Laura Vegas

I am a huge fan of Kellie Stamps, so I was thrilled to have the chance to guest design for her September release. While Kellie has physical stamps, I have always used her digital stamp sets. I own about 40 of her digital sets, and there's only a small handful that I haven't purchased. 

I used her new Routine digital stamp set to create this 6×8" pocket page spread about my Curly Girl hair journey the last few months. And yes, for anyone that doesn't know – there is an actual Curly Girl Method that you can do to help encourage and enhance the natural curl pattern in your hair. I used to have really curly hair, way back in the day, years ago. But I've pretty much been wearing it straight for the last 10+ years. I decided to embrace my curls again this year and have worn it curly every day for the last 6 months. 

Kellie has also offered up these "Friday Freebies" for quite some time now, and I will occasionally stop by her blog and download a ton of them. I've used a few in my Project Life pages and other other pocket page projects. I worked this "sure, my life isn't perfect but my hair is – let's face it, that's what really counts" freebie into my 3×8" journaling card. 

Since I used a large 6×8" photo for one side of the spread, and a pocket page protector for the other, I added a 3×8" page protector in between the pages to hold my journaling, which is something I do quite often on these smaller pages. 

I added my title digitally to my photo before printing, starting with the large "routine" digital stamp from the Routine set. The "yes to this" digital stamp is from the Fun Times set. I changed the digital stamps to purple and green, to tie in with the colors of the small photos on the second page. I felt like I needed something else in the corner, to go with the title, so I added the "learning to love myself more each day" digital circle stamp, which is from the Perfectly Imperfect set. 

This shows the 3×8" page protector, with the backside of the journaling card. Well, not the backside exactly, as I printed each of the 3×8" journaling cards individually. 

I used the Routine digital stamp set to break my hair routine into two parts – the evening routine and the morning routine. The Curly Girl Method can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. There's so much experimenting that you can do, to find out the products and techniques that work the best for your hair. 

I have certainly done some experimenting over the last six months, but there's SOOOOO much more that I should be doing. I've found a routine that seems to be working really well for my hair, so I've just sort of stuck with it for the last two months or so. Same products, same technique. But I'm fully aware that I could get even better results with other products and/or techniques. They also may NOT work out great, but I'll never know until I try. 

But like I said, this is my current routine that works pretty darn well. And these days, I'm fine with that. I will get around to experimenting more, but right now I just need something that consistently works 😉 Oh, and yes – I wash my hair at night. I've been doing that for as long as I can remember, and can't even imagine doing it in the morning, along with the normal "getting ready" stuff I do each day. Lol. 

I tried a few different ways of taking photos of the products in my "line up", and ended up just laying them on the board that I take most of my project photos on. I don't have pretty bathroom countertops or a pretty bathroom in general, so that was out of the question. Lol. 

I used the numbers from the Routine digital stamp set to number each photo, which essentially break down the products I use and the order in which I use them. The numbers match up with the numbered steps I listed on my journaling card. 

And yes, just in case you're wondering, I do use one product twice – steps 4 and 6. That wasn't a mistake 😉

I'll be back on Thursday to share the second project that I created for Kellie Stamps. As the September guest designer, Kellie was sweet enough to provide me with a discount code for you all, to use on either physical and/or digital stamps. LAURAGUEST will get you 25% off, no minimum required, postage not included.