In My Studio: Pam Baldwin

Happy Monday friends!! This is Pam here to give you a peek at my crafty space and how I get ready to use my Pocket Life kit every month. When I started thinking about this post, I thought "this is fantastic!! Just the motivation I need to get my crafty space finished up!" But the first week of March has not been kind to my little family, and after a week full of fevers and boogers and sleepless nights, you get a front row ticket to the real deal instead.

My crafty space feels a lot like me...not super organized and always "in progress". I've got a little 8 x 8 foot section in the basement where my craft tables are set up, overlooking the rest of the family room/play area.


My computer and printer are at the top of my list of "must have" items for my projects. I print all my photos at home (instant gratification) and can't imagine doing it any other way.


My second favourite item is that white rolly chair (also an Ikea purchase) that I find super comfy and zips across the floor from my printer to my work table and back again on a frequent basis.


We recently put up a "batten board" wall in our dining room and have lots of trim leftover (that pile of stiff on the bottom right). I'm thinking about adding it to this one wall behind my computer as well. Thoughts? Bonus: It might make it easier to hide that internet cable coming out of the wall.

One table holds my computer and projects "in progress" (or "soon to be in progress"....or "one day it will be in progress") and little bits and pieces I hope to one day put up on the wall. The other table is pretty much a blank canvas to get down to work with a  few of my "essential" supplies. UNDER the table...there's a bin holding probably 4 years worth of ephemera and memorabilia that really has to get sorted out one day, (I think I need like a kid-free dedicated week to do that), a trash can and my sewing machine. Love having my sewing machine super handy because it's really easy to just pop it up on the table whenever I need it.

I've got 2 Ikea Alex drawers in my space. This particular one holds my "stash" and it's pretty much a hot mess. But it does the trick!

The other one holds my basics like adhesive refills, ink for stamping, printer paper, printer ink...all that kind of stuff.

I definitely like to keep my "essentials" close and handy while I'm working on a project. I've got a variety of pens, pencils rulers and scissors in a repurposed mason jar sitting on my table. My third favourite item is a little desktop tray I found at HomeSense (the Canadian version of Home Goods) because it works perfectly for holding my monthly Pocket Life kit!!

It's got 5 sections that hold pretty much everything I need.

Top right: the monthly stamp set along with my go to ink pads (they're probably 5 years old but still going strong!), acrylic stamping block and date stamps.

Bottom right: rolling adhesive, tiny attacher, corner rounder and foam tabs.

Bottom middle: 3x4 journaling cards (this month I added the wood veneer speech bubbles and cork pieces to this section as well because I LOOOOOVE them, and with so many diecut paper embellishments to choose from, I wanted to make sure I could get to these guys easily :)

Bottom left: this section is usually reserved for all the embellishments, but there were so many this month, they overflowed to the next block! One day I read that the first thing Emma does with her kits is cut up her "cut-aparts" and I think that's brilliant :) I've been doing it ever since so they're ready to go at all times.

 Top left: 6x6 papers, 4x6 journaling cards, alphas and any oversized packages of ephemera like these adorable pink fresh puffies :) When my new kit arrives, I empty the tray and start fresh.


So that's pretty much it! Hope you enjoyed the little peek inside my space :)


PS. In the time it's taken me to write up this post, a plastic t-rex, half eaten bag of star wars cookies and set of jingle bells have also appeared on my table :) Everyday moments I tell ya!

Pocket Life Sketch Friday with Pam

 Happy Friday Friends!! This is Pam, here to share the Pocket Life Sketch for this week based on this 9x12 spread, using February's main Pocket Life kit, "Stories".

My plan for this year is to create an album with lots and lots of lovely layers, meaning I plan to mix and match all different sizes of pocket pages and layouts together and house them in a 12x12 album. I have to confess though, I'm kind of hooked on the 9x12 format at the moment. I'm hoping to have several spreads of various sizes for each  month. This one captures some of the everyday life details with my daughter in the first few days of February.

The colour palette for February's Pocket Life kit is SO lovely!! There are lots of bright (but not too bright) and cheery shades of blue and yellow and orange and pink. The most challenging part of putting together my spreads this month was trying to decide which side of the journaling cards to use because I really loved them both. Such a great new addition to the kits and I'm really happy with the quality of the heavier journaling cards!

