I had so much fun and pleasure putting these albums together. A little on the gator-mouth side but if you tie the ribbon really tight, you don't even notice lol.
I do need to finish filling in the rings today. By10:30 last night when I'd filmed, I'd been up since 4:30 a.m. and my fingers were tired of cooperating with me.
I hope you enjoy the album flip-through. Let me know in the comments below what you may have done differently. Thanks for watching!
I had the most precious email from Margaret last week asking about me. She'd not seen me at our weekly WOYWW meet-up and just wanted to check on me.
How sweeet that even though there is a gigantic pond between us, my neighbor wanted to check on me. Thank you, dear friend.
My desk is a bit covered at the moment:
Baby Albums! Across the top back (almsot out of view) are the papers I'm making pages from. Down the left side are the embellishments I've made and the right hand side is just left overs to do something with (Put away, maybe? LOL)
For the past several weeks my table has been all about First Year albums for two precious little girls to be born around Thanksgiving.
If you've been following me for awhile you've heard me talk about Kassie - the little girl from my daycare that became 'like a daughter' from the very beginning. By the time Kassie turns 23 in December, she will be holding twin girls. She used the Marco Polo app (like facetime) that I was going to be a grandma to twins. She's already dubbed us Mimi and Pop.
I combined the making of the albums with the October junk journal challenge from DearJulieJulie to construct the journals so each of the 11 tags/ cards and 11 embellishments were made in duplicate - except for the Sticker Embellishment. I made 12 of those for each album
If you have a few minutes (the video is about 18 min. long) I walk you through the elements. If not, come back next week and I'll have a walk through of one of the completed albums.
That's it for my desk (and story) this week. Who's Miss Julia and why am I here? When you are done visiting me in the Ozarks, please hop on over to Stamping Ground for all the details. Miss Julia has a long list of other studios you can peek into. No standing on an up-turned milk pail to look in the window. We open the doors wide and welcome you. Please leave your number and you'll be among the first on my list.
I finally got to make time last week to play. And I had so much fun creating this shabby chic album for my niece, Cheyanne. I've never worked in shabby chic before so this was fun to play with. I should have done an 8x8 but I am happy with how the 6x6 turned out.
This album was originally brown. I removed the plastic cover, took the posts out allowing me to dismantle the album. I used hot glue to adhere the unbleached canvas to the front and back covers and wonder-under for the spine piece. I did the inside covers with April Lovely cardstock by Core'dinations. If you've not used this cardstock before, it has a beautiful canvas texture. I chose April Lovely, Mystic Gray (which actually has a sage green tone to it) and Picket Fence. I found them at JoAnns Fabric and Crafts.
I raided my vintage lace and trim sewing tub for soft textures. The cover has 2 different layers of lace plus a strip of white/ pink daisy ribbon from The Paper Studio. All of the flowers are from Recollections except for the antiqued one in the center. That is made from 6 scallop layers punched from book pages and inked with SU Caramel. The baby buggy is made from 1 and 1/4 scallop circles punched from SU Pretty in Pink and GP White. You will find the directions HERE. I added the mini flower punch 'spokes'.
One of the embellishments I used throughout the album was the mini butterfly punch from SU. I punched some from GP white, and some from DCWV Shimmer Matstack. Some of the white ones I brushed with ink or stickles, others I left plain. For the body I used Recollections teardrops or The Paper Studio gemstones. The pink ribbon is pink grosgrain from Paper Studio bobbin.
The inside cover is stamped with an Innie Outie stamp in SU Regal Rose. I've layered the stamped GP white mat on a sheet from DCWV Garden Party. I loved the hints of the pink tones I had in the Recollections flowers. Then these were layered onto the Mystic Gray.
Here is a sample of a 2 page layout. There is a spread for each of the first 12 months of little Libby Ann's life. I used the Picket Fence for all of the 6x6 bases. The titles are printed on GP white using the MEANINGFUL font. You can download it free HERE. Each title mat was layered onto the April Lovely then Mystic Gray.
The journaling box is corner punched with an EK Success decorative corners - Lace. The pink ribbon decorative strip is layered with a soft green print from the DCWV Garden Party slab. On the facing page, I brought in some of the vintage lace (no, that isn't paper). The photo mat is large enough to accommodate a 3x5 photo... just the right size for a 1st year picture. The concept is to see the subtle changes the child goes through from month to month that we often don't see as they occur. The only embellishments I used were the flowers from Recollections (there were 3 each of 3 color tones in the package) and the butterflies.
I know Cheyanne liked the album and I loved having the opportunity to give her a head start on documenting little Libby Ann's life. Of course, her grandma (my SIL, Kelly Sue) has a new camera and has been taking tons of pics of the mommy-to-be and is a paper crafter so I know there are more albums in their future.
Tomorrow is WOYWW. Are you sure you want to see the mess I left in the wake of this album as we headed out the door to OK last weekend? Come back and see me. I'll show you what I bought while we were there.
Okay, no one faint. I have Monday's and Tuesday's cards done! I'm getting the Monday post uploaded tonight as we are under a Winter Storm Advisory and could have ice in here tomorrow. With the ice, there's a good possibility I won't have internet.
