We Love Weekend Road Trips ~ a Mini-book

I'm excited to have a little scrapbooking project to share with you today!

♥

I love having a collection of photos from a special occasion or a little road trip to put together in a mini scrapbook! I haven't made a mini-book since last summer and I'd been itching to play with paper - just needed a good set of photos to fill one up. For this one, I used the photos I took recently when Doug and I went camping.

I kept my embellishments simple and one-dimensional, and I was tempted to add some journaling and doodling along the way but in the end decided that I was happy with it just the way it was. I'll show you photos of my pages and then at the end of this post, for those of you who are interested, I'll provide some detail on how I made my book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

And now, the details:

 

♥ My pages are 4" x 6" - I cut Kraft cardstock to 8" x 6", scored down the center and folded to create a double-page layout.

♥ Book pages are glued back-to-back - I used a tape runner. I published a tutorial a while back that shows how to construct a book like this, and you can see that here.
♥ Before adding photos and/or embellishments, I stamped the background with a few random stamps I have. Nothing fancy, just random...
♥ I used punches for my shapes, cardstock and scraps from an old dictionary I have.
♥ I inked the edges of my punched shapes, as well as the edges of all of the pages. Inking the edges of punched shapes gives them added dimension.
♥ My title strips were printed using a Word document. I inserted a table and filled the background with brown, then made my font white. Printed, then cut the strips.

 You can see other mini-books I've made by clicking here.  :o)
♥

One more time for "30 Days of Thankful"

If you've been hanging out here for a while, you might remember the "30 Days of Thankful" project that I participated in during the month of November 2013. The project is the brainchild of Cathy Zielske, and I used her templates and posted my thankful thoughts and photos during that month.

This was the first time I'd used Photoshop files for printing a book so there was a little learning curve. I wasn't thrilled with the layout of the cover, but oh well! Next time I'll take more time to preview the product before rushing through the review of my cart and hurry-up-and-order.

The only page I didn't post on my blog was the 30th day - just because I didn't have it ready to fly by the time I posted my final pages in November. So I thought I would share that page today, and also a peek at the book I ordered from Shutterfly to document my thankfulness in hard copy.

A cool thing about uploading these pages to Shutterfly was that I was able to order an extra copy of this book to send to my grandma. I know she won't totally get the pages that relate to blogging, and she may raise her eyebrows when she reads about my love of red wine, but I know that she loved the book. It is beyond her to figure out how my typed words and photos ended up in a book. :o)

I loved participating in this project during the month of November, and I found it super easy to come up with 30 things to be thankful for! It's definitely a project worth repeating in a year or two.

{You can see all of my posts documenting 30 Days of Thankful by clicking here.}
♥

Trading Craft Lessons with a Friend

When Carrie was a little girl I made sure to keep photos of my family around where she could see them on a regular basis. The majority of my family lived in another state, and I wanted her to be able to recognize Grandma Marti and Aunt Valerie when we'd have the chance to visit them once or twice a year. One of her favorite things to do as a very little girl was to look through photo albums. She would point to the photos, smile and say, "Uncle Ron!" or "Britny!" and it would make me so happy that she knew they were our people - people who loved her and who she loved back.

♥

My friend Judy wanted to make a small scrapbook for her sweet little granddaughter, Harper. She wasn't sure where to start, so we got together last month and I offered a helping hand. Judy brought paper, and photos of Harper's cousins and aunts and uncles, and we sat in my craft space for a Saturday evening and played with paper. Bliss! And red wine.

It had been a long time since I helped someone put a scrapbook together, and it was such a sweet surprise to be in that space again. It was so fun to see Judy enjoy the process so much, to teach her how to use a paper punch turned upside down to get the most out of a piece of paper, and to show her how to use a tape runner. Yes, it works "just like white out." :o)

But the super cool part of helping Judy was hearing later how much Harper loved her scrapbook - how she stopped and looked at each picture and then looked up and smiled. Her grandma had given her a very special little book with photos of her people. People who love her and who she loves back.

