Happy Spring!

Ok so we are not quite there yet... but it's coming! With the sun breaking through our gray winter skys now and then we begin to look forward to Spring showing up.
Last Spring, one of my friend's Mom was visiting her, and knowing that she enjoyed crafting cards I suggested that she join myself and another friend to do a craft during her stay. Since she is more apt to do cards back home we decided to do a mini album for something different from her usual.

One day my friend and I planned out the design, then the next day we got together and all three of us worked on our own individual version of it. We each chose an element associated with Spring to use as our primary element in our mini... my friend picked birds, the Mom picked dragonflies, and I picked flowers. We each followed the basic design scketch with our differing elements and differing picks of colors, resulting in each one being quite unique.

I haven't put photos in mine yet; (there is a piece of blank cardstock in place of where each photo will be for now so I know what photo dimention I will need).
I wanted my mini to be bright and cheery, yet with a little softness. If you look close you'll see some basic principle scketch elements like: the background paper on each inner page goes...1/2 patterned top with 1/2 solid bottom, then opposite is full solid paper, next is full patterned paper, then opposite is 1/2 solid top with 1/2 patterned bottom and then it repeats. Also my 1/2 solid background piece was always alternating pink, then blue, then pink, etc. Along with using the flower element on every page in some way I also made sure that every page had some kind of sparkly aspect, from rhinestones to glitter. Some supplies and techeniqes used here are metal embelishments, glitter-stickers, (regular, foil, glitter & flock) rub-ons, punches, Glitter Ritz, brads, glitter-glue, stiching, stamping, heat-embossing, dry-embossing, paper edge distressing, different rhinestones, paper and fabric flowers.

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.