photo of the gas pump that showed how much gas is and how much we spent. 

Linked to: