A Week(ish) in the Life of the New Girl

Good afternoon! My name is Brenda Smith and I'm new around here. I'm honored to have been asked to join the team and share my pocket pages using the Daily Diary kit.

This week, the design team is working with this fabulous color board for inspiration.

These colors are already among my favorites and the Shine Bright Daily Diary kit  is packed full of luscious coral, mint, and gold foil elements. It was easy to make an entire spread based on this color scheme.

This year, I am taking a monthly approach to my pocket pages so I make as many spreads per month as I feel inspired to. This spread is the first I've made for March.

These first few days in March weren't very eventful, but I like to have even the very mundane documented as it speaks to our life right now. The weather is still cool enough for the kids to play outside (I live in the desert so it won't be too long before it's too warm here) plus my son has given up naps so outside play time has been very essential to everyone's sanity.

This picture of the mountains and wildflowers was not my own, but a friend of mine took it while on a hike recently and I asked if I could use it. I feel like it's quite representative of what life looks like right now where we live. Don't hesitate to use pictures that friends and family take if you feel it tells part of your story.

On weeks where there isn't much going on, I try to write general pieces of journaling that I think will be valuable to my family later on. This "my dreams" card was the perfect prompt and got me thinking about what I hope for for my kids.

On this card, you might notice a little black smudge on the tab I have underneath the picture. I tried to stamp the date but then I subsequently smudged it. Ugh. It was quite a bit worse than this and I tried to cover it up with several things but couldn't find anything that fit in with the aesthetic I was going for. So I got out some washi and didn't like it either, but when I took it off, I realized it was LIFTING the black smudges off of the sticker! So I did that a few more times and was able to wipe it off enough to make it look presentable.

On this side, I knew I wanted to use several 3x4 cards and photos so I chose the page protector with just one 4x6.

I made this 4x6 collage of food my husband and I ate while on a much-needed date night. The food was so ridiculously good that I wanted to give it a prominent feature on my spread. I created the circle photo collage with the coral cardstock background in Photoshop and then printed out and finished with the 6x6 sheets of Simple Stories I Am that came in the Daily Diary kit. 

I like to use my sewing machine on my cards as a finishing touch. It isn't overly obvious unless you're really looking but I feel like it gives it a bit more polish. 

I hope you'll give the color board a try and share your layouts with us. I'd love to see what you all are inspired to create.