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Insta-year

 Hi everyone, I am so excited to share with you the mini album I created using the amazing Gossamer Blue March kit. Unfortunately, the main kit is sold out, but there are still a couple of add-on kits available. If you've never checked out their gorgeous kits, you should do that first. Then come back here and see what I created! :)

When I got the kit, I opened it up and spread it out to plan. Everything I needed for my album was there, I just added some Chic Tags for the months, some of Laina Lamb's awesome stamps, some mist and Cameo diecuts. Using a kit to create a mini is so easy because everything is already coordinated for you, so there's no guess-work. Gossamer Blue even includes the chipboard and some rings, so making my mini was a piece of cake.

I knew I wanted to make an album to show off all of the instagram photos I've taken through the year. I decided to pick my top six pictures from each month, print them off in a 4x6 format, and build the album around that. I went with a 6x8 size album so I could have some room to embellish around each photo.

Here's my album I created.

Now comes the inside...quite a few pics so bear with me. This is the inside cover-notice the cool cut file created by our very own Christine? It's still available to download it here.

I have to say, I pretty much use kits to scrap with, and after using the Gossamer Blue kit, I am anxious to check out the next kit they offer.  It was full of such amazing stuff, and totally my style.  

Thanks so much for checking out my mini-album, and make sure to head over to Gossamer Blue and check out their gorgeous kits.

AC Digitals Mini Madness Week - Day 4

Hi, Francine here to round out our week of minis using the AC Digitals Crate Storyteller kit! And today we're going hybrid! Thanks to AC Digitals for providing us with this lovely kit. I oooh-ed and aaaah-ed as I opened up the folders to look at everything, but the one element that popped out to me was the bicycle. It immediately gave me the idea to do a mini about my son and his beloved pedal-less bike, which he would ride during a winter storm if I let him. Because I didn't want to spend a lot of time working on the computer my approach for the mini was to just print out everything I wanted to use, along with my photos and then put the book together.

I found a blank tag shaped album in my stash, which was perfect since I knew I wanted to use a bunch of tags on my pages. I then chose the patterned papers that went best with my theme and printed those out. I used my lazy method of printing, which is via the Print Wizard in Windows (scroll down to the end of that article for a tutorial). In this case I selected the papers I wanted and chose the 5x7 option in print wizard to get 8 pieces of patterned paper to use as the background for my pages.

You can also check out this post from a couple years back all about printing out digital elements. For this mini I printed out the papers and tags on cardstock, and the bicycle embellishments on matte photo paper.

Here are some completed pages

Notice how I have a big bicycle on the cover, but smaller ones inside? This is why hybrid is so great, you can customise the size of the elements. I did this by using the wallet size option for the cover when printing, and the index sheet option for the smaller ones.

Another great thing about using digital kits? I can continue to add to this album without worrying whether I will be able to find the products I used in a year's time.

The only thing I added to the kit was alphabet stickers by BasicGrey and some washi tape. I tend to keep my minis simple for a couple reasons. First, because that gives me a greater chance of actually completing them, and second because Kieran loves looking at these little books, and the simpler and sturdier they are, the longer they last!

Have you ever done a hybrid mini album? How did you approach it?

AC Digitals Mini Madness Week - Day 3

I am so very excited to be with you today. I am thrilled that American Crafts has launched AC Digitals. They have had limited kits available for quite some time. In fact, my first digital layout used their product and was in the final issue of Simple Scrapbooks. Ah...

Who knew then that now I would have fallen so deeply in love with the cleanliness of digital scrapbooking? And who knew then that American Crafts would launch their own digital shop with full kit releases? And four years ago, who would have thought that I would be here with you today using one of their new digital kits? Mmm. Life is good.

 

Before I get to my mini, I need to set the scene. Last year we did fifty three years' worth of vacations. We drove more than 1200 miles to have our first two family beach vacation. Not only were we there with cousins, but we also went to a theme park, a water park, and spent two days at the beach. Then, a week later we left for the second trip of the summer which included more than 3900 miles, seeing both sides of our families, a sleepover football camp, a twenty year high school reunion, Fourth of July celebrations, a birthday party, and sixteen days of activities. Which all add up to endless folders of piles and piles of photos. And while I love them all, I didn't even know where to begin.

Until this week. When I saw the Storyteller Line. With its subtle travel theme and delightful color scheme, I knew it was just the thing to help me get started.

I have mentioned before that I keep my photos separated by date and then sub-divide the folders by theme. I took out a pen and paper and made a list of all the folders over the dates we were gone. Then I looked for themes that the photos could fit into. These themes will translate into intro pages afterwhich I can group the photos to accompany the theme pages. Finally! A way to analyze and sort all my photos!

 

Here is the title page.

And here are the theme pages.

Now, as I gather photos, I will do so by their broad topic. For instance, I have gathered all the food photos together and put them in a simple format on the same blue background paper as the themed divider. Here is how they look together.

