Mini Album for my Secret Sister

The Crazy Cropper Scrapbooking Retreat is almost here!!  I am needing this retreat in a BIG way!!  Life has been crazy busy with two shows at the theatre back to back, school starting, and well, just.... life.  Anyway, I am very much looking forward to a weekend of almost-uninterrupted scrap time.  (I say almost uninterrupted because I will have to leave the retreat for a few hours for my cousin's wedding.)

One of my favorite things about the retreat is the Secret Sister swap.  I am so excited about this mini-album I made for my secret sister. (Shhhh!  Don't tell!!)  I did not add any kind of title or words inside - the idea is for her to add her own titles, photos, and journaling.   I hope she loves it as much as I do!   I used this YouTube video tutorial to get started:  Cardstock Flip Mini Album

Finished album is approximately 8 1/2" x 8 1/2" when closed.
The closure is Spare Parts from Hobby Lobby.

Opening the cover reveals 4 center pages that open alternately, and have spaces for 4x6 photos.

Both sides open up to reveal binder rings with 6 pages on each binder ring.   These pages have spaces for 2" x 3" photos and journaling.  There is plenty of room for more pages if she wants to add to it.

The center back has 9 waterfall style pages.

The paper is the Caprice collection from Close To My Heart, and uses Bamboo, Chocolate, Crystal Blue, and Honey cardstock.   I inked all the papers and stamped the journaling spots with Chocolate ink.  Journaling stamps are from Autumn Leaves.

Bad bad blogger....

Ok, so here are the scrapbook layout pictures I should have posted over a month ago. The photos are not great, and I apologize. I tried editing them, and never was happy with the results, so I decided to just forget it & post them "as is". I took these on my kitchen table at night, so you will have to forgive me for some weird lighting issues.

Enjoy!

Designer's Challenge Club

I have been working on Scrapbook Generation's Designer's Challenge Club monthly projects for a few months, and decided it was about time I posted some of the work I have done.

How it Works:
The wonderful ladies at Scrapbook Generation pick out a "packet" of stuff to give us every month. We meet on the 3rd Thursday every month to show off the creations we made with the packet we were given the previous month. The tricky part is, we are not allowed to ADD anything to the packet other than stamps, inks, paints, glitter, buttons, brads, and a few other tools. We can NOT add stickers, rub-ons, flowers, any other patterned papers, etc. It is really fun to see what other ladies have done when everyone started out with the exact same papers!

Here are a few peeks at my work.

November Creations:





December Creations:







January Creations:





February Creations:






If you would like to see some of the other artists' work, it is posted on the Scrapbook Generation Blog.

CKC Tulsa

Wow -- I can't believe it has been almost a month since my last post!!! I have been SoOoOoOo busy lately... my new mantra is "I can't... I have rehearsal." DH and I are both in the next show at Stained Glass Theatre and we rehearse 24 hours per week. That is enough for a part-time job!! It is going to be a great show, though! It is a musical called "Without Fear" - it is the story of Daniel. We will have performances every Thurs/Fri/Sat from Sept 11 - Oct 18. If you are in the area check out the SGT website for show times and ticket information!!

CKC TULSA
Wow!! CKC is a scrapbooker's dream! 4 days of cropping, shopping, classes, shopping, vendors, and more cropping! My mom and I went up on Thursday and hit a few of the Tulsa area scrapbook stores along the way. We also stayed on Sunday for a crop at one of their stores, and it was so much fun! I got a LOT done, which made me very happy!!

As for the CKC classes, I took a wonderful class from Allison Davis of Scrapbook Generation called One Two Three 4x6. It was all aout using full 4x6 photos on your layouts without cropping them first. It made for some fast and fun pages!! We completed 2 different 1-page layouts, and a 2-page layout in under an hour. I will be heading to Scrapbook Gen this week to get more paper to turn those 1-pagers into 2-page spreads, since I am totally a 2-page layout kinda girl. Another good class Allison taught was about journaling. She highlighted 8 different journaling styles, so when you are stuck in a journaling rut, you can try a different approach and see if it works better. I am anxious to get the copies of the notes from that class she is going to be mailing to us.

I also took 3 different board book classes, and loved them all!! I am really getting into making some board books now, since the boys love to look at them. NONE of these are finished, but I thought I would show you what I have done so far.

PIGGY TALES
This was a new company to me - they have been around about 3 years or so, but I had never heard of them before, and fell in love!! All of their paper lines are named after Fairy Tales. Simple, bold patterns for kids, and some more "sophisticated" styles for teens and adults. Their board books are FAR from ordinary! Lift-the-flap books, books with sliders, and more. I was definitely impressed! Here is a lift-the-flap book I made in one of their classes using their "Chicken Little" line of papers.



















LICKETY SPLIT
This was another company that was new to me. One of their designers, Shannon, taught the board book class I took. Shannon is from Carthage MO and has a company called K.I.S.S. that hosts all kinds of retreats and crops there, so I am sure I will be seeing her again, now that I know about her!! The Lickety Split Disney board book was a great class too!! I learned how to do a board book with a covered binding that doesn't get worn out from all the opening & closing. This book is still missing a lot of ribbon, tags, and white pen doodling, but I can already see it coming together in my mind, so I know it is going to be a favorite when I get it done!!



























PAPER KANDI
I also took the "A Boys Life" board book class from Tracey & Darby that was sponsored by Oriental Trading. It was pretty time-intensive with the stitching on the front cover, so the cover was all we got finished in class, but we have instructions on how to complete the rest of the book.








While shopping at the Vendor Faire I found a great sheet of robot punch outs from Cosmo Cricket that I bought for AJ. Here are his creations so far!

Scrap Happy!

Wow - the last few weeks have been super busy! But I did find some time to scrap last weekend, so I thought I would post a few of my layouts... Considering it is my #1 hobby and I have yet to post any layouts here, I thought it was past time!

This is one of my favorites. AJ started playing T-Ball this year, and this is HIS page! He did the baseball, inked the edges of the pages, told me what order to put the pictures in, etc. I did the cutting and assembly, but he did the rest! He likes to help Mommy scrap. :)

These pictures were taken on February 4th- it was SO warm that day! The kids loved playing outside for a change. I thought these papers really went well with her dress. Sorry for the glare -- next time I will take the pages out of the protectors first....duh.

Grandma's birthday - there is more color to this LO in person. The large photo is of her looking at the recipe album I made for her. It is a 9x9 scrapbook filled with family recipes/traditions & photos. I am thinking it will be a continuing work in progress. Hopefully other family members will make pages to add to it!

Oh Boy! Hunter playing in the mulch at Silver Dollar City. An entire amusement park surrounds him, but no, he is intrigued by the mulch...

AJ and his buddy from church, enjoying popsicles and making mud pies in the lid of the Turtle sandbox. Oh, come on, admit it! You had the turtle sandbox as a kid too...