Five tips for shopping Christmas in July, Target-style.

This is my third time going to the Target Christmas in July toy sale. I skipped it last year because we still had so much stuff. With two kids in preschool now the number of birthday parties I need to buy toys for has doubled so I decided to stock up again this year. I have tried having 'please no gift' parties in the past but sadly it is a trend that does not seem to be catching on.

I've been going to Target a few times a week waiting for the clearance to start. I've also gotten in the habit of checking the #targetclearance hashtag on Instagram. I found some great baby deals that way. I got an adjustment for some shoes I bought Nandini that way as well. 

I finally heard last night from my friend Kayla Aimee that the markdowns were rumored for today. We didn't get to target until about ten (and swim lessons started at 10:20, oy.  We were only fifteen minutes late.  Oops). 

We got a ton of stuff. There were a lot of cute baby toys. I bought a few kinexts building sets for Avi and birthday gifts. I also got Nandini a new dolly. In the car the whole way to Target she kept asking, "I get that black dolly at Target". When we got there she found it in the end cap herself. It was marked down to $6.88 from 23 so I let her put it in the cart.

Here is a picture of my awesome haul.  I counted at least 15 things and I paid less than $90 for all of it.  That works out to about $6 per item.  These are mostly bigger items too as I don't like tiny knickknacks that just clutter up our house.  They are kind of like gremlins and seem to multiply on their own anyway.

I'm still waiting for the patio and garden stuff to go in sale. The furniture was on sale a few weeks ago but I really want to get some of the solar powered patio lights. The outlets are no where near our pergola where I want to strong the lights and I love that they don't add up our electricity bill. (NB. If anyone sees these on clearance please let me know!).

You can see my tips for using the Shopkick app to get free target gift cards here.

A few of my Target sale shopping tips:

1. Keep an eye on social media.  This is how I discovered this sale in the first place.  It also helped me see things that were on sale but maybe hadn't been marked yet in my local Target.
2. Don't stress about not getting their early.  They were still putting on the markdown stickers when I got there at ten.
3. Check the end caps first then swing through the aisles.  Most of the 70% off toys were not in a special section so we went through each row.
4. Don't be afraid to return stuff! Yes you got it on clearance, but if you don't need it or have space for it just take it back. With the red card you can return stuff for upto 90 days. Or better yet, find someplace awesome to donate your extra stuff. We are big fans of goodwill. 
5. Shop with your kids!  It may seem crazy, but it was fun shopping for toys with them.  They helped me look for red stickers and we talked about how most of the toys are for giving away.  The 'specialness' of today helped to reinforce that they don't get toys every time we visit Target and that not all toys we buy are for them. 

Penny Arcade Layouts and How to get a Free Studio Calico kit!

Studio Calico has a great offer right now if you are thinking about trying them out.  With twopeas closing I think it is a great way to get fresh product on the regular.  Plus, the cost of a new kit ($20-30) is more than what it costs to cancel a subscription ($15), so if you ever feel like cancelling you will have more than gotten your money's worth.  I sub to all three kits and find them a great value.  Plus, they just make scrapbooking fun.

This is what this month's main kit looks like. Many of the papers are by artist Ashley G and have this great fresh and exquisite feel to them. 

I tend to mix and match my kits, but here what I have created using (mostly) Penny Arcade so far:

Science Club| I just love making science-y layouts and this is as science-y as they come.  I have a package of Crate Paper die cuts I am trying hard to use up so I added those to this page as well.  I don't love the look of my handwriting and they help to break up the lengthy journaling on this page.  I die cut the word awesome directly on the photo.  It shows up much better in person.  The strip of black and white paper from the kit on the side really helps give this page a more graphic feeling.

Gudiya & Mish Matalie| Another stamped and watercolored title here, though much softer with the yellow ombre color instead. I don't know why, but I just love the colored paper doilies in this kit.  Actually, everything in this layout is from the kit.  I love the pink paper and was scared to use all of it so I combined it with different patterned strips.  I scattered the stamps and wood chips for embellishments. A very easy page to pull off.

hello Fireflies| I made these stenciled star circles a few months ago and was waiting to use them.  I combined them with this month's alphas and chipboard embellishments for a quick page about the magic of summertime.  I love the ethereal feel of this layout. 

