I have another idea to share about Project 365.  Again since the kits are sold out…we have to become creative ourselves.  This is ok…I like creative! ;D

I have these pages by Crop In Style.

They are meant for storage but I got them to do some pages in my scrapbooks…just for something different.  I originally got the idea from Ali Edwards.  You can see what she did here.  I was thinking about them the other day in relation to Project 365 and I thought it would be another perfect substitute for those of us looking for alternatives who did not get a kit! ;D  You can find the PSB Crop In Style refill pages here.  I bought mine at Archiver’s.  I was able to buy them there individually rather than a pack.

Here’s what mine look like for this week…

Supplies Used:
Crop In Style Refill Page
American Crafts Cardstock
My Mind’s Eye Out and About paper
Kaiser Scrapbook flower
Cloud Nine Word Phrase sticker
Martha Stewart Embellishment bead
Heidi Swapp date stamp
Cricut Design Studio Software
Cricut Expressions
Cricut Cartridge Base Camp

What I did was measured the pockets and then I designed the shapes on my Cricut Design Studio Software.  I then cut the pieces out on my Cricut Expressions in different paper colors and styles.  Then I went to work.  The picture below shows the piles of cut out paper I have left over for future pages…

Again…I did this pretty simply.  And I like that.  Mostly just photos and words.  I’m liking the power of photos and words lately.  Obviously you can do as little or as much embellishment as you want.  I like that if I have a week when I don’t have a lot of photos I can put interesting looking paper or what-not in the pockets.  And then weeks when I have a lot of photos I can do just the reverse.

I think that with Project 365 I’m going to do a combination of this page above AND the hand made ones from yesterday’s post.  Mostly because I like variety.  Also because I’m not always going to want to have my photos cut up so small as the page above has such small pockets where the sewn one has larger ones.

I’m hoping these ideas help you out and get the creative juices flowing.  If you are doing these ideas or anything of your own please share…I’d love to see! ;D  Have a fabulous weekend!

Don’t forget to live intentionally! ;D

Have you been thinking about Project 365?  I have.  I’ve been thinking of all the different ways you can do it…especially since the kits are sold out.  This is ok!  It’s a chance for us to use our creative noggins! ;D

Why do Project 365 in the first place?  Well I was thinking about it the other day…wondering…do I really want to do this…be committed.  And I thought of a couple of good reasons to…

1.  If you take more photos it will make you a better photographer.  Plain and simple.  I want that!

2.  If you remember that you have to take a photo for the day and you haven’t yet…take a photo of mundane life…after all isn’t that what life is mostly about?  Do not put any pressure on yourself!  I’ve been talking about stopping long enough to look at ordinary moments…and suddenly they don’t look so ordinary anymore…they become extraordinary.  Aren’t we the sum of our memories…big and small?

For example…my photo for today is this…Just to show you I’m not putting any pressure on myself I’ll post my everyday life photo…

I just picked up the camera and took a photo of what was happening at the moment…no making sure things were perfect or picked up or dressed right or anything…as you can see the dirty napkin on the table and Ava in her robe at the table.  Normal everyday life.  More of the point of Project 365 right???

So…the kits are all sold out…what do you do?  Options.  Here is what I’ve done with my first week.  I took my own advice…thank you Michelle…and sewed custom fit page protectors.  This is from one of my earlier posts.  If you click on the link you can find all the explanations of how to do these.

My friend Michelle has some tips on her blog about these custom made page protectors.  They are excellent ideas!  If anyone has any other ideas let me know!

Michelle also has her custom made pages for her take on the Project 365 posted for her first week over on her blog.  She did an excellent job! ;D

Supplies Used:
American Craft Page Protectors
Jen Maddocks Days of Week 365 Brush
American Crafts Thickers Stickers
7 Gypsies Savannah Large Clear Stamped
Heidi Swapp Ghost Shape Heart
Heidi Grace Alpha + Words Glitter Stickers
Hambly Screen Prints Brocade
Zig Millennium Pen
Prismacolor White Art Pencil
Gelly Roll Pen

The days of the week cards are a digital brush that I created.  I printed out a sheet of them on white cardstock and just placed them in the pockets.  Here is the brush if you would like to download it.

I was also thinking about my friend Kendra who does all digital scrapbooking now.  And so I designed a template for Project 365 for those of you who like to do digi work.  This is my own take…didn’t want to copy the original Project 365 exactly! ;D  Click on the pics to download.

