Thursday, December 31, 2009

From one holiday to the next

It seems like it was just Christmas! I hope that everyone has a fabulous and safe New Year's Eve. This is a little mini that I made for my sister for Christmas. Leslee loves flamingoes, so when I saw the metal flamingo business card holder, I knew I had to do something with it for her, even though she doesn't have business cards. She also loves the song/spoken poetry, "Wear Sunscreen" by Baz Luhrmann, so I put the two together and made her a very simple mini book that features the lyrics and uses the card holder as a stand for the book. I used manila file folders for the base of each page and broke the song up per page, adding a few tropical colored flower embellishments along on each page. She LOVED it!




Wednesday, December 23, 2009

One more mini down!

So I have finished* the third mini I planned to make for a Christmas gift. There is a very special lady in my family, one who is not blood or even marriage related to any of us, but she still loves us like we are. I wanted to let her know how much I really appreciate her choosing my family to share her beauty with. I used a kit from my incredibly talented friend, Daniela, at The Art Life. The kit was full of Jenni Bowlin papers and one of my favorite Maya Road albums. The brown, red, yellow, and green color scheme is perfect.





I wanted each member of the family to have a message in the book, so I created separate 2 part tags for each one of us. The first part is a place where we will write what our special family member means to us and the second part is a photo of the author, which I laminated and put together with a bad so it could spin in case the person's message needed to be carried over to the back.



I used the pages of the album to either be a pocket to hold the personalized tags or to be a full picture of the family. 








Hopefully on Christmas morning, she will have a small idea just how important she is to everyone of us and that without her our lives wouldn't be as beautiful.


*it still needs the messages added, but technically speaking, it is finished. ;P

Monday, December 21, 2009

On the cover...

As promised, here is the cover for my 25 Days of Christmas album. For those of you who had this done in November, shush! ;-P Yes, this is as far as I have got, but I have quite a bit of down time this week and I am pretty sure I will get caught up. I am planning to use the KISS rule for the inside pages, hoping that will help the flow.



Call me slow, but I also realized this morning that the perfect place to photograph things is placed on a package in front of the Christmas tree! 

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Inside of the Mini

Here are the remaining pages of the gift mini book. I am still really happy how this turned out. The blank book had mini file folder shaped pages, so I used the tabs to distinguish words that I consider going with the family theme. The recipients of this book have had a blessed year, getting married last October and then welcoming a beautiful baby girl in July, so I made sure to make pages for both of them and one for their baby. I pre-matted all the photo spots for either 3"x3" or 2"x3" photos and included two templates, one for each size. I wanted to make adding photos super easy. I also added a page with two removable tags in a pocket for journaling memories and on the back cover, I used a die cut scroll to feature the last name of the family and the year they were married.









I will be back later with the cover of my "25 Days of Christmas" album and hopefully the majority of the second mini I am making for a very special person in my family.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Loving the minis!!!

I have really been into the mini books lately. They are fairly quick, fun, and give a sense of completion. I did this one for a friend for Christmas. I started by staining the wood covers and letting it take shape from there. I am really happy with how it turned out. These photos are of the cover and the first inside page. I will post the rest of the photos tomorrow, but for now, it is back to the studio where I have three projects on my desk that must be finished by Thursday when we leave for Oregon.





I also just realized that I forgot to add the middle ring to this book! Sometimes I do not fire on all cylinders. Oops, I will have to send it to my friend.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Finally broke through!

In case you haven't noticed with all the silence, I have been mojo-less. Not sure if it was the traveling, the illness, the end of the term, or all the above, but I was like a creek bed in the dead of an Arizona summer for about the last month and a half. Then I did make two gifts for friends and completely forgot to photograph them. But I think I have broke through to the other side. I made 20 Christmas cards, a mini book, and covered my 25 Days of Christmas album all in the last two days! Not too shabby, I would say. So here is the cover of the Christmas card. Can't show the inside yet because it is a surprise to those getting these in the mail.


Tomorrow I will post some pictures of the mini, but not too many because it is a gift too, though I don't think the recipient peeks in on me here.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Monochromatic

Happy first day of December, everyone!! So I can finally post this layout. I have been hanging onto it for almost two months, but it was created for a challenge over at Scrap Street magazine and I didn't want to publish it until I was sure they weren't going to pick it up. They didn't, so here it is. The challenge was to create a layout that was monochromatic and I instantly went to all white. I pictured the top of Grandma's dresser, with lace and sparklies, and pearls. In the center is my beautiful niece, Cadence, looking like the angel she is. (Yes, I am partial, but look at the picture. You can see why I am partial.) I added the little gossamer bag at the bottom which contains charms such as a music note and a ring. I journaled why each charm is included and what I feel it represents to Cadence, such as the music note- I hope that she always has music in her life and dance in her step.


This has to be one of my favorite layouts ever. I love the layering, the details, and the essence of colors, or lack of in this case. Thanks for looking!