Paper Bag Baby Album

I have made lots of these albums in the past year.  Lots of babies being born.  So I thought I'd try to take photos of the process.

I begin with taking 8 paper bags and cutting them down and adhering them together.

Then I usually ink the edges of each page.

 

Then I choose the papers that I will use in the book.  This time the recipient doesn't know if it is a girl or a boy, which makes it a little more difficult for me.  This is the first time I haven't used "baby" papers.

I adhere these papers to the pages.

 

I cut out two pieces of card that is firm enough for the front and back cover.  I cover both sides of the front and the back.

Here I have only covered one side.  Next I decide what colour cardstock I will use as mats for the photos and journaling.  I also pull out lots of embellishments. I start to put the pages together.

The inside of the front cover

On the next page a tiny pocket with a tag

There is a pocket between these 2 pages that hold 2 large tags

In the tiny pocket I cut a window to see the tag within

This is the inside of the back page

Here you can see that within each paper bag there are large tags to add more photos

The final step is to attach the front and back cover with a coordinating piece of paper

The completed album.  Well except to the front cover title and embellishments.  That will be done over the weekend.

First post for 2011

I can't believe that it's been months since I had something to share!  I have been making cards and sharing ideas with friends, but not a whole heck of a lot!

I discovered Custom Crops through Robyn's site, My Pink Stamper, and they have had some amazing deals lately, and with the Canadian Dollar doing so well, I don't mind ordering from the USA.  So I have ordered a few Cricut cartridges from them while they had their sale on.  My latest one is From My Kitchen.  I have always loved the images, but it has never been on sale before.  Guess how much?  $23.  Yes that is all.  Here in Canada you would be looking at least $70.  So I have been cutting away this weekend in preparation from a project at school.

We have a snack program that supplies kids with 2 food groups each morning, veggies and crackers, salsa and nachos, yogurt and fruit, muffins and milk, etc.  We have a kitchen  that also provides a hot lunch for $3.  The kids are sent home each month with a snack envelope in hopes that parents will donate about $5 per child.  We are a small inner city school of less than 200 kids.  We have been averaging about 10 - 15 kids bringing donations.  The snack program is in jeopardy, so we need to encourage parents to scrape together a few dollars to help out.  So my idea is to have a poster in the front hall, where the parents come in, and show them photos of the foods that are served for snack, and some info on the cost of such snacks and the benefit of a healthy start to the day.

These are the cuts I have made so far, and I will be adding some veggies and words.

If you know of any company or individual who might be able to make a donation to help keep our snack program up and running please leave me a comment on how I can contact them.

Thanks for looking!

Out of Commision.....sort of

I had surgery last month to repair a torn rotator cuff.  The recovery is long ans painful with pain meds and lots of physiotherapy.

I really wanted to get my holiday cards made for the kids and staff at school, but as I am not allowed any resistance on my arm, that means I can't even fold a piece of card stock in half!  So instead I put my Cricut to use and made tags instead.

 I know they will understand why they will not be getting the usual fancy gifts this year.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

I am recovering from surgery that repaired my torn rotator cuff.  I am taking some time off to help with the recovery.  I thought I could catch up on cards, albums and scrapbook pages, but alas, no.  I had more pain than I had anticipated, so although I have managed a few easy card ideas, I will not be able to do all that I wanted.

My friend Kietha shared an idea for a mini album, it was so lovely, and I had an idea immediately, so I had to give it a go.  It was pretty easy to put together, and I didn't use as many embellishments as I usually do.  So here is Thomas through the years at Christmas...

 

I did manage to make tags for the kids and staff at school instead of cards.  These were pretty easy, as I just used my Cricut machine to do all the cutting so I only had to assemble them.

 The cute reindeer with the red nose are for the kids, and the other reindeer are for the staff.

I wanted to add something different to my Holiday Decorating this year, so I put mt Cricut to use and came up with this idea.

I have a JOY one as well, but I am in the process of redoing the embellishments as I really didn't like the way they looked.

Now I am working on my annual newsletter that I send out to family and friends all over the world.  My challenge is to edit it more so that it goes from 6 pages without photos to 4 pages with them!

A few new cards

 

This is the card I made for the children in my class

 This card I made for friends of mine for Canadian Thanksgiving last week.

 I got new stamps from the Stamps of Life from Stephanie Barnard and tried them out

Think Pink

These are a few bookmarks that I made in honor of Breast Cancer awareness.  I saw a few people today who were returning from their Run.

Hallowe'en is creeping up on us.

I made these cards for a fundraiser, and wouldn't you know it none of them sold! 

I took a bunch of my cards to the weekly Couchsurfing meeting at Tranzac on Brunswick to sell to other CSers.  All the money collected would go to the Food Bank.  Other people brought along non perishable food items, Anf taught salsa for a donation and Joanne did Henna tattoos.  I asked for a minimum donation of $2 and ended up with $77.  I was happy with that.  It made my stock of cards lower which means I can make many more!

It's beginning to look a bit like.......

Christmas!

I made a list of things to do over the summer, and I have completed almost every task I set out.  One of the things I didn't get to was to start my Christmas cards.  So this morning I got up and had an idea of what I wanted to do.  Here are a few that I came up with.

I think I like the hot chocolate one the best with the snowman a close second.

The hot chocolate takes a bit of time as I have to use markers, then stamp 3 times and cut out the cup and heart from patterned paper. The stamp is Hot Chocolate from Imaginisce Snag 'em Stamps.

The snowman is all cut out by my Cricut machine using the Winter Woodlands cartridge, but again the time in setting up the paper, and gluing it altogether, not to mention the 2 embossing plates, D'vine swirl and Swiss dots from Cuttlebug.

The snowflake one was to try to come up with nontraditional  colours for winter/Christmas.  It is okay, but not a card that I will repeat. The snowflake is also from the Winter Woodland Cricut cartridge.

I used the same sentiment in all three, from a stamp set I won early this year from Debbie at Country Heart and Home.  I added Stickles to all the cards too, just to bling them up a bit.

New Stamp Set

I get a stamp set once a month from Stephanie Barnard who is in the States.  I love her sets, and what makes her very special to me, is that she only charges $1.50 for postage and packaging.  I have wanted stamps from other companies in the US, but they charge more than the actually set, so I don't usually bother buying anything from south of the border.  Except for the lovely and versatile stamps from The Stamps of Life.

Here are a few cards I put together using her August stamp set.

The September set has just been sent out, and I am looking forward to playing with that one as it is a Hallowe'en set.  Then kids at school will love it, I'm sure.

Baby Boy Mini Album

I've spent the last couple of days working on this baby book.  I had a friend in mind when I planned it out, however I still don't know whether she is having a boy or a girl.  Anyway I love the way this one turned out, and if she had a girl, then I will have to make another one, and this one will be available to purchase, should anyone be interested.  Just drop me a line and let me know.

It has many pockets where there are double sided circular tags waiting for photos.  There are lots of smaller tags to record the events and there are some other bigger tags to either add photos to or to journal on.

I used patterned paper from DCWV called Nursery, it is the from the Baby Boy 6 x 6 paper stack.  I used brown lunch bags, cardstock, white ribbon, ink and stamps, and a few other embellishments.

There is a slide show on the right panel of this blog, or you can click on it to go directly to the pictures.  Check it out.