I know it's been a long time since I last posted...but when I looked at the date of the last post, I was shocked that it's been nearly 6 months! I wish I had a good excuse, like I ate the wicked witch's poison apple and have been waiting for Prince Charming to wake me with a kiss...but alas and alak, no such luck. I've just plain run out of hours in a day to do everything I want to do! Does that happen to anyone else? Please, oh, please tell me so!
I know how it started, the lapse in posts. Does that count? So, here I have a blog about scrapbooking, and I post pictures of the projects that I am working on and share techniques. What I haven't posted and was pretty successful in keeping a secret was a scrapbook project I had been working on for 2 years. You see, 2 years ago I went on a "girlfriends' Weekend" trip (5 days, really) with my best friends. We went to Maine in October and had an amazing time. I took almost 400 pictures, and they took nearly the same. When we all flew back to our respective homes all over the country, I asked them for dvds of their pictures. They obliged and sent me theirs and I had the "brilliant idea" of creating a scrapbook album for each of them.
No, not a little chipboard album...not even an 8x8 album. No, I decided to make 12x12 albums for all 5 (five, cinco, cinq, cinque, fem, funf, piec, bost, viisli - yes FIVE!) of us. However, I did concede to make all five of them identical, making 5 page ones at the same time, and so on..
Yea, I know, I haven't gotten to the "excuse" part yet.
So, in July or so, we started planning our semi annual "Girlfriends' Weekend" and settled on October again. 3 months to finish the books...since I wanted to give the girls their books when we all gathered. Did I mention I didn't tell anyone I was making the books, I wanted them to be a surprise? I still had a ton to do! So weekend, after weekend (because I work fulltime outside of the home), I buried myself in my scrapbook room and worked on the books till the wee hours of the morning. As a result, I was blowing off posting on the blog, because I didn't want to share the pictures of the pages before the girls got to be surprised. Well, I gave them all their albums and they were, indeed, surprised and loved them. :-)
That explains July through October...apparently I pricked my finger at the beginning of November and fell under the same spell as Sleeping Beauty, sleeping through the whole month!
Then... my son (15 years old) signed me up to make a couple of blank scrapbook albums (thankfully only 8x8) to auction off at a Silent Auction for his Chorus program next week. So, I've spent every waking, non-working moment of the last week creating a Music-themed Album and a Wildcats Album (school mascot is a Wildcat). I turned these in this afternoon. We'll see how they do at auction. Some people just don't have an appreciation of the work that goes into scrapbooking, so it's an "iffy" venture.
So, I thought, before some other project hits me ('tis the season, you know) I would throw a post up on the ol' blog. And while I spent most of this post telling about these (5) albums of Maine that I made, I think I'll post a different layout and chat about it briefly, and save Maine for a series of devoted posts. Because you know, it's the holidays, and I'll have lots of free time on my hands... ha ha ha, ho ho ho!
Since it is the holidays, and the holidays are about gathering together and creating memories that last a lifetime, I'll share a recent layout I did of a set of pictures my family took about 10 years ago, while we were having some good Old Fashion' Family Fun. I think I even used the family pose in or Xmas cards that year.
The photo op was an old time set up with costumes from the 1920's and the photos were developed in sepia tone. I had been holding on to them until some papers inspired me. Finally inspiration struck and it was a combination of papers and embellishments. It was nothing I went out and bought for this layout, just a bunch of stuff I had acquired over time. Bits of this, and some of that and with a dash of creativity.
I wanted to pay homage to the Twenties, remembering the depression and how folks made due with what they had. My mother's family created beautiful dresses for the little girls of the family, using flour sacks, which often had a print of some sort in the fabric. They made quilts salvaging scraps of old clothes that were too worn to wear. The quilts were amazing works of art and filled with memories. My mother would sit on my bed, picking out quilted petals of the flowers and tell me, "oh, I loved that blouse", or "that was my favorite dress".
So in nodding my head to past generations, I used scraps for the flowers, and combed through my stash, finding odd bits of lace and buttons, ribbons and thread as well as odd assortments of embellishments that came in sets that had been abandoned after I used what I bought the set for.
I made the flowers. I was inspired by some calico flowers at my local scrapbook store, "Scrappy Boutique", but the colors didn't go. So, I decided to make my own out of scraps I already had. I didn't use a die, just cut some (imperfect) descending circles by hand out of 4 different fabrics (for each flower, cutting some with scalloped edges. I used a thread and needle and a button in the center of each flower. I also made one little ribbon rosette, threading the needle along one edge of the ribbon and gathering it tight, until I liked the look of it, then sewed it closed. I centered that one with a pearl embellishment. I did some stitching, adding details to the word "family" (which was created using Thickers) and a little "xo" in the bottom right corner, as well as used the punched-out holes of the border punch used on the bottom-most piece of paper, as stitching guides.
I love the eclectic look of how it all came together. It kind of reminds me of going through the old trunks in my grandmother's basement and finding all the treasures that lay hidden between the folds of dress up clothes (old bridesmaids dresses) and tucked in the corners of the bottom of the trunks.
Lesson Learned: keep everything because you just never know when it will be the "perfect thing" to add to a page!
I hope you have forgiven my latent posting and will continue to follow me. I have so much more in store! Until the next post...go crop yourself!
