Leona Lane

Photo Friday: Color Block

Sarah came up with this topic for today and I will admit that I had to look this up on Pinterest to give me ideas. Maybe I am just a little bit fashion/style challenged...:). I searched "Decor Color Block" and came up with THIS. Such an inspiring collection of brightly colored photos! This reminded me that when when Matt & I moved into our condo so many years ago, one of our favorite things was the brightly colored walls! We have a yellow bathroom, green bathroom, blue bedroom and red dining room. And now, as of last week, we have a wall in our baby room that is Aqua! So I thought today I would share a little sneak peek of baby girl's room.

Here is Renae's photo:

I've been organizing my desk area recently. There are no drawers so these photo boxes are coming in really handy to organize some of my less pretty supplies. I really love the way the mismatched lids look, its fun - sort of a subtle color blocking effect! I made the labels by cutting up one of the Seafoam Project Life cards. - Renae

Here is Sarah's photo:

My photo is of a GORGEOUS purple and white vase of carnations that's sitting in my kitchen. I absolutely love these colors together. Which is good, because they're our wedding colors! I also love the burlap and twine combination on the vase! That's like burlap color block, right? - Sarah

Thanks for letting us share our photos today. Hopefully you all have a fabulous Memorial Day weekend! If you haven't already, make sure you enter our giveway from yesterday.

6th Month Anniversary & A Giveaway

I almost can't believe its been half a year since we started Leona Lane! I still vividly remember sitting in Jenn's living room sketching up a blog layout and designing the logo. At that point it still seemed a bit like a pipe dream. It's been awesome seeing our dream come to life! It's been a very busy six months, time has been flying by. Today we thought we would do a flashback post and share some of our favorite posts since we started Leona Lane. Thanks for coming along for the ride! 

(Click on the pictures for links to the original posts.) 

      

Left: DIY glitter candles ~ Right: Jenn's announces they are expecting 

      

Left: Jenn sews a cute Baby Blanket ~ Right: Sarah crochets a blanket & gets a new puppy

      

Left: Earl Grey Cake Pops ~ Right: Coffee Themed Engagement Shoot

      

Left: Dreaming of Paris ~ Right: Renae's Ironic House Tour

      

Left: Local Spot-Taste & See Tea ~ Right: Mini-Book for Photo booth Pictures

      

Left: Hearts Photo Friday & Pecan Pie Recipe ~ Right: Renae has fun in Portland

We also decided it would be fun to do our first giveaway today to celebrate our 6th month anniversary!! We are giving away a set of Rifle Paper Co's Botanical Notebook Collection and 3 fun washi tapes to one lucky reader! These notebooks are the best, and there's three of them! We are also in love with washi tape, so we had to throw some of those in too!

Here's what you need to do to enter: Leave us a comment telling us what you like about Leona Lane or what you hope to see more of in the future. You can also enter a second time by following us on Bloglovin' (there is a button on the Right Sidebar) and leave a 2nd comment saying that you did so. We will announce the winner on Tuesday morning. 

Project Life Update & A New Photo Printer

I'm finally jumping back into Project Life! ...and I'm loving it. Usually I get overwhelmed trying to figure out which pictures to print and so it just sits there (and makes me feel guilty). But I love playing with paper, getting my date stamps out and putting the layouts together. I also really like having a kit this year, it's making the album feel more cohesive but not boring - there is still plenty of room to personalize it. I'm debating on going back and filling in the blank weeks,I haven't decided. But for sure, I will be posting updates here on the blog every once in a while to help keep me motivated. Last year I shared updates on my old blog and found I stayed on track time wise quite a bit better.

To help with photo printing, I finally bit the bullet and bought a photo printer. After looking and looking, and reading reviews and purusing forums, I finally decided on the Canon Pixma MG6320. I ordered the white one off of Amazon for $150. So far the print quality is awesome, I just need to find a decently priced photo paper that works well. The super glossy prints are actually pretty incredible but on the pricey side. So I picked up some Canon matte paper, which is what the three prints above are on. When it says matte, it means it - it looks more like scrapbooking paper and less like a photo. It has no sheen at all. I'm going to keep it and use it for printables, I think it will be perfect for that. So I'm still in search of the right paper... any suggestions?