I added little bits of machine stitching to a few of my cards this month for some added texture.  I'm pretty tempted to hoard those die cut words, but did manage to get this one into my spread. I added just a little bit of purple watercolour paint to complement the colours in my photos.

If I had to pick my top 3 embellishments in the February kits, I'd have to include the word strips (there are some in the Maggie Holme's ephemera pack as well as the Citrus Twist exclusive cutaparts) because they're ALWAYS a favourite, the cork pieces (love cork!!), and the puffy stickers. And then I'd tell you to ask me again because I couldn't possibly leave the die cut words off the list...or the glittery ephemera.. and I'd pretty much keep going on and on and on.


Hope you have a wonderful weekend and get some crafty time in!
Pam

2016 Pocket Life Intro Page Inspiration

Hi guys! This is Pam Baldwin and I'm so happy to be here in my very first Citrus Twist Blog post :) Those lovely fussy cut numbers...don't they make you so happy?! (They didn't make it into my spread, but I really REALLY love them. I'll have to get them onto a layout some other time).





Today, I thought I'd share my 2016 Pocket Life intro page. I think sometimes covers can really stress people out, not knowing what to include or wanting it to be "just right". I don't really have a formula but for me, my intro page MUST include a photo of our family, whether it's a group shot or individual ones, and the year....and that's pretty much it. The rest of the page is an opportunity to play and challenge myself creatively, because so much of the focus on the rest of my album is on making sure the stories and photos I treasure most are the stars.


I've totally got a thing for tags and I think they're a really fun element to include in a pocket page spread. I decided to go with photo tags for my intro page, one for each member of my little family. (I had to bribe them with brownies and promises of crafty/stamping time (for my littlest daughter...that's my girl!) to get them to let me take their photos. Small price to pay really :) )





Photo tags are super easy to make. Here's a quick run down on how they came together...





1) You're going to want to get a few basic supplies. I cropped the photos down to about 2.75 x 4 (because 3 x 4 didn't really give me the long looking tag I was hoping for). You'll want to grab a real shipping tag if you've got one handy, some scissors, a small circle punch, a standard hole punch, adhesive, some twine or rope and whatever embellishments and patterned paper you like to pretty up your tag.





2) It's a bit tricky to see in this photo, but I used the shipping tag as a template to be able to cut the photo to the correct shape.





3) I used the small circle punch to make the hole reinforcement for the top (because I wanted it to be black and I couldn't find any black hole reinforcements locally...but you could totally use a self adhesive hole reinforcement instead OR patterned paper would be really cute).





4) Adhere your little punched circle to the top of the tag with whatever kind of adhesive you have handy (just make sure you get some near the edges too or it will get punched out at the end and fall off your photo tag).





5) Use a standard size hole punch to punch through the reinforcement and photo.





6) Loop through your twine and decorate away! The twine in this picture is from the kit packaging, but I actually used the cord from the muslin bag for my intro page tags. I also added some patterned paper and little number stickers for our ages and the wood veneer letters for our first initials :) I totally lucked out that the correct letter was there for each of us!!


So that was the photos taken care of. Then it was time to play around with some fun ideas for the filler cards.





I used a variety of elements from the January Pocket Life kit and the January Embellishment kit, but my FAVOURITE might just be the canvas tag in the middle :) I loved opening my box this month and seeing that "A New Year" patch stitched onto the bag and I reeeeeaally wanted to use it in my album.


Here's how I did it:





1) I used one of the cards from the kit as a template and a pencil to trace the 3x4 card onto the muslin bag.





2) Cut it out with a  good sharp pair of scissors...





3) Pick a stamp and start stamping!! "2016" was perfect for my intro page, but ANY of them would be so awesome to include in your album :)





4) I repeated the pattern to fill in the entire 3x4 canvas and used foam dots to attach the "A New Year" patch to the middle of the card. I think it turned out really really cool :)


That muslin bag came in super handy!! I used it to embellish a few other projects this month as well:





A giant letter "P" cut from the bag and stitched onto patterned paper worked wonderfully in this 3x4 pocket.





I did some more stamping to create a canvas "together" banner, which I think is a lovely little embellishment on the journaling card for this story :)





And just one more piece of packaging inspiration...I totally cut a card out of the kraft paper bag for my intro page because the neutral colours were exactly what I was looking for. "Make it work for you!" is one of my favourite pieces of advice in all things crafty.


Thank you so much for stopping by today and I'm really looking forward to sharing more from my album throughout the year!


Pam