Mini Album: Barcelona

If you've stopped by sometime over the last week, you will have likely read some references to a recent mini album or perhaps even seen some sneak peaks of said album.  Well, today is the big reveal!

I often feel that it's difficult to do mini books or albums justice with just photos alone so I have a video to share with you below - I hope you enjoy seeing it from beginning to end.

And if you'd like a closer look at the specific pages, here are photos of each page, plus the covers.  For the record, in retrospect I quite like how the front cover turned out and I sort of wished I'd left the back blank (but I did the back first as a test).  Anyway, I know my friend will like it either way.

Mini Album: Barcelona

Title page (above) and itinerary (below).

This first chapter includes all of the tours we went on: hop on/hop off bus tours, cable car up the mountain and the walking tour of the Gothic quarter.

The second chapter details the important sights we saw, including a number of Gaudi's impressive works - Sagrada Familia, Casa Batllo, La Pedrera.  Also the concert house and some (unknown) arch.

The third chapter is one of my favourites - food!  We enjoyed paella, churros, tapas, a lot of seafood, creme Catalana and sangria, just to name a few.

The fourth chapter is all about the other fun things we did; not necessarily the big sights but also worth a visit - flamenco dancing, Catalan historical museum, ICEBARcelona and L'Aquarium Barcelona.

The fifth and final chapter is called 'Real Life' and talks about the unfortunate (but some funny) incidents that befell my friend during the trip, our three country hop back home and a little good-bye tribute to Barcelona.  I also left several large blank pages and put in a page for writing in various snippets for my friend to fill in (she loves to write); as a way to further personalise her album.  The last page also includes an extra large pocket for her to put in memorabilia and any extra photos she decides to print off herself.

Back cover (above).

And that's it!  All in all, I spent about three days putting it all together and I'm looking forward to finally giving it to her this weekend.

 

Hope you enjoyed seeing my first ever mini album.

WIP Wednesday

Hello, everyone!

Well, I'm back from Stockholm - such a lovely city and fantastic capital.  I had great fun doing the tourist gig - went up the Skyview on the Globe Theatre, visited the Vasa Museum and the ABBA Museum (squee!), went through the Royal Palace (old and current) plus the treasury and armoury and a bunch of other fun things.  I'm hoping to print off the photos soon and I already have plans for using my Fancy Pants Down by the Shore papers for the Vasa photos (very famous previously sunken Swedish warship, in case you're not familiar with the name).

And speaking of holiday photos, back in July I watched this video by 2Peas Garden Girl Nancy Damiano and was unexpectedly inspired.  I decided it would make the perfect gift for a friend's birthday, as we had holidayed together in Barcelona over Easter earlier this year.  Anyway, I finally got to work on it this past weekend.  Here's a sneak peak of the inside cover page:

As you might notice, I'm using the Simple Stories Snap! mini album and related products, which I found the local Panduro Hobby has recently started carrying.  I've never done any sort of pocket scrapbooking before and I found the preparation a bit tricky; the photo printing in particular.  Since I don't print at home, it was a bit challenging figuring out which photos I would need to order at special sizes before having planned out the whole album.  In the end, I decided on which ones I wanted at 6x8 prints, made a bunch of collages and paired up 3x4 photos onto 4x6 sheets and printed any I wasn't sure about as both 3x4s and 4x6s so I could have some flexibility and this turned out to be a good idea.

I also discovered (although this should seem obvious) when I sat down with the prints and the album and supplies that it does take a much different approach than 12x12 scrapbooking and it took a little time to get into the groove of that approach.  But I feel like I got it to work pretty well after I changed thinking about the album layout in terms of individual days and broke it up into themes, such as tours, sights, food, real life and so forth - then things started falling into place much more easily.

Here are a few more sneaks of the different chapters in the album and I'll have proper photos and a video later in the week to share with you.