Part two of this post is that Judy came over on a recent weekend and taught me how to knit. We've been talking about this for a while now, because I have become attached to washing dishes with a knitted dish cloth. All of the dish cloths in our stash have been knitted by Judy and while they have all worn very well, it's time for a new round. So we sat out at our patio table, and Judy taught me how to knit and I loved every stitch of it!

 

While I was in the middle of dish-cloth-number-two later that afternoon, I received a text and photo from Judy. She was making another book, this time with the help of her daughter and daughter-in-law, and it made me feel so happy knowing that they were enjoying that craft together, making another book for a grandson this time.

I'm so happy that Judy and I were able to trade crafting lessons.
And gosh, I am so glad that Judy is one of my people.

♥

My Blog Friend Mini-book

Oh how I love a mini-book!

They're such a fun little way to hold a collection

of photos and document a fun event.

♥

I knew while Carrie and I were in England that I wanted to make a mini-book when we got home. And I knew that I wanted it to hold photos of all the blog friends we'd met while we were there. I loved working on this book and recalling the sweet memories of being with these lovely ladies (and one small gentleman).

Gosh, it was so awesome to have the opportunity to meet so many blog friends in person while we were in England earlier this year. I loved having the chance to go back through our photos and relive our time together. As I worked on this book, I thought of each friend as I worked on her (his) page. And even though the process of making this book was a bit drawn out, I loved every minute of it!

Here's a look at all the pages, with names and links of each friend under their photos. :o)

Alison and Deb

Karen and Denise

 Helena and Jacky

 Becky and Mel

 Rhona, and her daughters and grand-daughters. So sweet!

My friend, The Boy Child, and his mum, Ruth.

 

Sweet memories of time spent with lovely friends.

It just doesn't get much better than that.

♥

 

Thanks again to Lisa-Jane for the cute Union Jack paper she sent me as part of Sian's Great Big Swap of Very Small Things.

Vacation Journaling

 Good day, blog friends!

And thank you for your sweet comments yesterday

welcoming our little Lucky-Dog.

♥

Today I'm sharing the travel journal I plan to use when Carrie and I head to England at the end of next month, and I'm interested in your feedback about journaling while on vacation.

First, a little bit about my little book.

For my base, I used a plain Moleskine journal that Carrie gave me and added a few simple embellishments. {I love that the word chocolat is visible at the top of the book page scrap. I purposely avoided covering it with paint.}

I adhered a little scrap of book page with a glue stick, then a little bit of teal paint and a couple of random rubber stamps. The tie is a piece of elastic trim that I attached to the spine {with needle and thread} to hold it in place. The fact that it's elastic means that it slips over and off of the book rather than having to be tied/untied each time I use it.

I used a little stamp {from here} on some random pages inside. As I stamped it I imagined the different words I'll use to fill-in-the-blank and thought, "everyone of these will be filled with awesome." Haha - we'll see what other words I come up with during the course of ten days.

The little pocket in the back of the book holds a small bag of individual glue dots for adhering bits and pieces along the way.

While my sister and I were in California last month sorting through our mother's things, we came across Mom's travel journal from a trip she and my step-dad took to France several years ago. There wasn't a whole lot of journaling in it, but what she had written was really fun to read. It was a little piece of her, written just the way she talked, and it made me even more excited about our upcoming trip and keeping a travel journal myself.

Carrie has a little journal to bring along too, and we have vowed to remind each other to use it along the way to document our thoughts as we go.

So, what about you?

Have you kept a travel journal during a trip before?

I'd love to hear any helpful tips you might have to share.

♥

Project Life: To Kit or Not to Kit

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Carrie and I went round and round last year on the subject of ordering a kit to use with Project Life. I argued that she didn’t need a kit – she could just make her own inserts. She did just that for 2012, but this year she ordered a kit. Eh-hm. And so did I.

It is fun to have coordinating inserts for Project Life, and I realize that particular element does help to unify a weekly spread. So, well..I’ll just say it: Carrie was right. {ouch}

But! Even though I’m glad I ordered the kit, I wasn’t real crazy about all of the papers that were included in the one I chose. I particularly liked the journaling cards, but didn’t care for some of the patterned/colored paper sheets. So, I made a few of my own.

