A summer of mini albums

I have scrapbooked some layouts this summer, but mostly I've worked on mini-albums. I have a few posts to share.

First are some mini albums I had started but not finished or continued.

The Halloween album I made this year, for example, I had made a mistake on the most recent photo. The ring holes did not match up, so I fixed it by printing a new photo and re-punching the holes. Here it is:

Next, I hadn't recorded the last three years of our family 5K's in the 5K album.

NOTE: I noticed doing this that I had the wrong dates on the album cover. I removed them and will fix it.

The trick about using SMASH! albums is working around the designs. Here's what I did:

I use a few graphic collections: KI, Echo Park, E.G.--to embellish these pages.

Next I added the last couple years of family photos to my Easter album. I should mention I JUST found an older photo I never included This one's not done.

Finally, I made an album with Write. Click. Scrapbook a few years ago about little things that make me happy. I left the last few pages empty, meaning to fill them up but never did. And so I finished it this summer.

I had run out of the brown foam stickers, so I used a similar-toned, similar styled Thicker.

And those are my completed and updated albums! Thank you for checking them out. I made a few more that I will edit and share later. Like I said, this has been the summer of mini-albums.

Halloween in April: mini album acorss the years

Hello! Spring is definitely here in Minnesota, but I tend to scrap off season, so I decided to tackle some mini albums that were unfinished.

First, I added this past year's photo to the family Halloween album. I thought it would be easier to make this mini with my Bind-it-all so that I could  add new pages every year for as long as my boys dressed up.

I dug into my Halloween Iris container for this mini, mostly using October Afternoon with a little Elle's Studio and Authentique.

This first page was blank. I can see myself journaling a bit on this when they have grown up, but for right  now it's empty.

When I make a mini-album, I tend to use the same pattern for each spread. Here I liked the idea of the boys' photo taking up a full page, then the facing page having a pattered paper background with an embellishment cluster and the year. This next spread is my favorite photo I've ever taken of the boys:

Sometimes being a brother is better than being a superhero.

Here are the rest of the pages:

 

 

(One thing: You'll note that Dominic comes up to Rowan's chin. Since then, he is up to his eyes. Wow. He is growing so fast right now. When he finishes dinner, he asks for a snack.  I'm trying to avoid buying shoes and pants right now because he is growing so fast.)

I left the last page blank. If they get costumes next year, I'll use this as the page with the embellishments and the year. If not, this will be the end.

And the just plain back cover.

That is my mini! I have become enamored with making stuff that highlights the boys across the years. When I finish the next one, I will share it. That one involves baseball.

Boo! Scrapbooking non-Halloween pages with Halloween products

I've mentioned this past week that of all themed products, Halloween is the one I have the most of. My boys are almost outgrowing trick or treating, so I have to seek other uses of the products. Here's a recent page I made that uses those Halloween products:

I hope you can read the journaling. I grew up in an old New English town with some very old cemeteries, and I learned to hold my breath when I passed them (so as not to let the ghosts in, of course). My boys have started doing the same thing. It's not as necessary in Minnesota, where the cemeteries are not as scary-looking, but when we visited New York a few years ago? Whoa. Lots of breath holding. Here's some details:

I tried to choose some vintage-y products, and ones with headstones or about ghosts, since that fit my story. And that flair? Comes from the Globe theater. It seemed to fit.

I sewed down a lot of elements since the stickiness was abating and it was hard to hold down the patterned coffee filters with adhesive alone.

Thank you for checking out my page! Come back tomorrow to see my contribution for November's Write Click Scrapbook.

A little spooky

Of all the themed products I have--vacation, Christmas, camping, Halloween, and school--the one I have the most product is probably Halloween. That's kind of sad since the boys are getting older and may be soon done with trick-or-treating. Not Dominic--he's going as a Hipster this year.

So I am going back and finishing up last year's Halloween layout with some melancholy. Here's the page:

Every year the boys do a series of poses in front of our evergreen. It was a very warm day, so everything was still green, so I used a bunch of green papers on some woodgrain. (Some of these papers may have been Christmas papers even!) I dipped into the Halloween bucket for the pumpkins and embellishments. Here are the details:

I did the journaling differently, adding strips to the white space on the main photo, not the page.

