Ali Edwards's Blog, page 10
February 7, 2025
In Case You Missed It | February 7
Happy Friday, friends! Welcome to the latest
In Case You Missed It. Just a reminder that this is a quick post that will happen every Friday afternoon with all the updates and links that have happened throughout the week. So, let's get to it:
STORYTELLER KIT CLASSROOM UPDATES
Did you know our new quarterly Storyteller Kit subscription will have monthly classroom content? This month Ali shared her content. She has so many beautiful projects and interesting prompts available in the classroom now. Coming up next week (live February 12th) will be our contributor content with projects from Linda, Jen, Denine, and Nolana. Then on March 12th our community sharing will begin. We’ll have more details on how this will be structured later. We’re excited to share that Linda Jordan will be back with live Zoom calls to chat about the kit and story sparks related to this quarter’s theme. New this year, she’ll be joined by a different co-host each quarter! This time the call will take place this Sunday, February 9th at 11am Eastern Standard Time. The lesson with the link and additional information is live. Find it now in the Fun Storyteller classroom.
JANUARY REVEAL
Our January kits are here! Last month we revealed our newest kits and stamps. In addition to our first Storyteller and Stamps Are Fun Kits, we also have a brand new Stories By The Month™ kit and the next edition in our Alphas Are Awesome series. Head to the blog for Ali’s post with all the details about this month’s release.
ONE LITTLE WORD® 2025
It's not too late to join us in the 2025 One Little Word® workshop? We are just getting started and are all on board with letting January be January + taking our time as we begin developing a relationship with our 2025 word. The January prompt is up in the classroom and we'd love to have you join us as we work to make our words visible in our lives. Want to learn more? Since 2006, Ali has been choosing a word to live with each year as an alternative to resolutions. In 2011 she started offering a workshop to help keep our words visible throughout the year with a simple creative prompt each month. We also have a selection of One Little Word® supplies to help support your creative storytelling over the year.
Ali is excited to have @azzarijarrett, @lizelayne, and @lucrecer back with for lots of conversation and community in 2025. Register now for 12 months of inspiration and community support as you make your word visible in your life.
Head to the blog now for Ali's product video and all of the details for this year's collection.
FEBRUARY DIGITALS
The first Friday of every month we have a new digital release available in the shop. Play with scale, recolor objects, add journaling, print multiples…the sky is the limit when playing with digitals. Shop digitals here.
As always, we’re so grateful to have you all as members of this community! Thanks for joining me today and have a great weekend!
February 4, 2025
Project Life® 2024 | Week 39
On my project list this year is finishing up my 2024 Project Life album and February is feeling like a good time to focus on filling in the pockets.
For this spread I'm employing one of tried + true design formulas which is using label stickers on my photos and simply adding in a couple journaling cards.
Let's dive in to the video:
Here are some close up images of my spread:
9x12 Page Protectors
Stories By The Month 2024
Label Stickers
Currently Stamp
Pendleton Ink
Tiny Attacher
Uniball Vision Elite Pen
Epson PM400 Printer
Basics via my Amazon Storefront
February 3, 2025
Storyteller Kit 01 | Special Guest Jen Wong
Hi, friends! I’m thrilled to share my first project using the new Fun Storyteller Kit. When I first heard that the theme of the kit was “fun,” I immediately thought about all the fun I have while traveling. I love traveling and have quite a backlog of trips to document. I’m starting a traveler’s notebook to document a trip taken to Hawaii last summer and thought the Fun Storyteller Kit would be perfect for making my first page in the notebook.
Since the kit comes with 7 numbered 3” x 4” journaling cards and this trip was 1 week long, I thought I could tell a story of something fun everyday we were on the trip. I’m starting right in the middle of the trip, on our fourth day where my family and I did a fun hike.
I always take a lot of photos on my travels and one way I like to include multiple photos is through photo collages. I created one on the left side of the page and created a fold-out page on the right, to highlight a large landscape photo.
The left page photo collage is embellished simply with a couple of the die cuts and an orange word phrase sticker from the January SBTM kit.
On the right, I created a pocket where the 3” x 4” journaling card resides. I wanted to tie more of the orange from the card onto my page, so I used the digital version of the beige die cut flower to recolor it orange and adhere it over the pocket.
I digitally created a tab for the top of the page using one of the labels from the kit and “the story” text from one of the story cards.
On the inside of the right page is a large photo which is embellished with one more label and a speech bubble from last year’s June SBTM kit.
