summer mini book

finally!  i finished my summer mini book at the end of october and i completely love it.

i picked up one of elise blaha's summer kits and also took her mini book workshop in september. i think the combination of the two really helped me to focus and not just throw anything and everything into this book.  sure, there are a TON of photos, but what else would you expect from me?   what i'm happiest with, is the cohesion that the kit and my edited choices make.
 

i used elise's tip of adding grosgrain ribbon to mark each month's title page.  i found this super cute & summer-y ribbon at kate's paperie.  i love this little detail.  while the book is mainly photos, i did add in some paper here and there and also have a few transparency pages thrown in to the mix to hold tickets to movies and events.  add in some labels and graph paper for journaling, a map, some postcards and lots of washi tape, and you have a super fun mini book.

here are a few of my favorite pages:

mini books are such a fun and easy way to keep track of memories.  they can be as fancy or as simple as you want to make them.  i can hardly wait to get started on my autumn book!

#9 - make more handmade gifts

i love picking out a good gift, but i wanted to try and make a few this year, too. i was totally in love with this project on design*sponge and decided to give it a go.

first, i used a paper doily as a stencil for the lacy part. filled it in with fabric paint.



then i made a letter stencil out of freezer paper. i ironed it on to the bag and then used fabric paint to fill in the letter.



i should have let it dry a little longer. maybe the edges of the letter would have been cleaner that way. but i still think it turned out pretty well. my friend loved it!



just wish i would have remembered to take a shot of her carrying it. =)

a year of dates

i came across this wonderful idea for a year's worth of dates and just knew it would be a great gift for my husband's birthday earlier this month.



each month has a different activity for us to go do together. some are fun or silly, some are more romantic, but hopefully each one will give us something to look forward to doing together each month. i did splurge on tickets to a comedy show that my husband wants to see, but for the most part, each of the activities are inexpensive things like renting bikes to ride in central park or going to listen to the free concert.

he really seemed to like it and i'm really looking forward to re-opening the envelopes each month to see what we have in store!



(a little dorky? yes. did it make my husband smile? you betcha.)

pdx/sea mini book

elizabeth turned me on to mini books and elise blaha's wonderful blog. so, when i saw that elise & her friend were hosting a week long craft challenge, i was all in and asked elizabeth to join me.

monday's word prompt was "wander." that got me thinking how i'd like to make a mini book of our portland/seattle trip last august. (turned out that it took me four evenings to make this book, so i didn't exactly get around to the other prompt words. oh, well!) i started a mini book for my 33 things list, but it's only partially done, since i have to actually complete all the items before they can go in the book. so, it was really nice to be able to start and finish this project in such a short time.



i made the cover out of a pressboard classification folder and cut up some file "out" guides to mark the start of each day of the trip with the date and a little list of things that we did. i also raided my old stash of scrapbook papers & stickers and used a few of them throughout the book, but not too much.



there are a few maps, postcards, tickets and other bits thrown in to the mix, but a lot of the pages are just photos or notes. i also printed out menus from some of the restaurants we went to.









one awesome thing that i discovered while trying to narrow down my photos, is that picasa has a really great collage feature. i set the collage size to 4"x6" and threw a few photos in to it. then, when i had the images printed, i had these great little mini collage pages. no cutting or pasting required! (although i did cut up a few of them.)

i think this one of images from pike place market turned out really nicely.



overall, this project was tons of fun! i'm already thinking up ideas for my next books.