And then one more thing.  I have another brush that I designed…it’s in the template above.  It’s the year 2009 in the top left corner.  Here it is below and if you click on the photo you can download it as well.

If you use any of the brushes or the template please let me know how they turn out!  I would love to see!

The girls went back to school this morning after being off for two weeks for Christmas and New Year.  All was very quiet in the house this morning.

I used the time to finish up my December Daily Album.  Wanted to get it done before it got too far into the New Year.  I’m happy that I did this project.  Happy that I took photos every day…or almost every day.  And happy that the album is pretty much photos + words.  I like the simplicity of it!  I’ve just posted some of the pages…not all.  If you click here or on the first photo (below) you can see the entire album.

Did any of you out there do the December Daily Album?  If so…how did it turn out???

You know when life just happens to hit you with things that you just don’t expect?  Things that were not on your “to do list”?  As my friend Kendra posted today.  I’ve been having that kinda day…every day…since like forever it seems…but seriously since Friday.  I’m just not back on my feet yet.  I cannot get organized.  It’s only gonna get worse, I fear, as the girls are off school starting Friday.  And so my December Daily album is not updated so I cannot post that.  I got off track with my daily photos I’m sorry to say.  And the list goes on and on.  Sigh.  It’s life…very unscripted.  If any of you know me at all or have been reading for any length of time you know that I’m a planner and this kind of thing just does not sit well with me.  You’d think after all this time I’d just go with it…but it’s like rubbing a cat the wrong way….and now my fur is all going the wrong direction.

So for fun…since it’s what I’ve been enjoying doing so much lately…this is what I did/felt like doing today.

Jen Wilson Designs The Merry Days of Christmas Fifth
Lynn Grievenson Peacock flower3, flower2
Lynn Grievenson Elizabeth flower 2
Trish Jones Distressed diva Distressed Edge
Wordle.net
Font King

I did the words on Wordle.net.  I’ve posted about this cool site before.  This is how I got the words from the site on to my layout:

1. Go to www.wordle.net and create your word cloud by following the prompts.

2. When you are all done, click PRINT.

3. When your print menu appears, go to the drop-down menu to select the printer you want to use. Select Adobe PDF, then click PRINT.

4. When your PDF document appears name the new cloud what you wish and place it where you want in your documents.  I saved this just as a PDF…but you can save it as a JPEG either way.  If you save it as a PDF it will transfer over into Photoshop as a transparency.  If you save it as a JPEG it will not.  Just an interesting thing I discovered…by accident…don’t you love it when that happens! ;D

5. Use your image-editing software (of course I use Photoshop) to open your Wordle word cloud and design away!!! ;D

And if you decide to do anything with this…show me what you come up with!!! ;D

***

I’m feeling a bit in the Christmas giving spirit so…let’s do a giveaway!  I’m going to give a $15 gift certificate to Designer Digitals!  Leave a comment on this post.  Tell me your favorite thing about Christmas.  I’ll draw a random winner on Monday!  Good luck! ;D

I found this fun site called Big Huge Labs.  Apparently it is used for Flickr.  While I’m not on Flickr…haven’t succumbed to that one yet…I have found a good use for this site in other ways and you don’t have to be a member of Flickr.  Here are just a couple of examples of some of the fun things you can you…

Frames…

Bead art…

Collages…

So now for the techy part. ;D  There is a Palette Generator on the site that you can use to color coordinate with photos and then download the swatches in Adobe Photoshop Exchange format to use in Photoshop.  Oh so very cool.  Here’s the process…

After you have uploaded your photo your screen will look something like this.  Your photo on the left and your palette colors on the right.  Here’s the photo I uploaded and the color scheme choices it gave me…

I clicked the download button and chose ‘save file’ in the pop up window.  Then I went to my downloads folder and found the swatches and put them in a folder of my choosing.  To get the palette colors into Photoshop find the drop down box in the swatches fly out box.

Then choose load swatches…

Make sure you have ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) chosen in the drop down box in your choice of files menu.

The new colors will appear in the swatches fly out box.  It’s pretty similar to loading brushes if you have ever done that before.  Have fun!