I also whipped up a quick little card tonight for a student in my class who had surgery on her skull last week - she has a skull bone that never properly fused together when she was an infant and the surgery was to correct this.  Poor thing is just 7 years old.  Her mum emailed me today to say that the surgery went well and they brought her home from hospital yesterday and she's doing very well so that's great news to hear.  I'll tuck this little surprise into her homework folder that her sister is picking up tomorrow - I'm sure it will brighten her day.

Thinking of You Teddy

Cheers and check back later in the week for more on the album.

In an Octopus' Garden

I've been working on getting back into a regular scrapping routine since having returned to work recently.  It's not been easy - especially the work; but we won't get into that.  But I do have another new LO to share with you today; this time returning to my Barcelona holiday photos.

In an Octopus' Garden

I am totally in love with these CP retro slide frames.  Not only do they look great and are a great eye-catching feature on a page but I love just how quick and easy they can make a page come together.  I also especially like that these chipboards have a smooth texture, unlike many of the matte/pixelated chipboards used by many companies.

I started by blotting some blue and green spray mists onto my cardstock base, then sprinkled on more blue, green and some white mist and stamped some 'bubble' shapes around the page.  There was a dicey moment when my acrylic block somehow flew out of my hand and landed stamp-side down in the upper right-hand corner but I just rolled with it.

For the title, I reached into my basket of current supplies and just grabbed the first thing that called out to me - Amy Tan's vellum sticker alphas from Yes, Please.  I decided to mix things up and use the orange letters, since there were pops of orange in several of the photos and I liked the idea of using a complimentary colour palette.  I knew I also wanted to use this cute wave border strip so layered it up in the title along with the circular letter stickers and I really like the effect.

I took my time fussing cutting this little octopus from FP's Down by the Shore.  Got to use a new SC cork embellishment and added another pop of orange and some enamel dots.

I've had these adorable fish buttons for a while now, just waiting for the perfect project and when I saw the little fish paper in Down by the Shore, it inspired me to use them here (even though I didn't use that paper on the LO in the end).  A few white enamel dots add some textured air bubbles to each fish.

And I was so thrilled when I discovered that yes, I did have bright orange enamel dots and sprinkled a few in the topmost cluster, along with a piece of flair from a package I hadn't yet broken into.

To finish everything off, I decided to back the page up with some distressed orange watercolour paper, do a little machine sewing around two of the corners and really distress the inner border for some depth and interest.  I also think the distressed edge gives a little impression of an old 'message in a bottle' feeling.

I Can Sleep Anywhere

Went to bed last night planning to spend my morning basking in the glorious sunshine on my balcony, stitching up a new embroidery block.  Instead, I woke up to a completely overcast sky - so disappointing!  However, it was an excellent opportunity to get back to scrapbooking without feeling guilty for not being out in the fine weather.

I got to thinking about the start of this layout over the weekend.  Not that you'd know by looking at the photo, but this is from my recent trip to Barcelona.  It was Good Friday and my girl friend and I were heading back home - unfortunately, there were no direct flights with SAS from Barcelona to Copenhagen so we made a loop around all three Scandinavian countries on the way home!  Barcelona to Oslo, Oslo to Copenhagen and finally Copenhagen to Malmö (that last leg is just a 20 min. train ride, thankfully).  Alice (my friend) marveled at my ability to fall asleep despite noise and everything else so she snapped this photo as documentation.

 I Can Sleep Anywhere

I don't have a lot of dark coloured papers in my stash but I had recently picked up this Panduro Hobby-brand paper.  It was distressed with a bluish wash around the outer edges so I cut it up and turned the edges into the center to help draw focus into the photo.  The rest of the papers are from Yes, Please by Amy Tan for American Crafts and I added in some vellum to add some softness.  I layered up the word definition strips from Yes, Please, which I thought worked really well to reinforce the story in the journaling.  I also topped the page with a strip of Dear Lizzy white crepe paper border and a pale blue velvet ribbon; I really liked the curtain-like effect it added to the layout and again, more softness, texture and a dreamy quality.  Then I sprinkled a bunch of vellum and blue scrap paper punched stars onto the background with some rhinestones for twinkle.  Oh, and just for some silly fun, I added a few glittery 'z's and an asterisk.  :D

For the title, I wanted the 'anywhere' to be large so I used the new Amy Tan vellum alphas in the turquoise, mixing the lighter and dark letters.  A bit of silver glitter Thickers, Amy Tan again, for the word 'sleep' and some small Basic Grey letters for the rest.  I also stitched with my sewing machine a few times underneath 'anywhere' to literally underline the word.

