Project Life Year II and how I made it easier on myself this year

I jumped on the Project Life bandwagon last year. I did not do a weekly spread but a monthly spread. I have a husband and a cat and a pretty boring life...how could I fill up 52 weeks worth of interesting?

I liked the 8 1/2 x 11 approach and I used the We R Memory Keeper 9 pocket page protecters. The cards/pictures I created using my Silhouette. I made a rounded rectangle at 2.625 x 3.5 and made a bunch of copies. I would then import my pictures, size them to the rectangle, crop and cut a sheet at a time...BUT...my Silhouette is giving me a hard time lately. It keeps jamming up when cutting and the software keeps freezing up especially when doing something with this many pictures and multiples of shapes. I carried on though, cursing every time I made a layout. I finished 2013 and have to say I really loved doing this and decided I was going to take another go at it but something had to change!

I am a basic Photoshop user and know how to make a digital template or two so I decided I would make a template in Photoshop instead of Silhouette and cut the cards/pictures by hand. This only meant I could not have rounded rectangles (as I would not be using my Silhouette to cut the shapes). Once I got over the horror of it all I went to work on the template. I could only fit 6 shapes on my 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper but again, I will get over it. Now I just open my pictures, size them up a bit then do a clipping mask and WALA! (wala is too a word).

Here is an image of the template though so you can see what I shoot for. If anyone by chance would be interested in the template I would be happy to email it to you.

Here is part of my January page in Photoshop before I printed it.

See the top middle image? My husband bought me the pasta making attachment for my KitchenAid Mixer! Holy Pasta Making!


Back to project life.....so after I have the page printed I can simply cut it on my paper cutter or use a blade as each rectangle lines up perfectly. In the pockets they go...no rounded corners but I am trying to get over that ;)  I do the same thing with my journal-ling and other filler cards to fill all the pockets. Sometimes I do a 2 page spread and other times just 1 page it just depends what I have to say that particular month.

I will try to create a You Tube video of my process this weekend if I can get the darn software to cooperate. We have issues we two....

And then along came Christmas

Well I think this has been the longest ever that I haven't posted. To the 3 people (yes that is one more than usual) that read my posts I am most sorry. With all the Christmas stuff going on...which comes in the form of shopping and planning and cleaning and shopping and dreading and shopping...I haven't had much time to post.

But I did get my cards done and would love to show you. I took a Mo Manning design called Ragged Angel and colored 4 up on a sheet of X-Press It  paper then had it copied at Staples. Sorry folks there was no way I could color 40 plus individual images and get them out by April of 2012!

I used an image from The Graphic Fairy for the sheet music. I opened it in Photoshop and reduced the opacity to make it lighter then cut to size and attached it to the card base. The rest is Basic Grey Christmas paper from different sets, some bakers twine and a Silhouette cut snowflake courtesy of Kerri Bradford. The inside has a sentiment from Papertry Ink.

I have to say the copied ones were only slightly different than the original and no one will know! Unless I tell you....which I won't....can't make me.

Now I know there were other people who did not get this particular card. Seriously I wasn't kidding...it would have been April before ANYONE got a card if I made everyone the one above. So I had to do something and here is what came out....

and.....

Thanks to my Silhouette it made easy work out of both of these. The Christmas Tree card was a Kerri Bradford design, Hero Art's stamp for the background and the same Papertry Ink sentiment and DONE! The Noel card was again a Kerri Bradford design with a little bit of Basic Grey paper and a Cuttlebug Swiss Dot embossing plate and call me finished!
Ah.....all is calm all is bright!
Now bring on the biggest stressful day of the year! Yes that is right family is coming over! WOO HOO! Bring on the fun!

Nine blissful years

Today is my anniversary. Nine years have flown by in the blink of an eye. I still remember every little detail of our wedding. I suppose I always will.

This is the card I made for my husband. I am not totally thrilled with my coloring but like how the card came out over all. The corner piece at the top left and the flourish were done with my Silhouette. I like how it frames out the image. The image is from Mo Manning. My husband asked me why I made myself so old (he is 15 years older than me). I told him that is because Mo doesn't have an old guy young chick image. He said "well I didn't say young....". Let's see if he makes it to 10 years!



Have a couple other projects I have been working on and will post more about those in the next few days. One involved actually sitting at my sewing machine which I haven't done in ages! Felt good......

What's for dinner?

In answer to that vexing eternal question I created a blackboard menu board for my fridge using my Silhouette. This machine is amazing! Don't get me wrong sometimes it is a bit difficult and will not behave but when it runs it RUNS!

Take a look. I also am posting the video of how I created this bad boy. (and yes I know the word Menu is not straight...fixing it after work today so there)



And here is how I made it:



So now all I have to do is come up with meals to actually WRITE on the board.

I steal things

I have to confess...I am a total thief! I have a hard time coming up with my own ideas but if I see something someone else made I am damn good at copying it. So it went today. I saw this vintage button card on www.papertreyink.com. I knew I had to have it. However I did not want to spend the money for the die and the stamp set. So I set out in my Silhouette software. Now as this is a complete and utter theft I cannot sell these babies. But I am OK with that. The challenge of making them was worth it.





I found the vintage graphic at www.papercraftkits.com.

Open the image in Silhouette along with the cut file, size them up, print and cut. The buttons were made by cutting 4 of the same from pattern paper then glued the layers together. I then sewed them onto the card with embroidery floss.

This would make a cute card if I had another crafty friend! Any crafty friends of mine want a card? Anyone? *tap..tap...this thing on?*

Using PNG files in Silhouette SD

The Silhouette yahoo group I belong to brought up the question today of how to use a png file in Silhouette. I may not know everything about the Silhouette Studio software but this is one thing I did know! I use png's all the time as digital stamps when making cards or scrapbook pages. So for anyone who needs to know.....