Supplies Used: Project Life - Seafoam Kit, Page Protector, and Grid Cards. Dear Lizzy and Studio Calico Date Stamps. Teal Staz0n Ink. White Alpha Basic Grey, Teal Alpha Heidi Swap. Gold Heart Sticker  from Botanicals Labels & Stickers by Rifle Paper Co. 

Stay tuned for our first giveaway, we'll be announcing it tomorrow!! Happy Wednesday everyone! 

Rescued by an Expedit

I am so excited to finally share the first part of my baby room transformation! Matt and I have lived in our Condo for nearly six years and over time this room has become a craft room, a storage room, an office and a place for Matt's bike paraphernalia. So the first step to make room for the baby was to organize my existing "stuff" in an efficient manner. Of course I had to make a trip to Ikea for an expedit! Mostly this holds my scrapbooking, crafting and sewing stuff, but there are several "empty" areas for potential baby items. The best part is that it frees up half the room for the baby. She's a good girl, so I'm sure she doesn't mind sharing. :)

The entire lower row of the expedit is filled with all my scrapbooks. I have a lot! The rest of the cubby holes are filled with various storage containers, most of which came from Target. We liked the blue fabric Itso bins because they fit perfectly in the 13.5x13.5 inch square. Also from Target, I picked up some flatware caddies and locker baskets for some variation.

I loved this awesome ombre basket, which perfectly holds my pencils and pens. We used some white photo boxes to hold photos, cards and extra supplies.

My washi tape collection gets to live in a locker basket, which I love because the tapes are so colorful! I displayed a few of my favorite items, my vintage stamps and camera washi dispenser.

I love that the white bins and photo boxes hold the "less pretty" items and also keep like supplies together for easy access. Now when I am scrapbooking I will have my enormous supply of thickers at my fingertips. So exciting.

I tried not to fill every single shelf with bins, that way I could display some of my prettier supplies. I got those cute little bowls at anthropologie, and I made the cake stand myself by gluing a plate on top of a candle stick. Remember those 2013 glitter candles from this post? I think they are too cute to burn all the way.

Renae came over and helped my Mom and I set up the Expedit. She also helped me decorate, of course! A few months ago she gave me these fabulous orange frames for my birthday, and I finally had the chance to hang them up.

The lower photo is an awesome print from Paris and the upper photo is from a photobooth in Chamonix. We paid five Euro to get that photobooth photo, and it was absolutely worth it!

This has been a really fun process getting the room ready for baby. When the other half of the room is done I will be sharing that as well. We already painted one wall a pretty color of aqua and Mom brought me a changing table when she came over on Friday. It's coming along!

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Mini-Book: Guestbook for Photobooth Pics

So today I wanted to share with you how I made the guest book for Sarah's bridal shower. I wanted to incorporate all the notes that we had her guests leave as well as all the photo booth pictures that I took.

As Jenn mentioned in this post we had a photo booth set up at the shower. We had a bunch of goofy props that I found at the dollar store and hung a giant piece of kraft paper on one wall with "Photo Booth" and an arrow drawn at the top. Everyone took turns to pick out funny props and have their picture taken. I used the PocketBooth App and was really happy with how the pictures came out. (If you are interested in how I print non-standard sized pictures, refer to this tutorial here).

Once I had all the pictures printed out and cut, I went to Michael's looking for a cute journal to put them all in. I didn't find anything that seemed right, so I decided to make a mini-book instead.  

Supplies I Used: Art Journal with Gray Paper (5.5 x 8.5 size), 1 Sheet of Scrapbook Paper, Variety of Washi Tape, Letter Stickers, Twine, Cropadile, Scissors, Paper Trimmer, Adhesive and Binder Clips. 

Directions: Decide how many pages you will need, and carefully rip that many sheets of paper out of the art journal. Use your paper trimmer and cut off the ripped edge, making all the pages the same width. Take the 12x12 sheet of scrapbook paper and cut to make 2 cover pages that are the same size as the inside pages. Adhere the photos and notes to the inside pages (I kept the photos on the outer edge and the notes on the inner side). Use washi tape on the edges if you like that look. Decorate the cover with washi tape and letter stickers. I also choose to adhere her bridal shower invite to the inside cover, and added a title page opposite that. On the back of my "title" page, I added a little handwritten note explaining the contents of the book. When you are done, carefully line the pages up and place binder clips on top and bottom edges to keep pages from shifting. Punch 3 holes using the cropadile, thread twine through each one and tie securely.

Thanks for stopping by! Leave any questions in the comments.