The pinwheel I made from some Yes, Please paper that has triangles/squares in an uncut pinwheel pattern.  The original was a little large so I trimmed it down to 2" square and then cut along the diagonal lines - super simple - popped in a decorative brad and done.  There was a large bit of negative space in the photo just above the pinwheel that was really bugging me so I stamped out a bit of vellum to tuck into the space.

I also toyed around at including some clear and white chevron transparency but it wasn't working the way I wanted it to.  Then I realised that the little triangles I had cut out along the chevron edge made neat little semi-transparent arrow heads so I stitched them down pointing toward the photo.

And now the weather is back to being sunny and lovely - hurray!

L'Aquarium Barcelona

Happy Midsummer!

Here in Sweden we have been celebrating Midsummer today, although the weather's been a bit off and on and the wind has picked up and chilled down so instead of dancing like frogs around a Midsummer pole, I've been scrapbooking instead (don't get me wrong, though, that Små Gröderna is my favourite of the songs - seriously).

So I decided to break out my new Fancy Pants Down by the Shore collection and pulled out the only photo I currently have of my Easter trip to Barcelona with a friend.

L'Aquarium Barcelona

This photo is actually a 6x8 and it fit perfectly in size and theme with this cute, chubby little whale and swirls.  I wanted to add more depth and dimension to the background paper so I hand stitched over some of the swirls and used blue, green and white mist splatters, then added rhinestones and enamel dots.  To balance the page, I hand painted swirls in the upper right corner, too.  Here is a close-up shot:

I cut one of the border strips and decided to scallop punch it but I didn't want to punch too deeply into the paper, causing it to become really narrow so I came up with this solution:

As you can see, the foam adhesive squares on each side of the punch allows for less paper to be trimmed off during the punching process, while still ensuring a straight punching line.  I'm sure this isn't anything especially new but I thought it was a clever, if simple solution to share.  Once I had my border punched, I decided to cut part of it off and layer the two pieces over each other, which is a bit difficult to see in the photo but it gives a nice dimensional touch to the page.  I also used the narrow off-cut strips, which look like waves, along the top of the photo and patterned paper - I really love when I can use up even those tiniest of scraps.

For the embellishment clusters, I've layered each with my new red stars washi tape and some of the SC Sundrifter imperfect circle wood veneers and a red enamel dot and then a selection of tabs, labels and die cuts.  I also tacked on some of the left-over embroidery floss in waves and loops and used some OA circle letter stickers in an uneven row to mimic bubbles for the title.

And I know you'll never believe it but after I finished prettying up the whale and swirls, I had the worst luck with accidents on this layout.  I accidentally dropped the border stripe with removable tape runner dots onto the photo and to my horror, the dots didn't come off!  This photo, which was printed at the aquarium, has a different finish to it compared to most photos and everything seemed to stick to it.  I managed to scrap (carefully) most of the tape dots off and I doubt anyone will ever notice but I was so cross with myself!  Later something else sticky (no idea what) got on the photo again, but not as badly as the first time and I got that off with more success.  Finally, I managed to smudge the date stamp on the tab by the title and it bugged me so badly that I ended up ripping it off and replacing it with another from my stash (which had been inked in dark brown ink so I had to cut down the edges first so it wouldn't clash).  Sometimes I should just stop while I'm ahead.

To wrap up, I'll share with you one last photo of a little something I currently have in the works: