solitude

Enjoy more Sunday Photos.

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sand in our toes

life doesn't get easier, you just get stronger

Enjoy more Sunday Photos.

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fri yay t-shirt

Some weeks, Friday cannot get here soon enough. And today is definitely one of those FRI YAY kind of days! Now let's make a t-shirt to celebrate.

• Grab yourself a t-shirt, some iron-on transfers {I used the stretchable Fabric Transfers from Avery #3302} and the free download. 
• The image is already flipped for you, you don't have to do that yourself. 
• Just print as is onto your iron-on transfer paper.
• My iron-on transfers recommended trimming the image with rounded corners very close to the printed design, so I did.
• Place your image design side down onto your t-shirt.
• And now you can iron the image onto to your t-shirt per the iron-on transfers you purchased.

Share your FRIYAY t-shirt photos on Instagram and tag me @monikawright_iloveitall so I can see how awesome they all turned out!

life is good mini album

We're just a little bit ready for a break and are counting down until we leave for the beach on Sunday! It's been a while since I've really documented our Summer, like I did here which just happened to be featured on Ali Edwards' blog, and want to really get back into doing something crafty every day. 

I create something nearly every single day, but it's usually for the shop. Sometimes 10 or 20 things every single day for the shop, but how I wish that after all that I made the time to do something creative for OUR family.

So I am. I'm making a commitment to our family and documenting our Summer. and you can join along with us. Now, just to decide if I'll use the horizontal or landscape option. Hmmm.

Thinking of what to include in the mini album for our upcoming Summer adventures is always fun and so I thought that I would just make a few more and add them to the shop as well. You can find them here. 

As much as I love using my Bind-it-All, there is something about the flexibility of using book binder rings that is so appealing. As I'm creating, I daydream of how thick and chunky and full of memories and adventures this little mini album will be when it's finished. With the rings, adding brochures and photos and bits and baubles is so easy.

just one step

Enjoy more Sunday Photos.

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light + fluffy cheesecake

I had my mind set on serving a light and fluffy cheesecake at our Mother's Day celebration on Sunday, but was having problems finding a recipe I loved. 

Until this...

Light + Fluffy Cheesecake | Mary-Ellen Cocchi via Family Circle Magazine, 2005

Oh, my! This is a must try recipe and I guarantee you will love it. You know how cheesecake can be dense and compact and heavy? Not this one, it's as light and fluffy as a cloud. I'm especially fond of the fact that it doesn't have a graham cracker crust as I find that crusts tend to take away from the subtlety of a cheesecake.

To give proper credit, I searched the internet for the author's name and found this funny story, which gave me the information I was looking for: the recipe is from a 2005 edition of Family Circle magazine. I'm not sure what this says about me, that I would hold on to a scrap of paper for that long, but why oh why did I wait ten years to finally make this recipe?

It's that good!

NOTES | I didn't have a 10" springform pan as recommended, so I used the 11" I already had on hand. Because I wanted the cake to extra tall and highly impressive as I served it, I added an extra 8 oz. package of Philadelphia cream cheese to the recipe and had no troubles with it erupting like a volcano! The original author suggests making the cheesecake up to 4 days ahead, but I found that the cake was it's fluffiest and lightest on the day after baking...we let ours chill overnight.

making cards with die cuts

I don’t often make cards, but when I do I’m always so very happy to have done so and then go on a card making spree and make about 10 at one time. Today, I want to share two with you I created as the Guest Designer using the April Kit from Cocoa Daisy. And I’ve even included a little surprise.

I wanted to find a way to use the limited edition Cocoa Daisy stamps and, even though I am not a technique-y type of gal, I did pull out my embossing powder and heat gun for this one! I love how the embossed polka dot circles contrast so nicely with the stripes on the tag, where I’ve added some of the green seam binding tape. I used my foam dots again to pop the tag and round die cut off the card. 

And for the surprise…I added some embellishments to the inside of the card, too! 

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This kit was all about circles, so I incorporated a portion of that fun patterned paper onto this card, meant to be sent to a friend that needs some encouragement. I used more of that circle paper as a journaling spot on my layout here. It may be a little hard to see, but I punched out a smaller circle from the larger yellow round shape to add in wood embellishment. And again more layers, in odd numbers for a fun pop of eye candy.

