I'm super excited and so very proud to part of a team of amazing and talented ladies!

Can't wait to see what all of you create! 

Sahin Designs

You guys, I think this is my favorite spread so far. I've been waiting all week to share it with you. For a week that didn't have many photos, I feel like I did pretty good with this one.

Last week I had to drive into the city to start all of my on boarding with Occupational Health. I'm always forgetting where I parked so I snapped a photo of the 5 near the elevators. And of course I added the paring stub. Yep, that would be $8 parking for an hour. Fun times.

Not sure if it's just because my succulents are doing well, but I've been on a cactus kick lately. I had to literally stay away from the plant section at Lowes the other day. Crazy cat/cactus lady here I come.

This Boston Starbucks card has been beboping (yep, just made that up) around for years so I finally put it to good use. (Sidenote: I hoard Starbucks cards.)

The super bloom photo came from Google and the Notre Dame photo is from @mattcrump on Instagram. I used the yellow SN@P alpha stickers on the bloom photo. These Days journaling card is from In A Creative Bubble and you can find the set here. 

Seriously. 42 minutes. $8.

*facepalm*

I don't think I'll ever get used to city parking.

And that's cheap!

We were having too much of a good time playing hide and seek with jelly beans that I totally forgot to take any photos. That's a good time right there.

#the100dayproject is still steaming along. I love adding the cards to my album so I'll be able to look back years from now and remember what I was doing.

Celebrating this kid this weekend. Lilly and I ran out to get ingredients for pizza and to pick up a cake. We had the bakery decorate it and headed off around the store. Rick texts me 10 minutes later and says get an ice cream cake. So we had TWO cakes. For FOUR people. 

#fatkidslovecake

I'm slowly running out of my chipboard sticker stash and that makes me sad. Hopefully I'll get some in some of my swaps.

Hands down, best (seasonal) candy ever. Cadbury mini eggs. I avoid them like the plague cause I'm pretty sure I could eat my weight in them but somehow they always manage to find me. 

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. Mason is getting Baptized this morning so we're heading down Cape for that. Lots of photos to come!

Happy scrapping!

Hi! Happy Saturday!

I'm super excited because it's almost the end of April. Which means May will be here soon. Which means my 40th, a weekend camping, a family BBQ and more. Did I mention I'm excited?

This week found me at my desk creating up a storm but I still managed to find fun stuff like this:

* I've never met a coffee cake I didn't like so I think I might try my hand at making these coffee cakes with almond streusel (minus the almonds, cause anaphylaxis)

* We'll be flying down to Georgia in early July for Nick's graduation from boot camp. I've been eyeing this dress from Antrho. Or maybe this one. Not looking forward to the heat (gimme 30 degree weather any day!) so I'm tying to find something light to wear.

* And speaking of something light, I've been thinking about chopping my hair off. This is the longest it's ever been (it's so heavy) and it's a pain in the ass to do (comb, section out, blow dry, curl, etc) I'm not much of a girly girl and most days I have a hat on or my hair up in a topknot. I love this style, this one and this one for a little bit longer chop. Knowing me I won't go through with it but I like to keep my options open.

* I've spent this last week working on my travel albums and I always like checking out other blogs to find some inspiration. My favorite travel albums right now are the 3x8 Prone To Wonder album from Geralyn over at In A Creative Bubble and Kelly's 6x8 Asia album. So much good stuff!

* The Black Keys are coming out with a new album, Let's Rock, on June 28th. It's available for preorder and you can hear their new single here.

Also, if anyone needs anything to do tomorrow, the Mexican Street Food Festival is going on tomorrow from 11-5 in Cambridge. You can find more info here. And who doesn't like tacos?

Happy weekend!

Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll be sharing all of my projects that I have in progress and hope to finish up before the end of the summer. This travel album initially started off as a 9x12 but I just wasn't happy with it so I dismantled it and decided to go with a 6x8 album instead. Currently it is in a Simple Stories black and white striped SNAP album from Scrapbook.com. (As of this post, they're on sale for $8.74) This album is also available in pink, yellow and blue and I might end up using those colors for other travel albums down the road.

As you can see she's quite the chunky monkey and I don't even have everything in it yet. As with my 'nothing new' mantra this year, I'm using up what I have which includes mostly Studio Calico items.

I went through my stash of cards and pulled out anything I thought might work with this album. The two sets of stamps, some wood grain washi, clear brown alpha, die cuts, chipboard stickers and the Explore card from Jamaica (Explore mini album class found here) round out my supply stash.

I've been hoarding that Explore button set FOREVER and am psyched that I get to use it.

A little background about the album: Mom and I went on a trip to Washington in May of 2014 (yes, you read that right. FIVE years ago.) We did the 101 loop around the Olympic Peninsula, hitting up Port Angeles, Forks and La Push and then made our way down to Mount St. Helens. After that we spent the night at Mt. Rainier and our last day had us exploring Seattle. I can't wait to go back.

On every trip I take I make sure I have some sort of container to keep all of the stuff I collect. For our Washington trip I kept the zippered plastic bag that sheet sets come in. It's the perfect size because you can jam quite a bit of stuff in there. I also make sure I add a pack of sticky notes and a Sharpie to make notes if I need to.

For our cruise, I brought individual 9x12 envelopes plus a few of the clear zippered pouches from my old Studio Calico kits. I wanted to keep all of my days separated and it worked like a charm. 

