Kelly Purkey

2016 Project Life Album: Weeks Twenty-Six and Twenty-Seven

I had to laugh when I was typing the title for this post because it seems a little silly that we're almost a quarter of the way through 2017 and I'm still only halfway through my Project Life album from last year! Ooops. Well, I'm still plugging away at it and determined to get that done. Never mind that I still have six months to go on it - I'm going to do it!

Catching up on posting here but sharing Week Twenty-Six:

Here's the process video for the spread - click below to watch it or you can view it on my YouTube channel (hope you will subscribe over there):

This week I was in Portland with my friend Jamaica and in LA with my bestie Sarah - both wonderful times with great friends. Nothing makes me happier. Here are a couple close-ups of the stamping:

I used my Clearly Kelly Los Angeles stamp set for the title photo - glad to put that set to use.

The big stamp here is from my Truth Bomb set which is one of my favorites. We all need to be dropping more truth bombs.

Here are the supplies used for this spread:

InLinkz.com

And now a look at week Twenty-Seven:

Here's the process video for the spread - click below to watch it or you can view it on my YouTube channel:

And a closer look at the spread:

I will never stop being delighted over stamping in white onto photos. I used the Brilliance Moonlight White ink pad and this pad has lasted me for years. Eternal favorite. It's combined again with the Truth Bomb stamp set.

In February I released a kit called Love Story and used a lot of the stamps from the kit on this spread, it's a set I could easily use every week. I combined it with my new Clearly Kelly Good Night set and Everyday Alpha here. And yes, I was terrified stamping all of those separately onto the photo and thought I would mess it up. But somehow, it worked!

Here are the supplies for Week Twenty-Seven:

InLinkz.com

I'm posting more process videos onto my YouTube channel way before I get around to sharing them here, so be sure to subscribe over there for updates. More to come soon. 

Always Stronger Together Flair Pin Fundraiser

I tend to ramble in my blog posts and since I could easily get carried away with words in this post, I will try to keep it brief. I've marched, I've called my representatives, I've made donations since the morning of November 9th, I've complained to friends (and ok, sometimes to strangers.) None of it felt like enough. I wanted to put together a fundraiser and talked it all over with a few friends who agreed to help me. Not only am I lucky to know some great designers but they are also wonderful, supportive friends.

I asked them each to design a flair pin, it could say whatever message they wanted to share. I love how they all came out. Can I say that again? I love how they all came out. We want to share them with you and hope you'll wear them with pride. I created a shop for you to purchase the set of five pins (the Nevertheless, She Persisted one is free with the first fifty purchases) over at widewoke.bigcartel.com. All of the profits are being donated to Planned Parenthood, which is an organization close to my heart that is in danger of soon being defunded by this administration. 

Thank you to Tina, Jamaica, Sarah, and Christine. And thank you to you for your support. I'm not giving up and I know that you're not either. 

2017 Hero Arts Spring Blog Hop + Project Life Process Video

Welcome to my stop on the Hero Arts Spring Blog Hop - thanks for stopping over. I am super excited to have five stamp sets in this new Spring release alongside all of the amazing other designs. They are sized 3x4 which is perfect for your Project Life pages, Traveler's Notebooks, mini albums, and all those other projects you might be working on right now. And I finally, finally put together a new Project Life process video using the new stamps. It's been months and I have to say it felt really good to be back adding to my 2016 album. Never mind that it is now 2017, we won't talk about that.

Here's a look at Week Twenty-Five using the new Clearly Kelly stamps:

Here's the process video for the spread - click below to watch it or you can view it on my YouTube channel (would love for you to subscribe over there):

And here's a closer look at some of those new stamps incorporated in the spread:

The Days of the Week set might be my favorite - I love it. I stamped each day individually with Brilliance Moonlight White ink directly onto my photo.

This is the date stamp from the Details of Life set. It comes with the numbers that fit perfectly in the circle.

I stamped the Everyday Alphabet in Brilliance Moonlight White ink and combined it with bits from Details of Life and also Good Night. The Everyday Alpha is a perfect size for pocket pages.

Here's the label from Details of Life alongside the old New York City stamp set that we released last year. An oldie but a goodie.

You can find the new stamps in the Hero Arts shop now (links below) as well as in my KellyPurkeyShop.com. I can't wait to see what you make using them.

Giveaway
Hero Arts will be giving away three $25 shopping sprees, drawn from comments left across all blogs in the hop. Leave a comment below to be entered to win.

And now next on the hop is Lydia Fiedler - you can visit her blog here to see what she's got in store for you. Don't forget that if you get lost along the hop you can always go back to the Hero Arts Blog to see the full list of ladies contributing. 

InLinkz.com

Subway Therapy

I've been lucky to spend almost a decade of Decembers in New York City - it truly is the best time of the year to be in the city. Last December had a couple of magic moments including seeing the Subway Therapy displayed at the Union Square subway station. I had seen some photos from friends posted on Instagram but trust me, seeing them in person was a completely overwhelming experience.

Several walls of the station are covered from top to bottom in many layers of post-it notes. The handwritten messages on them range from political to simple hellos to anti-Trump to pro-Hillary to lots of expressions of love. (My favorites usually are the ones with Harry Potter references.) You literally can't believe what you're seeing, there are so many notes. And each of them represent a person on this planet who took the time to stop and share their own personal message. I walked through three times during the week and each time I stopped and read. And cried a little. A happy and sad cry. 

No matter which side of the aisle you land on, I'm sure that we can agree we all went through some rough times during the election and fall of 2016. I still carried that gray cloud over my head during December and seeing the Subway Therapy notes really let the clouds part and some sun shine in. It gave me hope and it made me feel like I wasn't alone.

I left a note each time I went by and on New Years Day I discovered the most amazing thing. I was going to post one of my notes on Instagram and while I was scrolling through the #subwaytherapy hashtag, I found that a stranger had picked out one of my notes and posted it on her own account:

I was so amazed and touched that out of all the notes on the wall, this woman had spotted mine and connected with the message enough to share it. The lyrics comes from the song Seasons of Love from RENT - a show that taught me as a teenager about equality and diversity, about standing up to The Man, and about love. I believe in love and kindness and am challenging myself to spread more of both. 

You might be feeling that these are tough and uncertain times right now. I do. I hope you see the Subway Therapy photos and know that no matter what you're feeling, you are not alone. We are in this together.

2017 Spring Clearly Kelly Release from Hero Arts

The new year is now well underway and my resolution to update my blog more is going... welllllll, here we are. But I have great news to share in my first post of 2017 and with this I know it's going to be an awesome year. I'm excited to be adding to my partnership with Hero Arts, who remains one of the best companies to work with. I'm really lucky to be part of their program as they continue to knock things out of the part with each release.

For the new Clearly Kelly stamps, I wanted to go back to the 3x4 format that we started with two years ago. There are five new stamp sets that will be perfect for your Project Life, Traveler's Notebooks, planners, and all ways that you're documenting this year. Here's a look at the new sets:

The alphabet is a tinier take on the popular Dalton and I'm already obsessed with the days of the week set.

Look for the stamps coming to kellypurkeyshop.com very soon - I can't wait to see how you use them. Which set do you think is your favorite?