Now, before you go thinking that I’m all “miss high and mighty” {"Anonymous" commenter!}, I’m going to tell you that while I think that Project Life is a great way to scrapbook and I do think everyone should scrapbook in some form or another, that doesn’t mean that you have to have some fancy-schmancy inserts or someone else's kit for that matter. Plain and simple would do the trick just as well.

And these were pretty simple to put together:

{A paper trimmer, a few paper punches and a corner rounder, and glue dots. The end.}

And I realize this is really early in the year to be making a decision about next year’s Project Life {2014 – yikes!}, but I’m thinking I will completely make my own “kit” next year using some patterned paper I like, along with some solid {textured} cardstock for shapes and embellishments. I think it would be a fairly easy project. Hm...but that could prove to be fairly time consuming...

We’ll see how much time I have on my hands come December…

{wink}

PS: Here's a link to a great article for anyone who is curious about the basics of Project Life: Project Life Newbies

Anyone can scrapbook, and everybody should.

When it comes to Project Life, each of us fits into one of the following categories:

1 - You don’t do Project Life and are sick of seeing blog posts about it.

2 - You do Project Life, you love it, and you are hooked.

3 - You’re thinking, “What the heck is Project Life?”

I’ve been through a few scrapbook phases in my life; from the early days of ticket stubs, school photos of friends, and random bits [barely] adhered to pages with a simple glue stick, to a more elaborate form of scrapbooking with more-embellishments-than-photo-fare permanently attached to fancy cardstock and patterned paper.

No matter what format you choose, keeping a book with some photos and tidbits about life as it is right now {aka: a scrapbook} is important. It’s personally important so you can look back and see how far you’ve come in this life, or where you still need to go. And it’s important to your friends and family because some day, whether you like it or not, someone will want to know about your life. They’ll want to know how you lived it, who or what you loved in it, and how you spent your days.

The idea of page protectors with little sections to slip bits of paper and photos into just appeals to me. I can’t think of a simpler, more workable format for saving photos and memorabilia - and in the end, calling it a scrapbook. Lots of people call this Project Life {the simple, yet ingenious brain child of Becky Higgins}.

Carrie got me started on Project Life last May, and in the beginning I resisted. I didn’t want to do the traditional weekly spreads – didn’t want to conform. I ended up just printing lots of photos, saving a few odds and ends to include, and the result is that I have a nice collection of some of my favorite photos for the second half of 2012. I like it, it’s a cool collection of photos in chronological order, but it’s not the way I want my 2013 book to be.

This year I’m committing to Project Life in its traditional format with weekly spreads. I even bought a kit complete with journaling cards, all in a cohesive color scheme, and I’m taking daily notes in my hard-copy calendar/journal. Sometimes I’ll share my pages here on my blog, but for the most part I’ll probably keep it to myself.

You don’t need the actual “Project Life” page protectors to do this project! There are plenty of other brands, sizes, and shapes of page protectors and three-ring binders {sold at Target, Michael’s, OfficeMax…}. There’s no right or wrong way to make a personal scrapbook. Our scrapbooks should be as unique as we are.

So, go ahead - start documenting your life!
Somehow, just document it.
Because anyone can scrapbook,
and everybody should.
♥

A Little Something for my Mom

I spent last weekend working on the most fun project for my mom!

♥

I picked up these strawberry shaped coasters at Target a couple of months ago - got 'em

out of the dollar bin knowing that I'd be turning them into something for my mom.

She likes strawberry stuff. :o)

I loved working on this project for so many reasons! I loved the bright happy colors, the sentiments that came to me for journaling, the collection of photos I used, and knowing that I was creating something that my mom would enjoy looking at many times over.

The back side of the strawberry coasters were plain, so I backed them with cardstock and/or patterned paper. Strips of journaling were printed from a Word document then cut, glued, and traced around with a black marker. Looking at these photos, I'm really glad I took the time for some basic doodling, as I think it makes the embellishments pop.

Here's a look at all the pages laid out ~ 

And for those of you that are interested, here's a look at all the tools I used to create this mini-book ~

What a fun way to spend last weekend, making something for my sweet mom!

:o) ♥

{Linking to Skip to My Lou ~ Made by You Monday's}
{Linking to I Should Be Mopping the Floor - Mop it Up Monday's}