And a little splash of color never hurts either.

And for the surprise, another die cut embellishment. The paper strip is just the B side of the UPC code strip at the bottom of the patterned paper. How’s that for fun and thrifty?

You can see my entire Cocoa Daisy Guest Designer's Gallery here.

happy mother's day

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hidden journaling on scrapbooking layouts

During Spring Break this year, we went on an all girls trip to Charleston, S.C. taking my Mom along with us, to visit my oldest. Zach is 23 and carving out a life and a career of his own with a wonderful company, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing he were closer to home. So, on this layout I decided to use some of the same design principals that I used earlier to make the little time I have to actually create just for me, count. You might notice that I kept the contrasting design strip, this time it’s at the top of the page, and included more clusters and layering of embellishments. Even the photo is in the same general area, how's that for quick and easy?

One thing I did do this time is to hide my journaling. Using some foam dots, I popped up the 8x8 map cardstock so that I had room to tuck the green shipping tag. I sometimes use this technique when there is private journaling I want to include on the layout. But, that’s not the case here, I just thought it would be a fun thing to do, plus it allowed me to use the seam binding as well.

Truthfully, we only really had blue skies on the day we arrived and the day we left, but we made the most of it. Wow, Charleston is a lovely place to visit, that’s for sure. Now on to my layout…again, more clustering and this time just flat layers. The mini burlap clothespin was the perfect addition as the height of the clothespin was perfect for the space the foam dots created, plus it adds support to the cardstock as well.

I picked a handful of favorite phrases in both clear and cardstock options to cluster along the right edge of my page. I love how the gold accents add a bit of sparkle and pairs so well with the pink foam Thickers. I again used foam dots to pop up some of the embellishments, allowing others to lie flat. I even managed to add a wood embellishment to this layout because, after all, life IS sweet!

If you'd like to view my Guest Designer's Gallery for Cocoa Daisy, you can find it here.

it's five o'clock somewhere

A while back, the Cocoa Daisy team invited me to design for them using their April kit and I, of course, jumped at the chance. {You can see my Guest Designer's Gallery here.} I've never subscribed to a kit club before, but I have to say that it sure was nice to have a pizza box full of goodies arrive on my doorstep. All the goodies coordinated and complemented each other well and included so many yummy embellishments.

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When I saw that pineapple patterned cardstock, I knew for sure that I was going to include it in a layout AND I knew exactly the photo I was going to use! So what if the photo is years old, I still love the colors and the jumble of toys in the background. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that it makes me remember the days when my babies were still babies and a day at Nana’s pool meant that Mommy was in the pool the whole day, too. No rest for me, and a icy, fruity drink at the end of the day was a really, really good idea!

I consider myself a simple scrapper, nothing too fancy. And most often, not anything that includes techniques. One thing I do love is layering my embellishments. Oh, and lots and lots of clustering bursts. Sometimes, I just stand there and start piling on the bits and baubles laying in front of me to see if they work.  In this corner, I first did the machine stitching, leaving the threads attached, to anchor the pineapple paper, the orange tag and the strip of paper leftover from when I trimmed my cardstock. And then the clustering began…I added the yellow Dotties to a paperclip and die cut and much later added the green and blue twine because it balanced the blue and green from the toy buckets that in my layout photo.

Using my circle punch, I chose a journaling-like pattern from the circle patterned paper and used it to highlight the word paradise from the pack of Ephemera. I layered the pineapple to rest on top of the Five o’Clock embellishment and added another Dottie. And see how I kept the contrasting strip of patterned paper when I trimmed my cardstock? That’s what I used to make the pennant shape I stitched on top of the orange tag at the top left of the page. I snuck in a bit of journaling along the right side of the page, which is kind of fun when you don’t have a long story to document.

I love how I can play with color, pattern and texture and really let loose while scrapbooking doing things I wouldn’t “do” in real life. You know, like having wonky lines and loose sewing threads and polka dots on top of polka dots and slightly off color combinations. But, I love it when it all comes together and my most colorful pages always turn out to be my favorite pages.