4 Months|  Does the title make sense?  My husband couldn't figure it out.  (*hint the heart is an O).  Ha.  Non-scrappers wouldn't get that I guess.  I used mostly the card kit for this page.  I was actually inpsired by the monthly moodboard and decided the little color coded circles at the bottom looked like the circles from the washi tape this month.  I stamped white paint on the kraft paper and just stuck the washi circles on top. 

Project Life| Super Gudiya

This Week| Easter weekend and all the fun that goes along with it.  Let me just say, egg hunt competition is fierce.  Kite making and flying at the museum. Doctors visits for Gudiya and the emergence of a new super hero.

First Page| Most of this spreads cards are from the SC Camelot kit.  I loved this month so much I bought both add-ons.  My see through element is a watercolor die cut that I added a JBS butterfly to.  Each side has one glued on the outside of the page protector.

Second Page| My favorite part of  this spread? The 'Super Gudiya" cards.  I put the speech bubble sticker in the middle and sprinkled the cork stars to tie the related pockets together.  I made a filler card of sorts with this kits stamp set.  The fly a kite text was added to the top photo using the letterglow app on my phone.



You can see all of my Project Life pages here.  This is my third year of doing Project Life and I love this method of memory keeping for our family.  The PL kits I am using generally are the Studio Calico kit, and Midnight kit, with mostly Design A pages this year. I am linked up with the Mom Creative and the Memory Nest this week.

Now it is your turn!  Add your link back to your Project Life pages here and try to visit and leave comments for each other as well.  Grab a button if you'd like, or just pin it to your favorite scrappy pinterest board, anything works!  Thanks to everyone who linked up last time!  I will be holding a regular weekly link up from now on.

We Are Home| Adding a large stamped element to a page.

Studio Calico has this fabulous new stamp set called House Guests that I was dying to use.  It is a large 4x6 set with interchangeable parts.  It seems suited to card making, but I really wanted to put it on a layout. 

I started playing around with the "guests" that go inside the house.  I mostly used my favorite black ink from Ranger Archival because I knew it wouldn't bleed if I watercolored on top of it.  I of course had to stamp a set for Nandini too.  There was nothing about the little guests that she didn't love. Cats? A girl drinking tea? And a sleeping bear?  Heaven.

I carefully colored in the shape outlines with my waterbrush.  She painted in her own style, the perfect abstractness that only three-year olds can create.  Her set won.  I gave up my tortuously colored guests and made a crazy abstract set instead. 

Putting it all together after that took some more thought.  I thought about using a few different new pictures from the house, but ended up with just one.  The kitchen is definitely a favorite spot, combined with roses from our garden, this picture was just so fitting.    I layered a few different softly colored patterned papers together across the middle but I decided to keep a lot of white space on the page (big Marcy Penner inspiration there).

The title "We are home" was the first thought I had when planning this layout.  A statement, but also a prayer and a promise to our family.  The letters had to be woodgrain for that. 

We bought a house! Close to the city but feels like we are in the woods.  I love it so.

Ikea Finds: Scrappy Organization 12 things in one box for Project Life.

 I definitely have a problem when it comes to staying organized.  I love Studio Calico but with a monthly delivery stuff tends to pile up.  Especially because for a long time I had the "I need to stock up" mentality.  That is over now.  I am stocked.

Before we moved I had a lot of stuff in saved the project life boxes.  I transferred things that were loose in my printers tray to more boxes and just kept them all in there after we unpacked.  (Still finding a place for my printers tray.)  I liked that it kept things sorted but it wasn't very practical because I was opening each box every five minutes looking for things.

Enter the new Tjena paper boxes from Ikea.  They are $3-5 depending on size.  They go up to 12.5x13, which is perfect for storing patterned paper.  I love these medium boxes the most though because of the compartments.  I have one compartment for pens, letters, seqiuns, shipping tags, paper clips, tiny attacher, labels, chipboard, frames and envelopes.  3x4 journaling cards fit perfectly inside.  Stars got their own compartment too, because, well, why not?  We are all made of stars.