I used the same background paper on all the pages, and the photo pages each have the same two fonts, and one journaling block. Each themed section follows the same format. Not only does this remove the pressure to pretty-fy all the pages, it also let's me put lots of photos in the book. And if I decide there is a longer story needing to be told, I can create a regular scrapbook page for our regular albums.

Speaking of journaling, the tourist attraction pages will have much more than the food pages. Formatting each section individually allows the design to be more flexible and enabling while still letting the album be coherent and connected.

Best of all? I am finally feeling capable of preserving the memories of our trips in a way that makes sense and is fun to read. I am so indebted to this collection of papers and elements that inspired the whole shebang!! Thank you, American Crafts!

 

AC Digitals Mini Madness Week - Day 2

Hey everyone! It's day 2 of our AC Digitals Mini Madness week. Like Celeste, I was very excited to play with the Storyteller kit from Crate Paper. It was one of my picks from CHA a while back and I'm loving it in digital form. The colors are glorious and there's a fabulous variety of elements to work with. I was very inspired by Celeste's mini for this month's gallery and decided to create my own vacation bucket-list mini-album. I've actually had this in my head for quite some time so this was a good opportunity to get it done!

I chose a 5x7 format for my mini - it's a size that is commonly available for photobooks (Shutterfly, Winkflash among others have that size). I used two different basic layouts for my pages: both had one photo, a banner strip, a tag/label for my journaling and then a few embellishments. Apart from the kit, he only additional product I used was a polaroid-style frame from Katie Pertiet. Polaroids have the added advantage of having a nice spot to hold my page titles!

The cover featuring my favorite Liz Lemon quote:

A few pages:

and

Not forgetting:

And would you believe:

and a few more:

Last one:

This is one mini that could go on and on.

Thanks to AC digitals for the kit!

AC Digitals Mini Madness Week

Hey it's Celeste here! I can not tell you how excited I was when Marnie asked for volunteers to play with a kit from AC Digitals! There has been a recent trend in the digital world where paper companies are putting out their products in digital form. I couldn't be happier. Now once again I can watch (with glee) the new products debut at CHA and covet them, but now for some I can actually downoad them and use them on my pages! Just fantastic!

The Storyteller kit by Crate Paper is just gorgeous. You paper folks played with this line awhile ago. The rich colors and the wood grain just drew me right in. When I saw the vintage camera it gave me a fabulous idea for a mini! Last year instead of taking 12 photos on the 12th of the month, I created my own version Second Saturday. As a working girl and a winter mole person (never seeing the light of day), the 12th tends to fall during the week which would mean all daylight hours I'd be stuck at my desk. Second Saturday means I can find better light and capture some of the craziness that makes up our weekends.

I love scrapping from a kit. It's one of the easiest ways to produce a cohesive page or in this case an album. A digital kit is even better I can reuse elements and papers to my heart's content!

I decided my mini would be 6x6. A nice little handheld album that my boys could peruse easily. For the cover, I chose the wood grain paper for my background. I adore wood grain and this lovely honey color just drew me right in. I used the camera almost as a photo and added the banner strips behind it. The yellow block serves to ground my camera and who doesn't love a pop of yellow? The only items I added to the kit were an alpha, some word art, paint splatter and a few buttons.

My cover really set the tone for the design of my album pages. Here you can see I repeated the banner strips and button from the cover onto the top of my page. I also used the same set of word art for the months. I used the same background paper throughout to make the album more cohesive.

I tend to make mini albums with a formula. It makes them go quickly and takes the guess work out of the design. So each of my subsequent pages is similar. I just chose different papers and buttons to complete the look.

As you can see, I also kept the banners to the outside edge of the page.

This little mini came together quickly using just one fantastic kit. It helped limit my choices and scrap faster. Now I just have to upload it for printing and put it in a little book!

Big thanks to AC Digitals for letting us play with this kit!

This week is brought to you by AC Digitals

Each of our designers this week will be using the Crate Paper Storyteller kit from AC Digitals.

give.away.day. featuring LITTLE BLACK DRESS KIT CLUB

Not only is March filled with four leaf clovers (and minialbums) but there are also four exciting pots of give.away.day. gold (to help you make your own minialbums!). And today is our first rainbow day! Please put your hands together for our first MiniMadness

Not only has Little Black Dress kits provided each of our four designers with a kit so that they could create their minialbums, but they are also sponsoring today's giveaway. One lucky reader will be fortunate enough to take home the March kit, A Chance for Luck.

If you would like a chance to take home this kit, please leave us a comment telling us of a time where luck was on your side. If you would like a second chance to enter, please stop on over to the Little Black Dress Kit Club facebook page, like them, and leave them a little thank you for their generosity, then come back and tell us you have done so.

