Books in 2019 - Life Crafted Mini Album

I decided to use my Life Crafted album from Citrus Twist to document the books I read in 2019. I've set a somewhat bigger goal for myself than I normally do, and I really want to challenge myself to read more this year. So I thought it would be fun to document my progress and the books I'm reading in a min album.

I had considered using a traveler's notebook insert to document my reading, but I knew I would be hard-pressed to fit all 24 books in one album. Enter the Life Crafted album! The pages are the same size as a standard TN, but because it's ring-bound, I'll be able to fit as many pages as I need. It's the perfect solution.

But before I start documenting the books I've already read, I needed to create a title page. Every album needs a title page, right? So I grabbed the gorgeous February "Love Stories" Life Crafted Kit from Citrus Twist and chose a few items I knew would work perfectly for this project.

I started with the oversized tag that came in the kit. It fits perfecting into the Life Crafted album, so it seemed like the obvious choice The kit also contained a CTK exclusive dictionary print paper that I HAD to use. Then I chose a journaling card and some embellishments and just had fun putting the whole thing together!

I especially loved the little butterflies that came in the acetate pack. There were matching die cuts in the ephemera pack, so I decided to layer them and stitch them together to add some texture and dimension to the page. I love the way they turned out!

Here's a quick look at my process:

Happy Crafting!

Traveler's Notebook: July 2018

Today I'm sharing the July spread in my 2018 Highlights traveler's notebook. Here's a look at my process. You can scroll down to see detail photos and read more about the project.

The highlight of my July was hands-down my little brother's wedding. He got married at a private campground in the mountains of Colorado. It was beautiful!

Since it was an outdoors, camping wedding, we originally thought we would drive from Indiana with the dogs, but as the date drew closer it just didn't look like we'd be able to get away long enough to make the drive worthwhile. So we found a dog-sitter and flew instead. Best. Decision. Ever.

Despite all of the craziness surrounding the wedding (last minute preparations, power failures, and just general chaos), Jesse and I had a really wonderful time just the two of us.

Of course the wedding itself was beautiful too. I plan to eventually do a mini album of the entire trip, but for now, I wanted to get this memory captured.

For the layout, I used a bunch of random bits from my stash. The papers are from a super old Pebbles collection called Lakeside. The die cuts are from Gone Camping by Imaginisce. The title alpha is from the Amy Tangerine Shine On collection. 

I also added some pieces from previous Citrus Twist kits, a scrap of Studio Calico vellum, and some little watercolor trees I painted and cut out by hand. Overall, it's a pretty simple layout, but I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

Happy Crafting!