Hey Honey…r u proud of me for my ‘techy’ post?  ;D

When Laney came home from school today she saw all the stuff on the coffee table for the button trees.  “Mom what’s all THIS???”  So I showed her and explained it.  And she took off.  I was amazed.  Maybe I don’t give her enough credit sometimes.  I guess I was worried about the pins and her poking herself.  She did great…

We were running out of supplies so we got some at the store after getting Ava from school.  We still ran out…so I’ll be back before I’m done.  Laney is done.  Ava isn’t.  It was definitely a hit with both of them!

I have been wanting to do this craft for some time now.  I got all the materials together…had some time this morning…and started.  Let’s hope I finish it.  It is very simple and easy so it stands to reason I should!!!  I have seen it around in several places.  Have any of you out there done this?  I found it on Two Peas and Ali Edwards site.  I believe I am going to set up the girls and let them each do one.  I just wanted to do one myself and get it all in my head about how it goes before letting them dive in.  I’m like that.  I like to know how things are going to go…planner. ;D  It is sometimes easier with kids too…cause they can get outta hand pretty quickly if you don’t have all the answers! ;D  I’m not good in fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants situations.  That’s Corey. ;D

So…here’s mine so far…

Just curious if anyone out there has done one of these.  I’m finding it extremely mindless…in a good way.  Perfect for the mood I’m in.  ;D

Ok so the random winner of the challenge is Elizabeth!  Congratulations!

On Saturday we were out and about and turned into Tagawa Gardens (the same place Laney went on her field trip in October) just to look around.  I just wanted to look in the gift shop as I had seen some cute things while there on the field trip.  I knew Corey wouldn’t really be all that thrilled with a store like this so I promised 30 minutes and he could even set the timer on his phone! ;D  Luv you Honey!

Well I wasn’t even thinking…cause duh…they had Christmas trees and all kinds of stuff for Christmas.  They had totally restocked the place for Christmas + Holiday shopping.  And…the best part…the place was FULL of poinsettias!!!  As far as the eye could see!  A perfect photo op!  And of course now that I carry my camera with me at all times in my new Tamrac camera bag…well I just whipped that sucker out and away I went!

Ava was being overly photogenic…”Mom!  Take a picture of me here.  Take a picture of me next to this plant.  What about over here?  How about over there?  What if I tilt my head like this?”  It was quite humorous and you KNOW I took advantage of it…cause she doesn’t do it often!!!! ;D

You can view all of the photos on my private gallery here.  Yes I am still messing around with Lightroom. ;D  And my favorites of the day are as follows…

So you want to do a December Daily but you are feeling a little overwhelmed…just want something to plug photos into…easy peasy?  I found another great idea on Jessica Sprague’s blog.  I saw some templates on the Photo A Day gallery and was curious so I did some digging and I found it here and this is what it looks like…

If you go here you can see another layout Jessica did with it.  This is what I did with it tonight…

It is a very nice layout.  Simple and easy to work with.  I didn’t change any of the design…just the background paper and the number…and added some swirls…that I got from Jessica’s class I took this fall…he he.  The size of the template ends up being 8 x 8 so 1) you can print it at home if you wish without a special big honkin’ printer…Jill ;D…and two…it is the perfect size to make a mini album when you are all done with doing a page a day!  And it’s not too intimidating for those of you starting out on your digital journey…again Jill ;D…

One more thing to add…my December Daily Photo for today…which technically I took last night…the snow was falling in perfect little flakes yesterday and last night because it was so cold.  Something it doesn’t often do around here.  I had to try to catch it on film.  I don’t really know how to do it yet…but here’s my first attempt ever.  I got one.  Yay me!

Happy Friday!

I am really not feeling well.  It’s such a bummer…this time of year.  My good friend Jill just had her bday and I feel like I’ve dropped the ball w that.  Laney’s bday is today and I’m feeling soooo guilty.  Sigh…guess I just have to lay here and get rest to get better.  Not easy for me to do…grrr.

I promised to post what I had done so far on my December Daily Album.  I had all this done yesterday…just had to take photos…which I did this a.m.  That’s the only thing I did…after I got the girls ready for school.

At first I was upset that there wasn’t more embelishments.  And as I go I’m sure I’ll find stuff that I’ll add in there…but honestly…I kinda like the “simple-ness” of it…the focus of the words and the photos.

I haven’t gotten any daily photos for today yet.  But I’m sure I will as it’s Laney’s birthday and we are going out tonight.  Better take a nap and rest up for it!  Hope you have a wonderful day!!!