I used my second for washi tape.  This is not my full collection but if I filled the compartments to the top it would be less useful.   

I am going to keep these in my raskog for easy access.  The rest of the house is making pretty good progress too.  How about you?  Any great new organization tips to share for project life or otherwise?

See more of my Project Life posts here.  I am planning a post about my new album storage next!

linked up with the mom creative.

New baby pages!

Baby pages are pretty much the reason I started scrapbooking.  Avinash was a few months old and I just had to have the Becky Higgins baby album I stumbled upon on the internet.  I thought that one kit would be all I ever needed.  Fast forward more than five years later and I have a room full of stuff and I scrapbook about everything under the sun.  Getting to scrap about a new baby again is still it's own joy.  I have a stack of Lakshman layouts already.  Most of these papers come from Studio Calico's February kit, Sugar Rush. 

These pictures are taken from the family photoshoot we had when he was five days old. 

Love & Cherish | I enlarged this photo because I think it really brings out the little baby on a big bed juxtaposition I was going for.  The large black foam thickers are just so much fun to use.  Especially when I don't want to mess with brush script and all the ink. 

Five | This page was a scraplift of Marcy Penner.  I just love her style.  I tried to keep with her use of white space and scattering of embellishments.  Love how she almost always includes a shipping tag.  The pie chart is cut from a journaling card.  I don't really like using them literally and filling in each slice with a different label.  Instead, I just used the whole thing as a journaling spot.  The rubons (five and woodgrain) are from the lemon lush collection.

Cutie Toes | This is one of my favorite new layouts.  Just so simple and really highlights one simple detail.  Those delicious little feet.  Avinash always used to talk about Nandini's "cutie toes" and the phrase just stuck.  I repeated a few strips of patterned paper, I added a little chipboard and ribbon for visual interest.  I love all the white space, but it does make me nervous, so I splattered the page with a little gold anyway.  I'm not worried about the fact that there is no journaling because I have done so many pages from that one shoot anyway.

Courage, dear heart | Nandini Layouts

Courage, dear heart| I cut out this C.S. Lewis quote for a mini book I am working on about the Chronicles of Narnia.  I wanted to use the negative space and had the cut out words left over.  The words just reminded of Nandini so much that I printed out this picture of her and had to get it on a layout. 

I had the idea to use India Ink to make a scallop 'ledge' for my photo.  I added some soft color with gelatos underneath it in lime green and orchid.  You could get the same effect with watercolors as well.  I used a whole package of kraft butterflies from my latest Studio Calico kit.  I tend to use on or two pieces from an embellishment pack so it was nice to use it all up in one go.  I still felt something was lacking though.  That is when I pulled out the black and white patterned paper and framed the whole layout with it.  I hand doodled a border on the white cardstock to try to tie in the brush script and patterned paper. 

Tiny Dancer| I used this sketch from Melanie Louette for this layout.  I loved the symmetry and the shipping tag on top.  I use them in my Etsy shop packaging so they are always all over the place, I just can't get enough!

I love finding simple alternatives to my go to plain white cardstock.  Here I used old book paper, which I added a little watercolor too.  I like the ethereal, dreaminess feeling it lent the page.  I layered it over some pink patterned papers, added some new My Mind's Eye chipboard and basically called it a day.  I put a thin layer of white paint on the chipboard to continue the painted look.  A little row of wood sequins to finish it up.

Make a wish| I was really just playing around with this layout.  I have my last few Studio Calico kits mixed together and just pulled pieces at random that worked with her birthday photos.  Lots of blues, yellows and few pops of pink.  I used the Camelot card kit stamp to make the cake.  Is it odd that it has more layers than her actual birthday cake?  I love how it turned out on a layout. 

Looking at these all together, I guess I have been pretty Nandini focused lately.  Luckily I have a photo of Avinash printed and all ready to scrap tonight!

Project Life | Yes, please.

This week| I turned 33 (33? really? is that right?), and we celebrated with a hike and picnic at Pedernales Falls.  Lucky had his two month check up and we did fun things around the house like dying eggs for Easter.  I included more pictures from our visit to the wildflower center from the previous week/spread because I can't really keep track of what happened what week anymore and I just go with what I like, ha!