You can hear me talk about my decisions and see how I put these pages together in the video below.
I’m excited to continue working with the kit and I can’t see what projects you make with it!
Ali's Junk Journal January 2025
I loved joining in with the first half of @megjournals January Junk Journal challenge. Mine turned out to be more collage/mixed media than what you might think of as "junk" (found papers, etc) but it was SO FUN and a great way for me to dive into a creative project in 2025.
I shared videos of each of these pages on my Instagram account and also wanted to photograph and share them here.
I made my own little journal using watercolor paper for the cover and then a bunch of deli sheets I'd already painted on in the past as the base for my pages. I ran it through the sewing machine to create a binding.
And then I just let myself play using the prompts as the jumping off point.
January 31, 2025
In Case You Missed It | January 31
Happy Friday, friends! Welcome to the latest
In Case You Missed It. Just a reminder that this is a quick post that will happen every Friday afternoon with all the updates and links that have happened throughout the week. So, let's get to it:
STORYTELLER KIT CLASSROOM UPDATES
Did you know our new quarterly Storyteller Kit subscription will have monthly classroom content? This month Ali shared her content. She has so many beautiful projects and interesting prompts available in the classroom now. Coming up next month (live February 12th) will be our contributor content with projects from Linda, Jen, Denine, and Nolana. Then on March 12th our community sharing will begin. We’ll have more details on how this will be structured later. We’re excited to share that Linda Jordan will be back with live Zoom calls to chat about the kit and story sparks related to this quarter’s theme. New this year, she’ll be joined by a different co-host each quarter! This time the call will take place on Sunday, February 9th at 11am Eastern Standard Time. The lesson with the link and additional information IS NOT live at the moment, but will be posted soon. In the meantime, mark your calendars!
2025 PRODUCT + PROJECT SCHEDULE COMING SOON
Stay tuned for our updated project + product release schedule for the upcoming year. We love to be able to share this as a way for you to plan, think about what you might want to participate in this year, and simply share some of the things we have coming up to help support + inspire storytelling. Please note that, as you might imagine, any schedule we share is subject to change throughout the year based on a variety of variables.
JANUARY REVEAL
Our January kits are here! It's the Earlier this month we revealed our newest kits and stamps. In addition to our first Storyteller and Stamps Are Fun Kits, we also have a brand new Stories By The Month™ kit and the next edition in our Alphas Are Awesome series. Head to the blog for Ali’s post with all the details about this month’s release.
ONE LITTLE WORD® 2025
It's not too late to join us in the 2025 One Little Word® workshop? We are just getting started and are all on board with letting January be January + taking our time as we begin developing a relationship with our 2025 word. The January prompt is up in the classroom and we'd love to have you join us as we work to make our words visible in our lives. Want to learn more? Since 2006, Ali has been choosing a word to live with each year as an alternative to resolutions. In 2011 she started offering a workshop to help keep our words visible throughout the year with a simple creative prompt each month. We also have a selection of One Little Word® supplies to help support your creative storytelling over the year.
Ali is excited to have @azzarijarrett, @lizelayne, and @lucrecer back with for lots of conversation and community in 2025. Register now for 12 months of inspiration and community support as you make your word visible in your life.
Head to the blog now for Ali's product video and all of the details for this year's collection.
JANUARY DIGITALS
The first Friday of every month we have a new digital release available in the shop. Play with scale, recolor objects, add journaling, print multiples…the sky is the limit when playing with digitals. Shop digitals here.
As always, we’re so grateful to have you all as members of this community! Thanks for joining me today and have a great weekend!
January 28, 2025
Storyteller Kit 01 | Special Guest Jill Drangsholt
Hi friends! Jill here. I don't know about you, but I'm loving this new Fun Storyteller kit and the opportunity to dig into it for 3 month. Today's project was inspired by several things Ali did in her lessons that got me excited to make this insert in my 2024 Project Life album for my Alaska cruise last summer. I plan on making a full album for that trip so I just wanted an insert for some of my favorite photos and a few notes.
When Ali showed how she wanted to use those fun 3x4 cards for documenting her upcoming trip, I realized that they would also be perfect homes for photos for a 7 days cruise. And since Ali challenged us to use the small pockets and tags, I decided to pair those with them to hold the journaling.
With 7 cards and 8 pocket cards, I tried to figure out which page protector to use. Then I realized that if I cut the top row off of my favorite Becky Higgins design F page protector, it would leave me with eight 3x4 pockets and 16 total spots for my cards. Perfect!
