Lessons

Lesson Info

Embellishing Project Life

To embellish project life is something that aa lot of people enjoy for those of you here with me in the studio audience how many of you are either traditional scott vickers right now currently doing those pages or you're embellishing project life a couple a few of you okay great and you do that because why? Because we all I'm preaching here keep a simple get it done what's the reason for the embellishing what do you what's the joy that you kind of get from that it becomes a piece of you yeah you're making it yours my picture that ivan bellis just not going to be like your embellishment or how you fancied it up for anything it is me and how I do it sometimes you want that piece of you your creativity in there absolutely it is a piece of you that I did in my twenties you already on everything everything that I do I do it in a certain way so I want to make sure that when I'm scrapbooking I have that in there so it's easier I put a stamp on there or you know color it or you know and does i...

t's just you out no not with the project life and I still before why why is it different? Because it's smaller canvases what tell me the reason why it's less stressful even with pockets of cars were so pretty and they're kind of embellished with all right, pattern paper or, you know, whatever theme that it's on. So for me, it's only a little bit, just a stamp or a sticker or, you know, so, you know, starting from scratch, something that's already design, and you're exactly so I'm staring at a blank page for now and then designing for another hour. The designing part is done, so I'm just embellishing and moving on. Absolutely. Yes. What do you want to add the pressure's off? If you do great, if you don't great, right, mix it up. So that would be my main takeaway. I would help that some people watching everyone watching and if you do like to embellish, if you do want to be creative in your scott booking and you don't want to just be quick and, you know, easy and done and fast and all the things that I desire in my life by all means you have to do it so that you love it. And if it keeps you motivated to use those fun things, please, for sure, use them a lot of us ascot brokers. Do I have a lot of stuff? Raise your hand if you have stuff, yeah, okay. You have a lot of stuff I still have a lot of stuff I have done a lot of giveaways in my life over the years because I back in my days of creating keepsakes as an editor I received a lot of products saying hey, if you want to use our stuff and I use a lot of it and whatever didn't use I wanted to be really generous with those around me and I would say here you go and I still keep stuff because of my kids mostly I don't embellish my scott books personally I if it's not quick and easy it's not going to get done but I do know and recognize that scott workers have a lot of stuff and I encourage you to use it now that doesn't mean you have to use it in project life if you want to keep your system of scott looking really simple but certainly tap into it and use it do some fun cards or you know kraft with your kids or whatever but just a note for those of you who are feeling so committed to this idea of cutting out the clutter and simplifying and you know, getting the visual mess out of the way so that you can really focus on the photos and stories what do you do with all that stuff? I just mentioned a couple of ideas the main thing I would say though is it's okay to let it go, I don't mean in the trash can I mean, donate it. There are so many people who would be so grateful. Schools, charities, homes for mothers and children who are without a home. There are so many organizations and charities and schools and people who would be so grateful if you donated that stuff. So find the goodness in your heart toe like let it go and you benefit because it's less clutter in your life. And so there are options of what to do with the stuff on dh certainly don't need to keep accumulating more if that feel stressful to you or stressful to your budget, for that matter. But again, I want to recognize that scrapbooking stuff that a lot of us have is fun, and I get it and there's a lot of really cool and punishments and gadgets out there, so all right, so I wanted to mention for those who do enjoy traditional scrapbooking project life with every edition does have a coordinating pack of paper. I brought a few examples just to show you, but this is one that's for the honey edition. And you can see a sampling right here that shows the different styles of the paper and it's really sturdy a nice quality. This is the craft edition. This is the jade edition. I'm not going to all of them, but just know that for those who really do value the traditional scrapbooking, you still can coordinate exactly with the project life products as faras other products and infusing them into your scott books. This example comes from amy tan. I'm not gonna I don't have time to go into too much detail, but I do want to mention that some people love to embellish, embellish, embellished. So I've been showing you a lot of simple examples. This is kind of opening that world of possibility whether embellishments that you already have or ones that you want to accumulate, you could have a lot of fun with that you can also keep it really minimal. This is from stephanie baxter honor creative team and she's using doesn't look fine and decorated like a scrapbook page because it isthe she actually didn't embellish anything that's because the products the cards come pre design, so she literally just added her pictures and journaling, and that was it washi tape is something I mentioned the other day. And I and I failed to mention that when I was showing you some sample washi tape that I got from american crafts that it didn't make it in time but we with project life we are coming out with with washi tape with decorative tape to coordinate with project life and I don't mean all the designs and all the colors but I like to keep things classic and simple you guys understand that and so with washington we have the very neutral colors of the gray and a town and the block I think even why I'm not sure too many products that can keep track but coming soon so that's kind of a product announcement right? You're in creative life that's coming and a lot of people have been asking about that so you could do really simple things with washing tape like sea this is by catherine davis and you can see that on that black card kind of there in the middle she literally just tearing a piece of tape and stuck it on top it's not even holding anything it's just a embellishment there's lots of simple embellishments that you khun dio this is another example from amanda caves where there's a piece of washington behind the label letter stickers are in a abundance in this industry this is from ashley bennett the's air not our letter stickers we certainly have ours that are in great and tan neutral, neutral neutral but the letter stickers are great for adding titles that aren't just hand written but really bring attention to what you're talking about. This is one by christina profit and you can see very subtle she has her son's