Comments for the giveaway will remain open through Sunday evening. One lucky number will be selected at random and posted Monday morning. Please remember to check back as it is your responsibility to claim your lucky number via email by midnight Tuesday. We can't wait to read your comments. Don't forget to make a page about your lucky self and situation!

Little Black Dress Mini Album Day #4

Hello, it's Jennifer Larson, sharing the mini I made with the Little Black Dress kit!

When I saw that I would be scrapping with this kit, filled with vintage ephemera and charmingly eclectic patterns, I immediately printed out some of my childhood photos. I am a child of the 70s, a decade that epitomizes funky, charming, and eclectic, all at once. If you doubt me, check out my pants in some of the photos.

I thought about printing a school photo from each year and journaling about the year, but I discovered I didn't really recognize the year in each photo. Instead, I printed random photos that have memories tied to them from throughout my life.

I used as a base October Afternoon's Woodland Park mini album, which has the word "My Life" cut into the cover, a perfect title for this project. I cut the patterned paper away from only one side, leaving the grid paper underneath to show. Here's the cover:

I was excited to see buttons in the kit. If you've ever scrapped with me, you know that I believe any page can be made better if you put a button on it. And so this mini. I used almost every button that came with the kit, and the beauty of buttons? When you run out, they match the buttons in your stash.

I used the buttons as centers of flowers I die cut with my Big Shot. Just for texture, I curled up the edges of the flowers too. The buttons made the mini rather chunky, but I'm OK with that. It makes the album feel substantial, and all people should have that feeling about their lives!

Continuing my love affair with circles, I cut the photo mats for each photo in circles.

I added little My Mind's Eye word stickers and Crate Paper tape stickers to the photos to mix up the colors a bit. Again, these were the seventies and early eighties. The patterns of my times...

Here's the rest of the pages:

Thank you for sharing this mini I made! And thank you, Little Black Dress for giving me the inspiration to make it!

 

Little Black Dress Mini Album Day #3

One of the things I struggle with when I'm putting away scrapbooking supplies is double-sided patterned paper. I mean—I love it. (This is coming from me, who started scrapbooking in the mid 90's when the patterned paper choices were gingham, polka dots, and stripes!) I love the flexibility. But it's hard to decide which drawer to put it in. Do I love the green pattern best, or the yellow one?

Sometimes I have the same problem using double-sided patterned paper, especially when I love and adore and really, really like both sides. And yes: I can always buy two. Or four. Who am I kidding—I usually do buy in multiples. But I still dislike hiding away that other gorgeous side.

So for awhile now, I've been thinking about the possibilities of double-sided patterned paper. I wanted to make something that exists mostly to show off both gorgeous sides—a project that was as much about the paper as it was about scrapbooking.

Luckily, the kit that Little Black Dress sent to me included some of my most favorite recent papers. I decided to make a mini book for documenting the next forty books I read.

 

A spot to jot down some notes while I'm in the middle of the book, to record the dates I started and finished it, and to keep track of whether I'd blogged about it yet.

 

But it's not just that! It's also a gathering of patterned papers. Between each page of book notations is a sheet of patterned paper. I guess I could think of it as a divider, but really it's there for no other reason than it's gorgeous.

 

Well, some of the patterned paper dividers also hold some of my favorite quotes, embellished with the gold alpha stickers that also came in the kit. But some of them are just the papers, separating the notes.

I made the album by cutting every piece of paper included in the kit into a 4.5" x 6.5" rectangle. My very favorite papers I used twice. I supplemented with some scraps of other recent favorites until I had a total of twenty dividers. And then I had my copy store bind it for me.

And now I have a little book that combines two of my favorite things!

The fun thing about making this with a kit is that the patterned papers all had the same "feel," even though they're really fairly different in scope. This made it sooo easy to pull everything together. (It made it harder not to swoon over the gorgeousness. But still.) Thanks, Little Black Dress, for a great kit to work with!

Little Black Dress Mini Album Day #2

Valerie here today to share another mini album made with a fabulous Little Black Dress Kit. I decided on an accordion style album, and it really is pretty mini. It's 4 inches square.

The great thing about using kits to create albums and layouts is you open the box the mail man/lady delivered right to your door and everything is right there for you. You don't have to spend an hour digging through your stash to find and coordinate paper and embellishments. 

To create this album, I pulled out my most favorite items from the kit. There's always a fun variety of ribbon and trim in each and every Little Black Dress kit. I used the black and white chevron looking trim to "tie" my album closed. The front was embellished with polka dotted tulle and buttons. Don't you just love all that texture?!

I made this album for my son and included the most recent pictures I have of us. I took the black and white striped paper by Crate Paper and splattered some mist. The diagonal stripe creates such a fun guideline for my journaling, and I think the My Mind's Eye phrase stickers are a perfect fit.

I hope you're inspired to make your own.

Thank you Little Black Dress!!