San Francisco

Here's another one for Kurt's album. I'm trying as hard as I can to get it done before we leave. I need this monkey off of my back.

Halloween...

Well, it's either early or late, depending upon how you look at it. Late because these pics are over 20 years old and because I feel like I should have finished this album months ago - or early because I made this layout with materials from a kit I put together for my scrapbook club and am months early on finishing my project for October's kit.

I am cheating a little by posting it, but here's what I figure: I like to be inspired by what I see and improve upon it. Plus, I never scraplift anything exactly. Plus, isn't the point of the club to get ideas from each other. Alright, alright, that's just a justification. I felt like posting to my blog and this is what I wanted to post most as it's my most recent project.

Time Flies

Wow! Has it really been nearly a month since I've updated my blog? Is it laziness or apathy? Hmmm...

Well, just so it looks like I care (which I actually do), here's one I haven't posted before.

Again, it's for Kurt's album. This one is of Cyn when she was a pee wee. I love vintage photos and so I was excited to do this layout. The paper is My Mind's Eye from a few years ago, the flowers are Prima and the rest is just stuff I found around that went with the blue/peach theme.

A Couple More Layouts

Here are a couple more layouts for the album I am working on for Kurt. There are a lot of layouts remaining but things are coming along. It's fun to see old photos, but boy is this a big project. I am having fun, though.

These were taken in 1978, before Spencer was born. Cyn was such a babe. I miss her so much.



Here are some photos of their beloved cat, Edna. That is Spencer up in the top photo. I struggled with this layout, as I wanted to and did not want to show the kids' handwriting on the Polaroids. So much of a layout's design is dictated by the photos you are working with.

Hanna's Birthday Gift

Turning 2 with Blue

This is an album I made for Hanna's birthday present. It is made using an acrylic album I was given at the scrapbooking convention. I was a volunteer and one of the teachers was very kind and gave it to me for free. (Yay!) Her business is called The Button Farm and she makes fabulous kits with full color instructions.

Here is a pic of the acrylic album:


Hanna's birthday party theme is Blue's Clues. She loves the show.

Working with an acrylic album was a new experience for me, but I liked the end result. There was only one mishap where I forgot you could see through to the other side and I put glue in spots that showed on the reverse. Lucky for me, the glue wiped off.

Here is the album:


















































Here are the details:
I think it's neat how if you plan correctly, you can see some of the items on the other pages. For example, here you can see the red flowers on the scalloped edge which are not on the cover page. I paper-pieced Blue using an image from on-line as my guide.




This is the reverse of the cover page. You can see the bow from the front. (I like how the tag reads, "Party Time," and I included the clock as the flower center. Time. Clock. Get it? Haha.)




This page is where the red flowers have been added. It also has a hidden journaling tag. Below are the close-ups.













I love how I got the part of the paper with red and blue paws.




I used the red flowers from the previous page as backgrounds for the little yellow flowers. I left room below the mat for journaling.



I like this page a lot. I learned this trick from the class I volunteered in. These acrylic albums are perfect for doing this kind of thing (hinges, flaps, hidden journaling, etc.) because there are no page protectors.
The top mat lifts up to reveal spots for two additional photos, top and bottom, so that 3 photos can fit on this one page. It's a great way to add extra storage to an album.




Rachel mentioned she was doing cupcakes for Hanna's friends, so I included a 3-D cupcake here. I thought this page worked well for the cupcake photos because of the stickers which show Blue's friends. I was thinking that a photo or a couple of photos of Hanna and her friends eating cupcakes would look cute here. I often find myself imagining how pages could be used. Who knows if that will end up happening. I like how the added dash of green in the paper goes with the cupcake wrapper and the little green dog. I left this page without a mat so that there was one page where the orientation of the photo wasn't necessarily horizontal and where, if Rachel chose, there could be more than one photo.




I like this page. I punched the balloons out with a punch and added the string with a red sharpie which writes really well on the acrylic (but be careful not to make any mistakes!:-)). I didn't like how the yellow background was so high on the acrylic page so I added a strip of turquoise to the bottom and really like how it came out. I love making mistakes that end up working out better than the original idea.



Here I felt I needed another type of printed paper, but I was tired of the ones I'd already used. I like how this paper ties in the green from the previous page.



On this page, I was trying to use more of the turquoise. It's a little plain but I didn't feel like adding stripes or polka dots to the paper as I'd already done that earlier. This one was a tough one for me and I played with the colors and other papers a lot, but everything I tried just didn't work because of the page that lays opposite this one in the album. So I decided to keep it simple. It feels a little too simple to me, but trust me, it worked better than anything else. Keeping the color palette simple was the best way to go, especially because the epoxy stickers include a pink color and I didn't want to add any additional pink elements.




I wasn't sure is Rachel would want any photos on the back since they might get scratched. I decided to leave it blank and gave her some of the scraps to use if she wants to add a photo mat or something here.

Recent Layouts

Easter layout:


Hanna at play:


The Mommy-to-Be Layout:

The mats had all been set horizontally, so we rotated the second page to allow for some vertically oriented photos.

Back from California

My DH and I went down to California for Thanksgiving to stay with family and I got to visit with some of my closest friends. We had a blast crafting. I am lucky that my friends enjoy being crafty, too, and we spent hours getting our craft on.

I made a layout of my friend's daughter at the park:

(Hinta-Palinta means swings in Hungarian.)

And here are some place cards we made for my friend's Thanksgiving table. (The pics are horrible, I know, but it was dark by the time I got around to taking them. Sorry about the quality.)

We dry embossed the background and wet embossed the frame and leaf in gold. Then we popped the leaf with foam tape. I think they turned out pretty cute.




And finally, Christmas cards I made with my friend Theresa and her DH, Anthony (thanks for the pics!):