Kerri Bradford Studio + Color Cast: My Story TN Album

 

Hey everyone! I was so excited to hear that the Kerri Bradford Studio design team would be teaming up with the Color Cast design team, and I couldn't wait to play with some of their awesome products. Both teams are sharing projects all week long, and my completed project was up on Kerri's blog yesterday.

 

One of the items that I picked out was the gorgeous wood veneer "My Story" album cover. I tossed around a few ideas for what kind of album I wanted to create, while browsing thru Kerri's Travelers Templates kits.

 

 

I knew I wanted to include a collection of little stories in this album, so I looked for templates that had room for lots of journaling. When I came across a template in the Travelers Templates: Holiday Style kit that had room for a single photo, a good space for journaling, and had the option to add the months along the top, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

 

 

It's been almost a year since we sold our house and moved into a smaller home, along with closing up my home daycare business and starting a new job outside the home. There's been a lot of emotions along the way, as we all adjust to these changes and how they trickle into big and little parts of our lives.

 

 

I wanted to focus on a few of those changes/emotions that I personally have dealt with over the last 12 months. I went thru my photos for each month, picking out a single photo for each month that could tell a story. 

 

 

I started by creating all of my photo/journaling pages, using the Travelers Templates: Holiday Style kit. I added my photos, selected the correlating month, and typed up my journaling before printing all of them out on photo paper. 

 

 

Next, I picked out a few patterned papers to pair up with white cardstock to create the second half of my pages. I die cut several rose clusters from white cardstock, using Kerri's Roses kit, as I thought they would tie in nicely with the wood veneer album cover. I adhered these die cut roses to several of the pages, tucking them under the top of the patterned papers.

 

 

I laid out all of my pages in order, so that I could work on embellishing them all at the same time. I've always been a fan of the acrylic pieces from Color Cast, and had picked out the "view from here" piece and the "this feeling" piece, and luckily, they worked within the theme of this album perfectly.

 

 

I started with those 2 pieces, as they went to specific photos/stories. I love the wood veneer frames, as they're super thin (and I love that they have adhesive on them!), and picked out which pages I wanted those on next.

 

 

The ginormous acrylic stars are awesome, and I added those to several pages, adhering them to white shipping tags. 

 

 

My last step was to add some stamped phrases to several of the pages, using Kerri's stamps - Gather Together, Thankful, One Fine Day, Long Story Short, Oh Yeah (no longer available). 

 

 

I gathered several of her stamp sets, and searched for words/phrases that tied in with my stories, adding them to the centers of the wood veneer frames, as well as stamping them onto the black labels that I printed out using Kerri's Label kit. 

 

 

The last step was to assemble the album. I adhered my photo pages to the backsides of the patterned paper/cardstock pages, making sure they all fell in the right order. I punched holes along the left edge of each page, to line up with the holes on the wood veneer album cover. I used metal rings to hold it all together - they're a little bigger than I need, but the only other ones I had on hand were too small. 

 

 

I love how this album came together, and love that I took the time to document some of the feelings and changes that I've gone thru over the last year. 

 

Comments

[Stephanie Hokenson]

I love your album!!

[Deneen Cook]

Wonderful album and great job as usual telling your story my friend :)

[John Vonhof]

I love the flow of your story in pictures and text. The colors and layout are great. Coming up on one year since your big life change and moving. I love how you've made the house yours and how creative you are. So seeing all this in your pages is fun and reflective.