The past few weeks I've been working on a 8x8 album for a lady in Canada who will be having her first child any day. I needed a card to go with her gift and remembered I had a magazine with multiple layouts available.
I chose a card made by Julie Ebersole titled 'She's Here!' showcased in the May 2005 issue of CardMaker magazine. (pg 46) I kept the layout the same with the exception of using what I had to work with.
I used the same colors for the card I used for the album (which I'll show in a later post)... SU So Saffron, Soft Suede and Certainly Celery.
Julie used a velum tag with a pink doodlebug button and the sentiment said She's Here!
I didn't have a velum tag but I did have a tag stamp from Hampton Arts. So I stamped and embossed the tag with silver on white card stock. I also didn't have a ribbon I liked so I replaced it with paper twin in the three coordinating colors. I don't know which SU set the onsie stamp is from. I've been back through SU catalogs to 2000 and could not find it. I picked it up at a garage sale by itself about five years ago. The sentiment, 'Little One' is from the Nice n Narrow set.
Hubby and I are taking off for Valentine's Day on Tuesday morning. I hope to get the blog post uploaded before we leave. It's a Camo Valentine! Cute and simple!
It was not an easy journey. The HughesNet guy, Trevor, was really sweet. He had 3 modems on his truck 'new' from the company. It took the 3rd one to get one that worked. I also learned that I shouldn't have to shut my modem down. It sounds like HughesNet was hoping to extend the life of my modem until the warranty ran out and then I'd have to replace it. LOL I love their connection - just not their customer service.
On a more creative note, I'm scrambling to finish up 2 sistah packets to be mailed tomorrow. My daughter called this morning to ask how I felt about becoming a grandma NEXT WEEK! Ummm... if Abigail says that's when she wants grandma there, I guess it will have to work. LOL So I'm trying to get all of my deadline stuff out of the way by Monday - just in case.
So Monday, I will have a Magazine Monday card for you, at least 1 Teapot Tuesday card and then from there it's whatever I can accomplish while I wait to hear from my daughter.
I hope everyone had a safe extended weekend and took time to remember the importance of the holiday.
For the final card from the Welcome Baby Swap I fell in love with a card by Julie Ebersole.
It’s “Welcome Little One” from May 2005 CardMaker Magazine.
Julie used a white CS base. She matted it with a pale yellow which she had cut a 1-3/8 window in the top left corner – for dimension.
I opted not to do a window. But I did want to keep it just as simple. I chose to center my image and added the embellishment to the sentiment.
I used Barely Banana, a misc. stripe DP, Tuxedo Black and Barely Banana inks. The baby stamp is a Dollar General stamp I’ve had for years and the Oh Baby is from Katie & Co. I accented with a flower punch and brads.
I think this makes the perfect 'baby' card to have on hand.
I also took the baby boy card for the BOY category of the Welcome Baby Swap from the 2005 StampIt!
Designer Bonnie Lotz did a beautiful card using a variety of materials and techniques. For the card base, she used a Navy blue matted with white CS. From the sketch below you’ll also see she used stitching, buttons and two different styles of ways to showcase the words WELCOME and BABY.
I took the design a bit simpler and utilized what I had on hand. I didn’t have a large enough handprint so I substituted the pair of foot prints from StampCraft. The letters are from EK Success. I used Bordering Blue CS with Bashful Blue ink. The blue DP is from a misc. slab.
The neat thing with doing swaps is you send out 4 alike and you get 4 different ones back, making for a nice ‘All Occasion’ set always on hand.
Next week – the Neutral card, using up the last of my Barely Banana CS.
And I've returned with a vengeance. I spent 9 glorious hours creating in my studio yesterday. Mind you, most of what I created had to do with swaps I'm currently in (5-total). But it was wonderful to sit and play. I was surprised when I looked at the clock to see it was way past my normal bed time.
One of the swaps I'm in is titled 'Welcome Baby'. There are three spots - Girl, Boy, Neutral - making 4 cards in each spot. Well with a new grand-baby coming in October I just HAD to play. And I HAD to take a spot in each one. Hehehe. So I went through my magazines yesterday and found three different layouts.
This week I'm featuring a card by Jenny Grothe from STAMP IT Cards 2005. The only thing I've changed about Jenny's layout is the image. She used Stampin Up products including the baby's left footprint (I'm Here - retired set) in pink ink to match the dark mat underneath it. Jenny also did a zigzag stitch the length of the DP on the left hand side of the card and her base CS was a darker pink.
I chose to go with softer tones but used the darker mat to coordinate with the 'baby' in the bottom corner so it would pop off the DP background. I didn't have a footprint stamp large enough but it did give me the opportunity to use a 2-step stamp I've had for about 6 years and NEVER used!
I used Pretty in Pink, Melon Mambo and a Making Memories Maddi Narr Stripe. The background stamp on the tag mat is from Fresh Fillers (SU-retired). I added yellow glaze pen to the nipple. Ribbon and fiber were from my ever-present stash.
Next week I'll introduce you to the Baby Boy card.
