39 Rue des Cartes

I’ve a backlog of travel albums I’d like to work on (or start) and I’m slowly chipping away at them. A few weeks ago I started working on one from a stay in Iceland using the August Kit and Summer Vacation Kit from the Kelly Purkey Shop (along with a few of my favorite go-to embellishments: my typewriter, mini staples, and a handful of tags).

Flipping through an issue of AFAR Magazine, I was inspired by a photo spread with a lot of long skinny pics. To get the look, I printed my pics at 3×6 and split them along the the two middle rows of pockets (on a 9×12 page). I’m a CAS (clean & simple) and usually keep my embellishments pretty simple. There’s a fantastic label in the Captured stamp set; I trimmed the camera from it and stapled it to the bottom half of the pic.

Along with Captured, I used stamps from both kits on the tags (you can see more of them in the first pic). To tie it all together I trimmed a few 3×4 cards down to 3×3 and spelled out a few words on vellum with alphabet stickers from the Summer Vacation Kit.

supplies used:
kelly purkey shop, august kit: life lessons
kelly purkey shop, summer vacation kit (traveler’s notebook)
kelly purkey shop, captured stamp set
studio calico, 9×12 pocket page
small tags from staples
memento tuxedo black ink pad

October Daily (yes, it’s a thing). *grin*

When Ali Edwards introduced December Daily, I was all about it. I dig twinkle lights and snow and coffee in red cups and all the things that come with December (and the kits, oh, do I love the kits), but October is my favorite. And so it began …

I made my first October Daily in 2007 and have made one every year since (with varying degrees of “success”). The first few years I made my own albums and pages, but transitioned to using pocket pages a couple of years ago (and, wow, so much easier). But last year’s – what I’m sharing with you today – is my favorite so far. Using a 4×4 album covered with black cats from SevenPaper’s Baxter line as my base, I started with a simple plan: tell one story a day, use a date stamp on vellum for the date, and add a few simple embellishments from Crate Paper’s After Dark line (for the Minc).

Note: The two-thirds-of-a-4×4 insert you see out of the book in the photo above is my “intro” page: pretty black glittery stickers on vellum with a big star sequin. It started life as a 4×4 page, but the more I futzed with it the more I liked the idea of it being slightly smaller and I made the cut (using a Fuse Tool to seal the new size).

As the days passed, I hit my groove. I have a ton of Halloween stuff in my stash, but I found sticking to one group of embellishments really made it easy for me just get it done. I wasn’t over-thinking (something I do A LOT), I was motoring. Keepin’ it simple works for me.

Note: I have a love/hate relationship with my Instax Mini camera. I love (LOVE!) the photos and the quirks of instant film, but being the happy, healthy control freak that I am, it drove me bonkers that I couldn’t precisely frame my shots. Enter the Instax Mini Printer. It solved all those issues by letting me develop whatever image I wanted onto the film – control-freak-approved instant images coming right up! (No one’s paying me to say this – I just really love the thing.) A new version has come out since I bought mine, but from what I’ve seen it seems to function the same.

2016’s October Daily is in the works (in a 6×8 album this time). I didn’t keep it quite as simple so it’s not going as fast? Will I EVER learn? *laugh* In the meantime, if you’d like to see more of this album check out my Instagram feed (over on the right).

Thanks for stopping by!