Two out of many

At the end of this month I will be traveling south for a while. There will be little time for crafting so I decided to finish some, if not all of my many projects in progress.
I started with an album/cardholder. I keep all of the cards and notes that our family receives so I have a lot of them. I want to look at them from time to time, but digging through a shopping bag does not seem very appealing to me. So I started by sorting them out. I had a pile for the ones I received from my husband, a pile for birthday cards, and a large pile of Christmas cards. I will further make smaller groups, maybe by year, or some other idea that may cross my mind. For example, I have so many cards and thank you notes from one very good friend of ours, that I will make them one album. That should be sweet.

And now some proof of this ongoing project. I started with the cards I got from my husband, because it was around Valentine's day, and because I had the Pinkpaislee' s Pen Pals 12 by 12 paper collection.

 

The covers and the spine are made with chipboard that I first covered with white cardstock. I inked the edges with some pink ink. I like the inked look but it is very time consuming, I was considering using only black cardstock but some projects look better in light colors.

These are some of the pages. I made each page into a large pocket by bending in half a 12in by 7 1/2in paper. I glued the bottom of the pocket and I glued the side to the binding.
Here is a good tutorial of the binding I used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUtkJ9u6M6w.
I added the larger cards inside the pockets, and I glued smaller pockets on each page for the smaller cards. I also added some tags just in case I find some photos from the time I got my card.

This particular card had a nice ribbon to it that would not have fit nicely in the pocket page. So I glued the top and bottom of the page and cut the outer edge to hold the back of the card.

I have another album to show you, so check out my next post.

Catching up

Happy mid January! The best time of the year for me. No pressure from holiday preparations, the weather is cold enough so its nicer to be indoors. And my birthday, too. (I am not much into presents, but I like cake and getting together with my friends).
Keeping with my out of season album work, I just finished a beach album for my dear friend Tracy. I still have mine to finish from the same vacation, plus another winter beach album from December. They are already started so I know is only a matter of time, a long time it seems...

Here are a few photos of the finished album.

The cover made with Graphic 45 By the Sea collection.

The other paper collection I used for the album is a nautical package I got from one of the craft stores some time ago. I don't remember the brand, it may be something new...

Because I use most of the ribbon for stringing beads I used washi tape to finish the tags I added to this page and to the next page too.

Extra photos and journaling cards found their place behind paper bands and fussy cut images. 

I printed my photos to some odd size called true media. They are a little smaller that the 4 by 6 and fit nicely on the page. Some photos, like this one, are cut to what ever size felt right for the page.

Another card for writing the story of the day. It seams like I find a page design and play with it for a while. I just noticed that looking at the photos. First it was the tags on the page, then the cards, let's see what's next.

 

 The thing with albums that challenges me the most is the double spreads. All pages facing should have something in common just so I won't get a headache just by looking at an album. I go with colors, and since this album has smaller pages, two 12 by 12 papers are plenty to complete one spread.



"The million dollars experience".

Then I went into a rather plain page design. I think it worked for this page at least.

What do you think about combining stripes? Diagonal and vertical for this page, and repeating the journaling card idea from the previous pages.

Not quite the tag page but again a repeated style element to keep the continuity of the album.

I liked the colors in this photo so much that I wanted to replicate them in the design of the page. I cannot decide if its a good idea or not. 

Another page where the colors from the photo helped me choose the paper for the layout. Much better design that the previous page, I think.

I found these stickers at the dollar store and got them for the shells I used on one of the layouts. I was not sure what to do with the palm tree and the surf board. I think it worked on this page.

Another cluster of stickers from the dollar store find; and since the photo is so simple and airy I kept the design simple, maybe to simple...

And here are the shells I bough the sticker sheet for.









These are some of my favorite pages from the album. Simple or elaborated the pages are all done and I can't wait to see what my friend thinks about it.

Keep on crafting!

Where did November go?

I had such great plans for November... summer albums done, fall albums done, last year album done and so on. And here am I, is December and not all is lost. Good news! I finished an album. Is the smallest of all, but is one album finished and just in time to make for a perfect gift for a nice family in our church.  Here it is the fruit of a few days of work and a good three hours of fussy cutting.

Big thanks to Tracy for the papers and to Ioana for the mosaic stickers. Hope you like it and it inspires you to finish projects even the out of season ones.
Next to come is a beach vacation album that I want to finish by Christmas. I have already stock up on some Valentines paper. It was on sale from this year's collections. Since there is not much happening in January I might just get caught up with all these loose ends.
Stay crafty and have the best Christmas!

What a day!

It all happened last Saturday in September. I had my mind set on finishing a few projects. I took out my papers, albums and all the rest. I spread everything out on my dining room table and filled with inspiration and hope I picked out my Christmas album that was in great need of a spine. I was not even working for a minute, when this happened:

I just opened this new glue and the wide end had a defect and started to drip down the side of the tube. I was using the small end and did not notice the defect until the clear glue reached my fingers holding the tube. It was a mess. I put the cap back on the small end and tried to open the tube at the other end. The whole thing came apart. In a moment of inspiration I wiped my sticky fingers on the cover that was about to be covered with the paper. Lucky for me it was not the fast drying kind and I managed to wash my hands and glue down the decorative paper. Problem solved.

A few more improvisations later and this album came together better than I thought. With the extra glue that I had to use, it is sure that will last for years to come.