handprint and just about her name with letter stickers I mentioned that we have are our own stickers as well and as much as I like to emphasize how we can keep things simple, I totally get that sometimes is those core basic stickers really do make a difference and just to give you a couple of examples here at the table I'm not going to actually put stickers on something better shape. So you something that's already stickered if I can find it and I may have lost it and that's ok, so right here we have stickers that are arrows and we have letters and we have days and the purpose of these because everything I do has to have a purpose. The purpose of the arrow stickers is for with in a scrapbook page when you have a photo here and a journaling card here I want a point from here to here to say this story right here goes with that picture so gonna point to it really quick, simple but functional letter stickers are obvious sometimes we have a title and we want to bring attention to it and so we want teo put letter stickers on their very strategically sized small so that they fit nicely on the little three by four cards and then day stickers there fly on one side, the top. They're kind of flag on the bottom and that's when you convert it up, right up to the top edge of a card or the side of a card. And this is really fun for people specifically, those who are doing like a project three, sixty five approach where they're actually documenting every day, and you can actually label your days right there on the card. So I want to quickly show you that these exist and they are in two colors, a very specific reason. Why, no matter what additional project life you choose, gray or ten will be the neutral that coordinates and again, I like to keep things classic, so I don't want my bright pink stickers and my bright green stickers. I just want that neutral that doesn't take away focus from my pictures, and I want to show that you know everything pulls together, but it does so nicely. So just to fly through the rest of this ashleigh bennett embellished a little bit just with some letter stickers and by the way I would go back to that and show you that that was designed g on the right hand side where it's the squares that's how you can use them just enlarge the pictures a little bit and bring more attention to those this is some pretty heavy embellishing from lena in singapore on our creative team we have a very we have a worldwide creative team because talent is everywhere this one comes from a lease for how crazy you guys know who she is she actually designed the sea foam edition of project life and she is such a fun embellish are just little touches you could also embellished with non scott looking products but you can add in things in your scrapbook there aren't necessarily journaling our photos but tell the story like this I mentioned rebecca cooper yesterday she has an awesome blawg simple is that and she's honor creative team and we keep seeing her and all of the creative life promo stuff that's rebecca's page just such a beautiful style and even something such with map can be infused into your scrapbooking it really tells the story of this particular situation was their family moving from canada to arizona this is what the full page layout looks like. You see it there kind of in the middle of the bottom and so that's her story. This is an example of just kind of what's going on in their family but it's not a picture it's a map. We talked about digital yesterday a lot. Make sure that you you remember that digital can be the touches that you add in this case what does she add? Oh, if you look on the pictures, this comes too us from stephanie baxter she's actually in the uk and on our creative team and you can see that there's like a circle where she added journaling on several of the photos really simple probably took her seconds because she learned how to do it and probably do it in batches but that's a fund digital touch that she added, this is laurie made barbara, and she is adding journaling to her photos so it's it's that the principles that we talked about yesterday in our digital segments you can bring a photo into your photo editing program, you can add text and you can print that out and that's what laurie may has done here. You know that page lifter that we talked about you can actually customize that it comes in every project like album, and it comes with my little tagline on it and my little logo, hopefully subtle enough to not be in your face, but really, if you want to customize it like at least did then you can do that you simply cover it with paper I actually don't know what she used but if it were me I'd probably use mod podge just because it would you know I could take a phone brush and cover the whole thing with mod podge and she added a a simple button on the front which is like the perfect clean I love how clean it is embellishment to introduce her family album we have a partnership with becky hagen's and studio calico to bring project life in the form of fun embellishments on a monthly subscription program for those of you who are not familiar with studio calico and this program that we have I won't go into details you can find it all on our site or their site and what it is though just to give you an example a monthly kit comes with all the stuff now wait a second project life isn't about stuff it's about photos and journaling and pockets I get that I know that's how I do it but when we started the company and as we saw how people were using our product we saw the embellishing is still really fun on a smaller scale like we've talked about for people to be able tio enjoy doing more creative things and I don't have time to go into detail and show you how cute and adorable and creative some of these kits are but they even come with washing tape sometimes and stamps and pens and buttons and even project life cards and coordinate and so that's one option that is worth looking into if you want to do embellishments and do it through a kind of a monthly subscription where you get something cute in the mail every day, every month, then studio calico project life that's what that is and just to give you a few examples, I won't go into details because we're running short on time, but on go back, we'll just tell you that one's from alley edwards this one is from nicole reeves, lisa trusdell, alison waken lots of talent, deb duty who's also being our creative team. Jeralyn sigh ok, so there are so many ideas I can't leave, I'm running out of time let me just flip through because it will something's going to stick over the last minute or two that I'm gonna spend on this using product outside the album. Why am I even talking about this? I'm talking about inside the album well outside of the album because a remember we all have this creative tendencies and sometimes we want to get creative and b you will always have leftover product we give you enough that comes in a cork it that once you've completed the album, you're probably still going to have a few left of her cards and the reason for that is so that if you mess up on cards you have a backup we're not going to stress anybody out but everyone has left over cars and so