March Craft Month - day 15

This is one of those days when life interferes with my favorite activity. Before leaving off to this short journey, I had time to prep for a mini album or two. I had this Recollections 'Every day moments' paper stack, that I used for two mini albums and still had a lot of paper left.
So after sorting, trimming and matching colors and patterns I came up with three piles.
The pages and tags:

The cut outs:

And the rest to be used for covers, pockets and borders.

Can't wait to be back to put it all together. Have a nice weekend everyone!

March Craft Month - day 13

Since today is the 13th, I was inspired to pick up and do some work on a 2013 project. 13, 2013 I guess I am trying too hard to match everything. Anyway. A little intro about this project. I got curious about the Project Life and Sn@p products. The albums, the page protectors, all the nicely coordinated collections and goodies; scrapbook paradise. So I picked up a Sn@p album, a few page protectors and decided to scrap an entire month. It so happened to be May, 2013.

I chose the one with the green spine. Green in not my first choice in scrapbook projects, but I had recently acquired the DCWV Lemon Flower paper stack so I felt a little adventurous. I thought it would be easy, and the pages will come together in a few minutes. I had photos printed, paper cut to size for all page protector styles. What I did not have was experience.

My first page for the first day of the month. It took forever because of the many decisions I had to take and was not prepared for. Here are some of them.

• Cropping the photos. Do I cut from the left, right, from both sides, how much, will the photo still look good after?
• Adding text on top of the photos. How much, where, on what color paper, will it distract or add to the photo, will it cover to much, should I add more embellishments around it or not?
• The non-photo pocket. What if the paper collection does not look well with the photo in the adjacent pocket, how many layers, how much text?

And that is only the short list of questions that a beginner scrapbook maker had to find great answers for. What keeps me going through this intense Q and A process is the fact that after a while this process of making layouts and other paper crafts will become automatic. Effortless. Then hopefully my projects will be finally complete in less than a year.

That is about it for today about May 2013. It is still a work in progress and there is much to talk about it. And now some samples of my somewhat finished project. Some ready, others with problem areas that need some help, and others that are right at the start. No worries. Keep scraping...

 

 

March Craft Month - day 11

I know I skipped day 9. But it was not in vain, because while I was busy with other non craft activities I came up with the coolest idea I had in a while. I call it the greeting card album. And I know there are several tutorials out there for making albums using greeting cards, but this one is quite special.
A while back, I went searching for ideas of what to do with all the cards I was getting. I found a lot of projects, but none of them was what I wanted. I wanted to keep them all, the way I got them, so I can read the messages people wrote. All I found on the web were recycling type projects: paint over the writing, cut that image out and such like that.
I needed a different kind of project. One of a kind cards albums. For this first one, I used the cards I received at my farewell parties before I left US.

 I used the cards, some envelopes and I also made some extra pages out of cardstock for extra photos. I stored the horizontal oriented cards in the envelopes.








Because I had cards in several shapes and sizes, I decided to align them at the center.

This will be the first page. The white cardstock is part of the binding system.

I used the back of a cute envelope to make a pocket to store the card that was inside. I tried matching the card's sender with their photo.

 

I also tried some color coordination. Yellows with yellows, pink with pink, not much of a process, but it keeps the album looking neat.




                    

Two examples of family and friends photos glued down across the page from the message they so nicely worded and signed.

Horizontal group photos got a nice mat and a place in one of the envelopes.

And that is it. It takes less to make it than to talk about it. Now all it needs is a pretty cover. Hope that will take even less time to make and no time to write about.

Happy scrapping everyone!

March Craft Month - day 7

Tomorrow is mothers/women's day. Yesterday we spent some time with friends and watched The Book Thief. Today we had tickets to the Transilvania Filarmonica, thanks to a dear friend. All these great events and little time for crafts. But then is not yet midnight and I just finished a tag.

I like tags. They seem so easy to make. The ones on craft websites and other craft professionals blogs can keep my attention for minutes. I had no clue where to start, so I have not made a really nice tag. I stuck to plain ones, a photo and craft paper on the back. For this first try, I used scraps of paper, ink, tape and other bits that were handy. Now that it turned out pretty enough to keep, I wonder what to do with it? Any ideas?

March Craft Month - day 5

"Little album, big mess" would be a better title for this project. I started working on this album about a year ago. It has an interesting binding method that I have seen in several YouTube videos, and seemed easy to do. And it is for the most part. There is a lot of scoring, paper folding and gluing. I did not bother to be precise and I ended up with lopsided pages and hinges that need a lot of embellishment.

 The cover that saved the mini. More embellishments to follow

 One of the pages that is half way there.

 The jewels packaging is to nice to be thrown away. I have a feeling the Bo Bunny team want it to be a tag in the first place.
 And the last page. A small mini album inside a mini album.

 And now for the big mess. I used liquid glue, and glossy accents, and I did not factor the drying time. It run everywhere and soaked into the paper and did not hold them together as well as I wanted. The ink I used for the edges is very nice, with a pearl finish, but with slower drying time than other inks. So I got stains of ink in random places. More to cover up with embellishments. And except for the bits and pieces of paper, lace, ribbon, cutting tools, jewels, templates and other miscellanea that are piling up on my desk and getting stained with glue and ink, everything else went well.

Any crafting challenges? How do you manage the madness?

March Craft Month - day 3

Crafting everyday would be nice. Every other day is nicer because it is possible. Beads do not count. I painted some yesterday, spring inspired patterns for a Romanian tradition: Martisor. It is a celebration for spring. Its trade mark is a little trinket, usually something floral and a red and white thread.

On to more crafty stuff. Some time back I found this video. I shared it with my crafty friend, and she jumped right in and she was impressed. Now was my turn.

The verdict: Easy to do. Great end result. The papers feel more like fabric and I can't wait to use them for some projects.
A few extra suggestions from my experiment.
1. I used a very thin plastic wrap that melted very quick and shrunk. Next time a good 2 inch plastic wrap all around should save me the trouble of patching and remelting the edges.
2. Some napkins are better than others. The blue pattern was intended for dinner table use only. It also had a funny texture and it wrinkled a little.
3. I used parchment/baking paper to protect the iron and it worked perfectly.
4. I used cardstock and regular copy paper. Next time, I will stick to cardstock. The paper warped around the edges.

Any comments, suggestions and questions are welcome. Happy crafting everyone!

March Craft Month - day1

Finally a break from making beads and some spare time for scrapbooks.
Being a little out of shape, I started small with a mini album for a medium size traveling album.
I got the idea from one of the many YouTube videos with mini albums. I wish I had some record keeping going on so I could give credit to the person who came up with this design. It may be called the waterfall design but I am not sure. 

No embellishments for now. I will see how much room will be left after I add the photos. But first I might need to do some traveling
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