 

The Christmas album finally has a cover. Even though I admire the richly embellished album covers I see other scrapbookers do, I like mine to be plain. I prefer the book look for my scrapbooks mostly for storage purpose. I envision them lined up nicely in a bookcase.

 
The true hero here was the linen paper. I discovered it on one of my trips to Michael's. The page stacking system I used for my Christmas album did not turned out that pretty, and anyway binding was kind of a new thing for me. I though of using plain fabric, but then I had to go to Jo-Ann's or some other fabric store, find the right fabric, and also get some special fabric glue. The linen paper turned out to be the perfect mix of paper and fabric: sturdy yet flexible, easy to work with, no special glue required. And on top of it all, it coordinated with the paper collection.

The inside covers were easy to put together. This one page of the paper collection had numbers from 1 to 31. I have not thought about it when I decided on the size of the pages and the covers, but it turned out that after I cut it down to 25 it was the perfect fit. I will use this page as a table of content for my book.




Quite and accomplishment so far for me. But the day was not even at noon, and the tube of glue was drying with more than half the content in it. So I picked my Year in Romania album and started gluing down everything.

This was an album I picked out at a Goodwill store in Richmond some time ago. It had a baby girl themed cover: all polka dot pink and a pink baby stroller. Not a bad looking cover, but not the right style for my year in Romania. The Wild Rose paper collection I got from Wall-mart some time ago proved to be the perfect fit for the photos and the theme of the album. Black, red, cream, roses, some geometric patterns and other florals was all the inspiration I needed.

To speed up my scrapbook process I decided to arrange the photos in this album in a random order. I started my album with a photo of Sebastian and I, just because we are in most of the photos.This is also one of my favorite photos. Thank you, Ioana. It has the colors and the mood that can be found throughout the book.

The only rule I had was to group photos from the same event on a double spread, and that only if I had two or more photos from that time. These two photos are from a cousin's engagement party. Of course I had taken more than two photos at that event, but I decided to print only the ones that are necessary to tell the story of that moment.







Another decision I had to take was regarding portrait oriented photos. To crop or not to crop to the page size. In most cases, losing a bit of a sky or grass was no problem. In some cases though cropping was not an option so I decided to build pockets.


 

For the above page, the paper motif was too pretty to be covered up so I made it into a pocket. For the page on the right, I made a pocket by gluing the landscape photo and its mat on three sides. I added a little tab to my portrait photo to remind me is underneath.





  




This photo was so colorful and happy that all it needed was a mat and a bright background paper.









See that half circle tab on the right of the photo? The photo mat has a hinge on the left side and under it there is room for two more photos, or one photo and one journal spot, or room for a really long story of that trip we took to Oradea and the cloud we drove through at Piatra Craiului. Fun times.

My dad and I sipping coffee at a cousin's wedding. Another example on how the colors of this paper collection work so well with the photos.









I got a little carried away with my photo gluedown marathon and I forgot to leave some room for writing down the story of these photos. I realized that just in time and created a pocket under the photo on the left. I used some black cardstock and some decorative paper and made a tag big enough for the pocket and for the journal.

The circles I used for embellish this photo come from the cover of the paper collection. I cut them out with the Recollection 1 in circle punch. They came in handy to draw attention to hidden tags and pages.

I have plenty of paper left. Three or four 12 by 12 pages are still whole, yet I choose to put together a background of bits and pieces of paper for this page. It was not a conscious thought but now it kind of makes sense. It tells the story of the scene: an old camper, a home-made brick oven inside, an original food truck.





The back inside cover of the book and also the last page of the album were the perfect spot for me to try out an idea I had for a while. Sebastian's guitar strings come in this cute envelopes that I started saving for scrapbook projects. A scrap of paper and a circle punched earlier and it made for a good place to keep the airplane tickets from our trip back to the US.




That was all the energy I had for my Romania album. I had more pages done, but this blog is getting too long already. I will post some more about it when it gets closer to the finish line.

But the Saturday of crafts was not yet over. I also finished reading this book:

I have seen it on line and it seemed interesting. I find my copy at the local library. It was an easy read, it had a lot of photos. The layouts and ideas were a little dated but some of them still very beautiful. It helped me figure out my scrapbook style: Journalistic. That means I like to have  lots of writing, a photo or two and simple decorations in any style like classic, eclectic, old world, shabby, hip and trendy etc. I liked a few layouts and time-permitting will try my hand at scraplifting. (Google it if not sure what it means)

With a few more hours left in the day and a new paper collection bought on sale for a ridiculous low price at T.J. Maxx I started a new project. I know, another work in progress that may or may not be ever finished. But to my defense, the On Trend paper collection from Crate Paper looks like nothing I have played before.




And that was my Saturday of crazy crafting. Have you had a day like that? How did it start? How did it end? What happen in between? Anyway, happy crafting and see you soon.

Christmas in July III

I knew I forgot something. I have to give credit where credit is due and this guy was of great help.

Little Puffy loves to keep the paper warm and to make the paper cutter work only with the power of his curious gaze.

"What?! Is someone taking pictures?! I wanna be in them, all of them. And from there to the internet, and the whole wold... Are you ready? I'll go business-casual for this one. How are my whiskers?"








Just noticed that my bed spread matches my album theme. This should be great. Come on December!