Weekend vacations are so thrilling because, at least for me, I want to get my weekend’s worth! I like them busy and packed with goodness. That is how this trip was. I hadn’t ever been a tourist in Chicago – it was new to me. We saw Navy Pier, the Hancock Observatory, and the Shedd Aquarium (even a dolphin show!). We also saw a lot of historic buildings and bro told all.
This layout used the rope trick again for the brochures, some coins from tourist machines, tickets, hotel key (apparently that’s pretty standard for me…), my CTA transit card, some things cut from brochures, and the Chicago sign I bought at a scrapping store. You can see I’ve started to cram things onto my pages. This isn’t everyone’s taste, but I have been drawn to scrapbooks since seeing really old ones where the eye never stops traveling. Loaded with information, photos, and memories.

I used loud colors with a hint of gaudiness because, well, to be frank, that is how I feel about Vegas. We flew on Hooters Air, which gave us these little box lunches that had “Fun” and “Fly” cut out on them so I utilized them on my page. A Margaritaville napkin. Hotel room key and business card. Boarding passes. Maps, brochures, tickets. I bought some gambling stickers and whatnot to spruce it up.

Then Boy and I spent a lot of time outside of the city. We saw the Hoover Dam, the Valley of Fire, and drove around sight-seeing. On this page I got creative with using string through grommets so that the map could be pulled out later. I also got a little more creative with the matting. And yes, those are palm tree swizzle sticks. Think outside the box when you scrap, it is amazing what will work!

You  may have already seen some photos from this trip which I recently posted. In 2004, we went with our friend Jesse to San Juan, Puerto Rico over Halloween weekend. School must have gotten pretty busy because I still have a packet of things to scrap for this trip.

(I have these 9×18 inch envelopes which I take on my travels, collecting all kinds of things to scrap with. It is an awesome idea because then when I get home, I label the envelope(s) and set it aside until I can get to it. It keeps all my things organized and easily stashed away. Try it for yourself, it will amaze you, the simplicity of the idea!)

This spread tells the story of our arrival and plans to see Old San Juan and Camuy Caverns. It also showcases our Bicardi trip. I used a map, a postcard, the timeshare business card and room key, our boarding passes for the airline, and lots of things cut from brochures to spice it up. I also got crazy with cutting our photos. I bought one die-cut (“Our Vacation”) and used some puffy tape squares to make some things pop off the page (unfortunately, this is kinda lost in the photo).

This is one of the earliest page layouts I did. I started scrapping with wedding pages, but it turns out that marriages do not last in all cases so I won’t showcase any of those. But that’s ok, because since I started with them, most look really really awful, lol. They are still among my favorite type of pages to make though, but I digress.

In 2003, Mazda ran a program near here called Mazda Rev It Up. I tagged along with Boy and some friends. The main premise is that you not only get to test drive their cars, but you get to *race* their Mazda6. I was too chicken to do that though I did test drive a convertible for fun. The guys were awesome at racing –  Boy scored 4th place at the location when all was said and done and nationally scored #128 in his class group. It was a really great time and if you hear of it in your area, do it! Lots of fun:)

In this layout, I used Boy’s Silver Medal certificate and pin, his credential badge, and our wrist tags as mementos. I used the Mazda6 brochure and Mazda Rev It Up booklet for information. I cut the cars out of the brochure, too, for more interest. The photos I included were the boys congratulating themselves on their wins, the scoreboard, boy racing in the yellow #8 car, me testing out the RSX (cut to “drive off the page”), and then also a computer printout with Boy’s scores.

To continue my last posting…

Project D: Shell Frame

My best friend in highschool had invited me to go with her family to Costa Rica. My worldly tour would start there. I collected shells and sand, which is illegal probably to bring back to the States, but i was a kid at the time. At one of my sit-around-and-do-nothing-but-get-paid jobs, I created this frame out of cardboard. It was a fun experiement to make the shape fold how I needed it to and glue it all together. I gave it to my boyfriend as a gift with a photo of my trip in it.

Project E: Flannel Bear

When I first met my boyfriend, he had leant me his very used flannel. It was my first keepsake from him so I treasured it always. I don’t know where the idea came from, but I decided to buy a pattern and turn it into a bear. The heart was an after effect – the flannel was so used that it had begun to tear in parts, so the heart was a fix. Turned out cute though. I used the tag as his back pocket, and stuffed a little hankie in there, and used the buttons as his eyes.

Had I known the material was *that* fragile, i would have lined it with something stronger, but you live and learn in the World of Craft. I later made another one of these, using green, cream, and yellow corduroy material, which I cut into squares and sewed together before cutting and sewing as the pattern said. I gave it as a gift to my friend at work for her first baby and never thought to take any photos of it. But it was cute too – I used wooden buttons for its eyes and the simplicity of it was darling.

Project F: Collage

I think this one was for my highschool senior english class – for an introduction so we could all get to know each other. I love love love collages. They are one of my favorite things. I could drag on the explanations for all the stuff on there but the highlights are: My dog Marbles, a tarantula photo (I had two growing up), my then-desire for a computer science degree, garbage pail kid card, and my old dungeon and dragons character sheet.

Still more to come!

So I’ll be getting a pseudo-niece, as I like to call her (I’m not married into the family quite yet). I know I want to make her a killer blanket, and I’ve been tossing around the ideas of themes and possibilities and I think it will be a floor blanket, with detachable toys. She doesn’t have to use it but I think ill have a lot of fun making it, and as a family tradition of sorts, new babies always get blankets, so I thought I would continue that.

That’s not what this post is about though.

This post is about a small simple project I made for the shower. Since I’m helping with the necessities of that, I didn’t really want to buy anything but I did want to get something cool. This seemed like a good compromise.

It’s a Bo Bunny My Word Chipboard Album, reading “BABY”. I used mostly paper from Nana’s Nursery Paper Stack Baby Girl, by Die Cuts With A View.

The goal was to create a photo album for the Mum-to-be. So I made some places to attach photos, with the measurements written in so she would be able to cut to size. There are two things I did not adhere to the book because they will sit on top of the photos she places in it, so they are still in a protective coating (the white rick-rack looking square, and the “baby girl” circle).

I painted the edge of the chipboard white, so that it wouldn’t look as cheap. I cut the paper by laying the chipboard on it and using an exacto knife to cut around it. Then I added layers to it of other paper to punch the background up a bit. After all the paper was cut, I ran the pieces through the Xyron machines with the permanent adhesive paper and carefully lined them up and stuck them together. I used my Cricut Expression, with a borrowed cartridge of All Mixed Up to cut out some words. (Having a network of fellow Cricut owners saves tons of cash!!) I have a corner rounder I used on the photo mats, as well as some simple grommets. I had some old seam binding that I used in lieu of lace in the letter B. I had some tiny pink rope I used to attach all the letters together, and make a tie to keep the book closed. There is a little wooden tag on the end to loop through, rather than tying the rope.

Had I thought of doing this site prior to the project, I would have had photos of the stages in between. I’ll try to do that on future projects.

All in all, I liked this project a lot. The only thing I would do differently with this one is to run the chipboard itself through the Xyron machine, and then stick the paper to it, and then cut it out. It was a little difficult to match up the already cut letters to the chipboard once they were covered in adhesive. Live and learn :/