do it yourself (kind of) stamps.

In 2014 (so soon) I'm starting project life, a simplified scrapbook that allows you to simply slip photos, journaling cards, and other bits and bobs into plastic sheets, rather than gluing and cutting and sticking onto a giant sheet of paper. Though I love traditional scrapbooking and have made many a scrapbook from scratch in my day, I think I'm really going to love this project because it means that I can fit scrapbooking into my weekly schedule and get my creative juices flowing more often. I also love the idea of a weekly spread to really document the little things in life.

I have seen a lot of different project life spreads on blogs since my first discovery of it about eight months ago (see my faves: nicole + elise), so I think I've gotten a really good grasp on techniques I want to use, especially in terms of stamps. I love stamps, I think they're so fun, but they're also kind of expensive. I have bought quite a few stamps over the last year or so that would work well with project life, but I was looking for a few that I had up in my head but couldn't find online or in a shop, so I turned to simonstamp.com and used photoshop to create exactly what I wanted.The first one that I really wanted was a geotag. I made a mini book over the summer and used a geotag wood chip from freckled fawn that I was obsessed with. I knew I would need a geotag then for project life so that I could use it on map snippets and pictures for weeks when I'm on a trip. I created one with a heart opening instead of a circular one because I'm usually traveling with people I love and I normally love wherever I travel to, so I thought it was fitting.

I was excited about this love stamp, because I found the font I wanted to use and just knew that with the tail in the front of the word and at the end, I would need to put it in a circle. This one will be perfect for photos but also on journaling cards.

Since I do a "currently" post on here about once a month, I figured it would make sense to do that for PL, so I made this little baby stamp to fit in spaces on journaling cards. I probably could have made this one a bit bigger because the font is so delicate, but oh well.

This last one (with a quote from superbad) is kind of just a bit of silliness for those weeks when you just have a bad day (or even a whole week). If I need to vent about something, this is the perfect stamp for a journaling card, or even a picture of something crazy. You never know!

I really enjoyed spending the time making these stamps, and I have figured out what I liked and what to do better for the next time I order them. I think that I loved making these so much that I might even reopen my etsy shop to sell some of them.