Travel tip: Keep a file in your notes app on your phone and do a quick journal entry throughout the day. This saved my ass so many times.

One of the first things I did when starting this album was to lay everything out by day. It makes putting your album together so much easier. I do have some larger pieces that might not make it into the smaller album so I have a memory box that I can keep them in. (DIY post on that coming soon.)

I have a tendency of collecting too much stuff and I'm ok with that because it gives me more leeway when it comes to deciding what to put in the album. Stickers, postcards, business cards, beer coasters, receipts, brochures... I keep it all.

I still need to go through my photos and figure out which ones I'll use. All of the photos shown here are from my old album and are not the correct size. I might be able to work a few in, but we'll see. If you don't want to print your photos at home, I highly recommend using Persnickety Prints. They do amazing work and I used them to print all of my photos for the initial album.

To keep things cohesive, I mapped out what page protectors I'll be using. Each day will be as follows:

* 2x2 grid page with red plastic letters

* full 6x8 photo

* 3x8 protector

* 3 card page protector (2 3x4, 1 4x6)

* 4 card page protector (4 3x4)

There will be odds and ends thrown in outside of page protectors just to mix things up. I need to purchase some more page protectors, along with two more sets of the orange letters from Crate Paper.

So that's it for set up and plans for this album. Stay tuned for my 2017 9x12 Cruise album plus my foundation pages for May's Week In The Life.

Happy scrapping!

Can I just say (again) how much I love this project. And I love how these group of cards turned out as well!

I'm still getting up in the morning with my cup of tea and sitting down at my laptop to create. It's a good thing, my friends.

Also decided to go with some cactus. Cause who doesn't love cacti?

Remember that all of these will be available at the end of the project as a download for FREE!

You can see the rest of my #the100dayproject here.

Happy crafting!

You ever have some PL weeks where you're just like, meh. That was this week. I'm not 100% thrilled with how it turned out but I'm batch scrapping and trying to get caught up. Hooray for lazy weekends.

I'm finishing Season3 of Broadchurch and starting on Season 2 of Killing Eve. LOVE that show!

Normal People was really good (if you're interested), and I can't wait to choose May's BOTM. Also, I think Olivia Coleman and I should be BFFs. Just sayin.

The Today's Adventure card is from In A Creative Bubble's Recorded Journaling Cards #1. I used it to create some journaling about my trip to the dentist. Fun times. But not.

I'm always on the lookout for extra things to add to my albums like business cards, tags, receipts, coffee sleeves, etc. Usually I'll back them with one of my cards, or use some cut down cardstock or paper. 

For this side I used a lot of older items I've had laying around. The black and white camera card was cut down from some paper that I picked up at AC Moore forever ago.

We had a potluck/birthday party to attend so I made sure to snap some photos for my album. 

The Yum card documents my love for loaded oatmeal bowls which I've been making a lot of. I love to add peanut butter, bananas, shredded coconut, pecans and hemp seed hearts. SO GOOD. The card is another IACB addition.

Food is indeed my love language. This flat back button is from an older Kelly Purkey kit. I used some Zots to adhere it right to the card.

It's looking like I may have to split my PL album in two, but we'll see how the rest of the months go. She's getting quite chunky :)

Here's a list of materials I used:

Album: 9x12 Studio Calico Color Theory Album - unavailable (Boo)

Page Protectors: Studio Calico 9x12 9 Pocket Page Protector

Cards: Studio Calico Documenter Kit (various), In A Creative Bubble Journaling Cards, various old cardstock

Button: Past Kelly Purkey Kit

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Happy crafting!

Aaannnd we're in to April! And that means pollen season + allergy headaches. Can't wait.

Finally jumped on the bandwagon and started reading The Handmaid's Tale. Gotta be honest, it's taking me a long time to get into. Anyone else have that reaction?

Took the T into Boston again for another interview, at the Brigham this time. It went well and I've got my fingers (and everything else) crossed. I used my Charlie Ticket from the subway plus a SC die cut and glued them onto a patterned card.

The Faves journaling card is from In A Creative Bubble. Both book covers were snagged from a Google search.

I love collecting movie stubs, receipts, train tickets, business cards, menus, etc to include in my layouts.

I *might* have accidentally binged the first two seasons of Broadchurch (and started on the third.) It's SO good! I started watching it on Netflix while I was scrapbooking and next thing I know, I'm on to the next season. That ever happen to you guys? I swear I got sucked into some kind of time warp there for a bit.

Please note that I did NOT eat all of those hot dogs. The top two were mine. Also, if you're ever in the hood, Gary's Best Hot Dogs are pretty dang good and super cheap.

Finally snagged a photo of Mr. I Don't Like Having My Picture Taken while we were at the park flying kites. The cards are from #the100dayproject. Still going strong. I love this project!

We had a few eggs left in the fridge that were on the cusp of going bad so we hardboiled them and let the kids dye them. I had forgotten how messy dyeing eggs can be.

I'm super excited because I have a TON of new projects to share with you guys so stay tuned.

Happy crafting!

All cards are created from elements from the free downloads available from Creative Market. If you haven't signed up yet, you're missing out. Each week, CM offer 6 new downloads each week. They vary from fonts, elements, social media graphics and more.

Feel free to link your #the100dayproject in the comments. I'd love to see what everyone is working on.

Happy crafting!