I still have some Halloween projects--this year's Halloween, of course, plus a mini-album compiling all their costumes. I can only hope that they will grow interested in hosting Halloween parties once they hit high school. Otherwise, I will have to go trick or treating as Buffy the Vampire Slayer every year and make a page about it. We don't want that.

October pages for the Scrapbook Circle kit Mix Tape!

Hello! October has arrived, and with it the new kit from Scrapbook Circle called Mix Tape! I love the bright colors and playful accents. Here's the first page I made:

I've wanted to make this page for a while, and the playful accents and colorful labels were the perfect inspiration. I used a lot from the main and the washi stickers from the Playlist add-on, which was one of my favorite embellishments with the kits. Here's the details:

Next, I wanted to try a Halloween page, so I pulled the orange and grays and added a little blue and gold to make this:

Gold glitter may not seem like a Halloween color for the page, but these letters in the Cassette add-on along with the bronze tags and wood circles from the same kit were a spooky but non-thematic addition.

Next was a page I made using the awesome stamp in the main kit, made by Neat & Tangled. I wanted to make a page of the books I most want to read next, because scrolling through hundreds of books on GoodReads in my To Be Read shelf is a little overwhelming. No photos on the page, just punched tabs from the gorgeous Illustrated Faith paper in the main, which I also cannibalized for the stamped bookshelf.

My husband calls this an OCD dream page. I have no idea what he means by that.

Lots of stitching...

Finally, a black and white photo that highlight's one of Dominic's favorite activities:

Again, I used a lot of the add-ons--the glitter letters, the wood circles, the washi stickers, plus some printables and my favorite embellishments, the Evalicious puffy stickers and the Pretty Little Studios Word Strip from the main.

Thank you for visiting! I hope this gives you ideas for scrapping. Please spend some time over at Scrapbook Circle checking out this and other great kits, and continuing to get inspired!

Merry boo! Holiday scrapping

I keep a few Iris containers I got at Michaels for my themed supplies. What themes do I keep separate? Halloween, Christmas, Travel, Camping (we do that enough for a separate bin), and school. I thought I'd share a couple themed pages I did recently.

Since Halloween is coming up, I thought I'd share this page that I made of my boys last year. They always have an epic battle before trick or treating, and I take some pictures, mainly because the trick or treat photos will stink because it's too dark at, say 5 o'clock on Halloween. (Darn Northern hemisphere.) I usually mix and match supplies, but here I used October Afternoon's Witch Hazel, which had just come out. Here's some details:

I love how stitching a frame, either hand or machine, adds a nice texture to a page.

Next, this is one of the first pages I made of Christmas last year. It's actually more winter than Christmas, but I had fun using Fancy Pants Designs' Merry Little Christmas on it. Here's the page;

I printed this Instagram photo 12x12 and scrapped a corner of it, something I love to do. I love how the photo shows my husband and older boy shoveling together, one of many snowy shoveling sessions we would have last winter, which lasted until May (May! Argghh!). Here's the details:

Thank you for checking out my holiday pages! Please share: do you scrap using themed products? How do you organize them? Leave a comment to give everyone new ideas!

Boo 2010

My favorite Halloween line at CHA was probably Fancy Pants October 31st. LOVED it. Truth be told, though, I have a ton of Halloween product, so when I saw it at Archivers, I actually held back and didn't get it.

When I got a published layout back this week*, how delighted was I to also receive this very collection in the box. I kept it out to scrap my remaining Halloween photos from last year. Here's Boo 2010 (the story is amusing--if you click on the image, you should be able to read it.):


Since the box came with lots of embellishments, I used them much more profusely than I normally do--chipboard, rubons, glitter cuts, die cuts, plus some jewels, brads, and stitching from my own stash and supplies. One teeny regret: using all the magic and witches' hats. Guess who's going to be Harry Potter this year?

I raised several elements on dimensional stickers just to add more texture and depth.

The paper corner was smooshed, so to hide it, I folded it over and put a wee bit of blue behind it. The flourishes are a cool rubon, as is the bit of magic.

* The layout is published in the online and print magazine Scrapbook and Cards Today. It's around page 58 in the Reader Gallery. This was my first page in this magazine, so I was truly honored to have the page selected, and I'm thankful my son's teacher gave me permission to submit the layout!