to use them in creative ways is really fun for example this mom for her daughter made a little tribute gift on the spinner display and she did this this is tammy in washington her daughter is graduating so she had everybody write their messages and she included their pictures on that little spin wheel this is from maria and british columbia and she created a box of favorites and it's literally just favorite photos and the facts about them that she kept in a box similar to that we have mary anne perry who was also a part of our creative team I have this here with me actually she made a memory game with project life cards and it's right here she laminated them you see all these photos she made them three by four there's two of each two of each because they're kind of mixed up in here because I shuffled him around but two of each photo because on the back the pattern paper that she used from project life she lemonade them together and now she and her girls like to play the memory game they spread them all out and the girls find if I tried to find those matches you know that's what a memory game is with memory matching this way like crazy oh yeah two pairs of photographs so all the backing is now that's another they're all they're all different you know they're all different so it doesn't really matter because you know yeah yeah you know it's way more fun and people like that right? I love that that's cool home decor sticking even just a piece of paper in a frame can be a fun decorative element office supplies making them cuter I have a couple of uh manila folders here you see how plain jane they are there's nothing going on here but if I were to take mod project keep bringing that up because it works or a spray adhesive and attaching some pattern paper that's another thing that you can do to just cute q and things up a little bit while the camera is on the table just because I noticed that I just show you the youth of this stairs I did show it earlier because I couldn't find him. This is what it looks like when the letter stickers are on the card and this is an arrow and this is a day sticker and you see how I just work that into the journaling card super simple and easy um okay, so just a couple quick gift ideas but I was going to just show you how quick and easy it is just a slice up the paper folded and half entire ribbon around it and put it with envelopes it's an instant gift like a set of cards that you could make in like five minutes or less um but gift on a ring we talked about the christmas card idea somebody brought that up I think from our internet audience and I was saying I've seen that done before well this is from rebecca cooper again she's super creative clearly and she made with project life card she didn't do any anything creative with the larger paper she took the already cut and design cards and she put them on a ring and she made a little booklet ten things I love about you mixed in her photos and journaling and you can see the numbers that she made and put on there which she offers on her block as an offering for her readers and made ten things I love about you for her husband something non artistic and this is a reminder about how versatile the project life cards are we use them in our home aa lot as flash cards for my kids this is a recent I threw these away once I was done taking the picture they were dying porter was done with that test but porter worked hard to ask himself all the questions that he wanted to study getting ready for a test and answers on the back and he just made his own little flash cards doesn't have to be just for scrap booking. Project life, surprisingly, has become something popular and party decor. This is candace during them in texas who threw a project like party you see at the top what's going on there. She threw project life cards on string and decorated the party not just because it was a project like party but it's festive. Check out these pictures. How fun is that? It's. Just fun and cute. And she used the sunshine edition and strung them around the house. And it was just such a fun and festive way tio decorate for the party. But even outside of parties think about home decor when it comes to the holidays. This is from katie sweet rose studio is her blogged, and katie took a very simple handful of cards. I think they're from our vintage travel edition exclusive. That michael's, I think, is what these look like. Uh, maybe I might be, I might be saying that wrong, but look what she did. She took her paris scissors and just went chop just like this at the corner at the bottom of each card, and strung them across her fireplace for such an adorable embellishment, and you can do this at the holidays because we do have holidays and seasons related type of cards. So this is another blow you can see mandy see, I I'm going to have to correct this later on social media who this comes from because I think she just changed the name but fourth of july and americana brandy in texas who actually works for us did this with every season lately including a birthday party in the upper right hand corner and she was not even doing this to impress me believe it or not, she actually did this without me knowing and I asked her to send me those pictures because she just simply clipped them to a string with like the little close ten and that was it so I'm gonna stop talking I have one through some of the idea as a way to quickly but I hope that the ideals ideas are swirling in your minds about this possibility of not only creative journaling and what you should write about but also take that product and use it in other ways that inspire you ok, I think it's fascinating because if you keep an eye on the news today of course this is a very emotional day in american history actually for me personally because you'd probably guess where I was named from and people are sharing in the end all over the news today the memory of the memorabilia they kept from the day jfk was assassinated and it's really fascinating that incredible timing that we talk about preserving these memories and, you know, that was a terrible tragedy, it's still something that people, you know, remember very clearly and kept things, things going from that? Absolutely, and I resonate with that I was actually studying in england when diana passed, and so I have some things that I could pull out and and create that that was a big moment for me and for the world to incredible timing. Yeah, so a fabulous segment we are going to take our forty five minute break, though, but what are we going to get, teo, when we get back in this almost toe last segment and I I know getting sad like I'm gonna I'm gonna get a really good nap, but I want to an end because this is obviously we can talk for days and days about this, but our next segment, our next to last segment, is going to be about project life resource is so a lot of people are jazzed about this, they're feeling organized, they're backing up their pictures, they're doing all these things that we're talking about. But when it comes to, like knowing howto, like tap into resource is and know more about project lice and get ideas and get inspiration, that's what we're talking about next.