That's when I had the idea for attaching the colorful fun vellum to the top of the page protector to fill the spot I had just cut off. I loved how Ali combined a transparency and page protector in her album and wanted to try something similar. What I didn't think about until I was midway through the project was that the vellum is a 12x12 and the page protector is actually bigger than that. Oops! So I had to do some problem solving and ended up reattaching part of the page protector that I had cut off (the part with the hole punched in it). It wasn't exactly the look I had intended but it was close enough.
For the little pockets, I attached them to the outside of the page protector so I could easily take the tags in and out. And that made the perfect opportunity to make a see through shaker pocket beneath them. So I looked in my ephemera from the trip and ended up using my hole punch to make my own confetti out of a map I had from Victoria BC. I love how it turned out!
I also pulled out these day of the week strips that I had saved from Week in the Life that made the perfect little heading for the journaling tags.
Check out my process video to see more of how this project came together:
Here are some additional images:
I hope you enjoyed my project! I have more ideas to come with this kit that I am excited to share with you. In the meantime, you can follow along with my other crafting adventures on Instagram (@jill.drangsholt).
January 24, 2025
In Case You Missed It | January 24
Happy Friday, friends! Welcome to the latest
In Case You Missed It. Just a reminder that this is a quick post that will happen every Friday afternoon with all the updates and links that have happened throughout the week. So, let's get to it:
2025 PRODUCT + PROJECT SCHEDULE COMING SOON
Stay tuned for our updated project + product release schedule for the upcoming year. We love to be able to share this as a way for you to plan, think about what you might want to participate in this year, and simply share some of the things we have coming up to help support + inspire storytelling. Please note that, as you might imagine, any schedule we share is subject to change throughout the year based on a variety of variables.
JANUARY REVEAL
Our January kits are here! It's the Earlier this month we revealed our newest kits and stamps. In addition to our first Storyteller and Stamps Are Fun Kits, we also have a brand new Stories By The Month™ kit and the next edition in our Alphas Are Awesome series. Head to the blog for Ali’s post with all the details about this month’s release.
ONE LITTLE WORD® 2025
It's not too late to join us in the 2025 One Little Word® workshop? We are just getting started and are all on board with letting January be January + taking our time as we begin developing a relationship with our 2025 word. The January prompt is up in the classroom and we'd love to have you join us as we work to make our words visible in our lives. Want to learn more? Since 2006, Ali has been choosing a word to live with each year as an alternative to resolutions. In 2011 she started offering a workshop to help keep our words visible throughout the year with a simple creative prompt each month. We also have a selection of One Little Word® supplies to help support your creative storytelling over the year.
Ali is excited to have @azzarijarrett, @lizelayne, and @lucrecer back with for lots of conversation and community in 2025. Register now for 12 months of inspiration and community support as you make your word visible in your life.
Head to the blog now for Ali's product video and all of the details for this year's collection.
JANUARY DIGITALS
The first Friday of every month we have a new digital release available in the shop. Play with scale, recolor objects, add journaling, print multiples…the sky is the limit when playing with digitals. Shop digitals here.
As always, we’re so grateful to have you all as members of this community! Thanks for joining me today and have a great weekend!
January 17, 2025
In Case You Missed It | January 17
Happy Friday, friends! Welcome to the latest
In Case You Missed It. Just a reminder that this is a quick post that will happen every Friday afternoon with all the updates and links that have happened throughout the week. So, let's get to it:
2025 PRODUCT + PROJECT SCHEDULE COMING SOON
Stay tuned for our updated project + product release schedule for the upcoming year. We love to be able to share this as a way for you to plan, think about what you might want to participate in this year, and simply share some of the things we have coming up to help support + inspire storytelling. Please note that, as you might imagine, any schedule we share is subject to change throughout the year based on a variety of variables.
JANUARY REVEAL
Our January kits are here! It's the 10th of the month and that means today we are revealing our newest kits and stamps. In addition to our first Storyteller and Stamps Are Fun Kits, we also have a brand new Stories By The Month™ kit and the next edition in our Alphas Are Awesome series. Head to the blog for Ali’s post with all the details about this month’s release.
