Keeping Memories... Alberta Mini Album

I made my first trip to visit my husband in Alberta since he began his new job there, and decided to commemorate the trip by creating a Mini Album of my week of travel there and back. I started by exploring local scrapbook stores while he was at work during the day. I chose this great scrapbook store in Sherwood Park to spend a couple of days working on the beginnings of my Mini Album. The staff of Scrapbook Divas was awesome and the shop has a great selection of supplies to choose from. So I made myself comfy in their crop room and got going. I finished it off over a couple of days at home when I returned. It now sits on my coffee table for all to enjoy. So here it is for those who may not get a chance to sit on my couch and pick it up off the coffee table to browse. Enjoy!

Alberta Mini Album... First Pages

I Love the way the pages of this Mini Album have arrows pointing in every direction... perfect to represent the many turns and detours of my road trip, especially when trying to find my way around big centers I had never driven in before.

Alberta Mini Album... The Rest of the Story

I also added a compass to represent the sense of feeling lost and needing some help to find my way driving around on this adventure. I chose bright colors for the Mini Album to show the fun and excited (to see my husband) nature of the trip as well as to be inviting for someone to pick up the Mini Album to have a peek. Yet I added distressing to soften the look. I uses flowers as one of my main embellishment features as we were just finishing summer, and worked within colors that are representative of summer (yellow, green, red and orange) yet may also flow into representing fall (gold, orange, red). I carried over the arrow theme with chipboard arrows on the pages as well. I added some bling with glitter and rhinestones for a little fun. I wanted to use all my chipboard page surfaces and even had to add a page, but did not want my photos on the back page to get damaged over time so I made a protective back cover out of opaque acrylic. The pages are busy but I think over all it turned out well.

A Painted Perspective

This is my first attempt at oil painting through a class which teaches the Bob Ross technique, enabling one to create a painting in a day. It was an excellent class and I enjoyed it so much that I immediately invested in supplies and later took more classes.

It was amazing to see the variations of perspective on the same scene painted by various students all learning the same technique. We are all uniquely talented and we each have our own perspective view of what we see with our mind's eye. Beauty shines forth from within in many forms. When it comes from the heart, the painted perspective is always a masterpiece!

Copy Cat... only kinda.

This was a simple birthday card that I made for my Step-daughter for her 21st. I had helped her create a birthday card for her Mom and liked what she came up with so much that I was inspired by her design to create this design for her card. I made sure this was somewhat different than her original, but the big flower element, the half solid / half pattern background and the keeping within a color family with the varied pattern papers were all elements we employed in the card she made too. Otherwise my color choices are totally different, her card was horizontal while mine is vertical, and there are other differences too. Just interesting how when you help someone create, what they come up with can so get you going on wanting to create something similar... but different.

Friendship Framed

This is a photo of a gift I made to give my husband's best friend and his wife as a moving away present. It is a Scrapbook style layout that I framed for their new home to remember us by.Because my husband has another very close friend that was included in the photo I decided to make another version of the same idea as a friendship gift to them. Now they too are looking at moving away.I'm glad our friends can take us along wherever life takes them... in their hearts and on their walls.