First page| A lot of transparencies and a lot of red.  Most of the cards are from a Kelly Purkey kit.  The two months card is Creative Bubble and the April card is Paislee Press.  I stamped over the letterpress today card with a few different Color Studio inks as my fun 'technique' card and I like how the inks are translucent enough to show through in layers.  I used a vellum word sticker and star over the photo of Avinash dying eggs. 

Second page| I repeated the use of vellum word stickers and stars on this page as well.  Again, using a little more consistency with my usually eclectic look.  I also used a few more transparencies from Kelly Purkey on this page, right on top of the photos.  The photo of Nandini is especially blurred, but I like the effect and there are plenty of regular pictures of her in the album already. I used one card to hold all my journaling for the week.  This really helps to streamline the process for me and get spreads done.  I admit, I sometimes spend way too much time figuring out what to say. 

FYI, Two Peas is having a big Project Life sale right now.  These are the albums I use and I'm really happy with them.  I'm stocking up on page protectors because I am wanting to try out some of the new designs and I need more envelope pages to keep up with all the stuff the kids bring home from school already.


You can see all of my Project Life pages here.  This is my third year of doing Project Life and I love this method of memory keeping for our family.  The PL kits I am using generally are the Studio Calico kit, and Midnight kit, with mostly Design A pages this year. I am linked up with the Mom Creative and the Memory Nest this week.

Now it is your turn!  Add your link back to your Project Life pages here and try to visit and leave comments for each other as well.  Grab a button if you'd like, or just pin it to your favorite scrappy pinterest board, anything works!  Thanks to everyone who linked up last time!  I will be holding a regular weekly link up from now on.

Project Life | Party Time.

Today I am sharing two spreads.  I have been a little behind with posting.  We recently moved and most of my stuff is still in boxes.  I haven't found my PL album yet, but luckily I photographed a lot of spreads before we left.  And, as always, I invite you to leave a link to your most recent PL pages! I know it helps keep me accountable.

This week | We celebrated Nandini's third birthday party.  This event pretty much took over the whole spread.  My parents and brother also came to visit.  I included a few other random moments, like dance class leaps, playing at the park and a visit to the Thinkery. 

 I used an old-school all horizontal 3x4 page protector I had from a BH kit from five years ago.  Not sure what they are called now, but you can see the variety pack they are in here.
I normally don't do this, but this week I pretty much stayed to the color scheme of her party.  Lots of yellow and pink.  On the spread I added in some black and white elements (from a Kelly Purkey kit) for contrast and really like the way it sets off the more colorful elements and helps to break up the photos.

This side got a large dose of black and white from my brush script journaling card (available in a set here).  I kept it very minimalist this week.  I added a few rub-ons to the photos and stamped directly on another.  I used Ranger Archival Black, my favorite black ink by far and it works well even on glossy photos. 

This week| I was on the hunt for wildflowers big time.  We drove around to different places this spring, looking for big patches of bluebonnets.  I think it is one of my favorite family traditions. 

I used to be really into having a checkerboard effect with photos and cards, but I like the flow of a few cards in a row as well.  Here it moves from saturated red to pink to a translucent card, which helps the page flow.  I used a transparent journaling card over the photo of Nandini as well.  I love mixing different opacities on one page.
I also love the trick of snipping off the edge of a journaling card to add to a photo and find myself reaching for those more than label stickers.  

I used a few gold foil printed cards from a Studio Calico paper pad.  Metallics are just so fun to play with and they were easy to match with all the different grass and flower colors in my pictures.


You can see all of my Project Life pages here.  This is my third year of doing Project Life and I love this method of memory keeping for our family.  The PL kits I am using generally are the Studio Calico kit, and Midnight kit, with mostly Design A pages this year. I am linked up with the Mom Creative and the Memory Nest this week.

Now it is your turn!  Add your link back to your Project Life pages here and try to visit and leave comments for each other as well.  Grab a button if you'd like, or just pin it to your favorite scrappy pinterest board, anything works!  Thanks to everyone who linked up last time!  I will be holding a regular weekly link up from now on.