ONE LITTLE WORD® 2025
It's not too late to join us in the 2025 One Little Word® workshop? We are just getting started and are all on board with letting January be January + taking our time as we begin developing a relationship with our 2025 word. The January prompt is up in the classroom and we'd love to have you join us as we work to make our words visible in our lives. Want to learn more? Since 2006, Ali has been choosing a word to live with each year as an alternative to resolutions. In 2011 she started offering a workshop to help keep our words visible throughout the year with a simple creative prompt each month. We also have a selection of One Little Word® supplies to help support your creative storytelling over the year.
Ali is excited to have @azzarijarrett, @lizelayne, and @lucrecer back with for lots of conversation and community in 2025. Register now for 12 months of inspiration and community support as you make your word visible in your life.
Head to the blog now for Ali's product video and all of the details for this year's collection.
JANUARY DIGITALS
The first Friday of every month we have a new digital release available in the shop. Play with scale, recolor objects, add journaling, print multiples…the sky is the limit when playing with digitals. Shop digitals here.
As always, we’re so grateful to have you all as members of this community! Thanks for joining me today and have a great weekend!
January 16, 2025
Stories By The Month™ | Special Guest Lisa Varshine
Hi friends! Happy New Year! We're thrilled to share that after almost a year of being on waitlist, our Stories By The Month™ subscription is now open to new subscribers. Beginning this month we'll be sharing inspiration using these kits periodically on the blog. I'm kicking us off with a quick and easy spread using a combination of physical and digital products from the January-themed kit.
In addition to two Design A page protectors, I included one 10x8 insert with word art from the kit. I'm a big fan of enlarged photos and love using them as a home for my stories. I use Photoshop to add all of my digital elements to spreads, in addition to creating any cards, etc. This particular word art was taken from one of the digital 3x4 cards in that kit.
My title card is another digital that I printed in black, with the gold foil vellum slipped in on top, one of my favorite (and easy) ways to use the vellum from the kit. For many of the pieces I design in these kits each month, that's my goal: make them simple and graphic. Typography is my very favorite. For several of the 4x6 photos I use the same format as the numbered 3x4 cards I included in January's kit. Since I wanted to use more than what I had in the kit, I whipped up a few additional cards and recolored them to suit my photos. A perk of hybrid scrapbooking.
I've always been a big fan of including journaling directly on my photos, but it is time consuming. It's a great option for photo-heavy spreads, as mine tend to be. I print both my journaling cards and photos on the same paper, an Epson 13x19 luster paper. Here's that exact paper. I have the Epson XP 15000 oversize printer that's very popular (for good reason!)
You'll see the same elements repeated on the right side of this spread.
I recolored another digital element to include on top of this photo. It's not often I opt for less color. These pages came together very quickly, which is vital in my current season of life. I'm finding less and less time for playing with product in my process.
Looking for more inspiration using these kits? Join us in the monthly Inspiration By The Month classroom, included in the cost of your physical subscription. You'll have access to four lessons: pocket page inspiration from myself, Jill Drangsholt, and Jen Wong, as well as a hybrid lesson from Denine Zielinski. We hope you'll join us in the classroom...but don't wait! There are only a few spot remaining before we go to waitlist again. Subscribe now to receive our newest February-themed kit.
Looking for more from me? Find me on instagram at @frecklepickle. Check out my photography class, Magic of Moments, here. You can also find projects from me in Hybrid Product Play, our travel classes, December Daily® Product Play and Prep Day, as well as several WITL Prep Day classes.
January 15, 2025
Storyteller Kit 01 | Special Guest Nolana Lynch
Hi Everyone!
Happy New Year! I am so very excited to be here with you for 2025! How great is the new Storyteller Kit? I look forward to having a lot of fun with it over the next few months.
To kick things off, I created a 9x12 Project Life Pocket Page. Here’s the process video for this page:
I loved working through the 3x4 journal cards, and these mixed-media ones were great. I enjoyed cutting off the base and leaving space for some sequins below. I used a fuse tool to section these bits off.
I also enjoyed using the circle die cuts to create some swivel pieces and decided to add sequins to these spots. I loved adding ribbon and a brad to make this feature.
I also created a 7x 8.25 insert for this spread. I loved having a photo of our family on one side and adding some embellishments at the top right-hand side.
On the other side of the page, I added a sequin pocket and some journal cards to the “This Was Fun” 4x6 card. I absolutely adore how this turned out.
All in all, this was a beautiful way to kick off my 2025 Project Life album and I had the most fun creating it all!
I wish you the very best 2025 and I can’t wait to share in all your storytelling adventures!
Cheerios!
Nolana
