It's time to start the wedding album!

Yes, I've made two shower albums, and although I have decided to make another mini-album documenting activities from the day before the wedding, I don't have the budget for acquiring the perfect album yet.  So, I am taking the plunge and starting on the wedding album itself.  There are somewhere around 800 photos to sort through and organize.  The mind boggles.  I have decided not to try to plan the whole thing out ahead of time, as my head might explode.  Instead, I'll take one little bit at a time.  So, I started with a simple page showcasing the invitation:

This page is sporting some seriously old Rusty Pickle paper.  Ah, what a fun paper company that was!

One more page has been finished.  I used a ton of Websters Pages for this one, which is about the way I felt waking up the morning of my wedding:

I had some issues with the title, I started by adding a light layer of gesso to the paper, thinking that would make the letters stand out.  When that wasn't enough, I went back and outlined the letters with black ink.  Someone small and furry distracted me mid-trace, so I didn't do a perfect job.

I cut the wedding dress, the scalloped paper, and the heart out of spare bits of paper, and then added a few pearls to the dress to give it a little more bling.

It was a fun page to make!

It seems that any time I'm working on an album, I end up with way more photos than I actually use in the album.  Some people might be able to choose what they want to scrap ahead of time and order only those pictures, but I just don't seem to be able to work that way.  So what do I do with the leftover photos?  They are perfectly good images, and it seems crazy to throw them away.  But shoving them all together into a large bucket (which is what I had been doing) gets a little nutso too.  You can't see any of the pictures, and should I for some reason want one of them, it takes forever to dig through everything.  The other day, I found these 200 image albums at AC Moore for only $1 apiece.  I grabbed a few, and I think I'll end up going back for a few more.  I'm going to stick labels on the sides so I know what's in each one, and hopefully this will make for a more organized photo collection.  And look, I found albums with birdcages on the front!

On the stitching front, I have been working a bit on 'Black'd Skie', but I don' t have a photo tonight.  I'll have to share later this week.  I've also been working on a couple of Halloween ornaments.  Photos will go up when I finish them.  I have finished gather goodies for my Halloween exchange, and I plan on making a trip to the post office later in the week.

I have started going through my stash looking for supplies to make some of the cute ornaments I've selected from this year's JCS ornament issue.  This turned out to be a bit more frustrating than I'd expected it to be.  For starters, I found a rather large handful of stitched, but not finished, ornaments.  I thought I'd done away with that problem last year, but sadly, I have not!  I also got a little frustrated by these two skeins of thread:

I won't name the company, but THESE TWO SKEINS OF THREAD ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE SAME COLOR!!!  And dude, they aren't even close.  I purchased them a couple of years apart, but still, that is a crazy color difference.  I guess I'll just put them both with the rest of the fibers for the project and decide which one I like best.

Okay, that's enough complaining for one night.  I guess I'm blessed that my biggest worry this evening is nonmatching dye lots.  So I leave you with miss Spike, who is celebrating the cooler weather by snuggling on our bed now that there is a nice cozy blanket thrown across it.

Til next time, have a crafty moment or two!

Aloha album, part two

Well, it has certainly been a rather interesting day around here.  I was starting to straighten up a bit as we will be having a guest staying over this weekend.  I was cleaning out the boot tray, which sits in our breakfast nook, when I noticed that the cover on one of the outlets looked like it was coming off.   Upon closer inspection, I discovered that this rather soft plastic covering was warping away from the wall, the plugs themselves felt a bit warm, and there was moisture running down the wall from under the cover.  Yikes!  THe outlet is directly under a window, so I can only assume that there is some sort of leak on the interior of that wall (wish I'd found this a week ago before our new home warranty ran out).  I think the problem has been going on for a while because I noticed what looked like a drip mark beneath the outlet 3 weeks ago, but I thought I'd splashed something out of the boot tray and just cleaned it up.  Anyway, the electricity to the outlet has been turned off (after many tries to find the fuse that belongs to said outlet), and I'm now waiting for hubby to pull the thing apart and decide what comes next.

Enough with the homeowner drama, though.  It's time for the rest of my shower album.

 This was another two sided insert tucked into a pocket.

 In this next pocket page, I tucked some papers that we used for playing games at the shower behind the photo insert.  As you can see, the photo is labeled 'prizes.'  Since the prize is a rather silly one, I will leave it discreetly hidden inside the little pocket!

 This was one of several funny stories about some of the wedding gifts we received.  I had registered for this pretty glass pitcher at Belks.  For whatever reason, the fact that someone had purchased said pitcher was never reflected in my registry, no matter how many different times it was scanned in.  So I received two pitchers at this shower.  And a week later, I received two more.  There's no telling how many pitchers we would have ended up with if I hadn't finally just deleted it from my registry completely!  But I love them, and ended up keeping two of the four.  They've been used a couple of times already, and are sure to be filled with much sweet tea in the future.

 One cool thing that some of the guests did was write down a short story about a favorite memory of me on the back of a card enclosed in their invites.  I tucked those cards inside the last pocket in the album.

The inside back cover was used to display one last photo:

And there you have it.  Wonderful memories of a wonderful party in a wonderful little album.  

I leave you with a snapshot of my most foolish cat, loving on my broken toe, which was (thankfully) safely protected by this ugly black boot.

Til next time, stay safe and be crafty!

Aloha mini album

Good evening everyone, and welcome to my new followers.  Wow!  I am getting pretty close to 100.  I'm going to have to think of a nice giveaway if I ever do reach triple digits.  Hmmm.

In the stitching department, I have no photos to share.  But I have been busy.  I stitched something for a Halloween exchange I'm participating in, now I just need to do the finishing.  I have also selected and ordered frames for 4 pieces.  This morning I pinned to pieces to their boards, and adjusted the pinning on one side of a third piece that my dad had so sweetly started for me.  One more piece to pin (and it's a huge one) and then I'll head back over to Mom and Dad's sometime in the next couple of weeks so that Dad can finish the framing.  I've decided to enter one piece in this year's state fair.  That is, I'm going to enter if I successfully managed to properly complete my entry form.  I'm pretty sure I did, but sorting through all those online instructions and picking categories can be a bit daunting.  I have pulled out a piece I started last September to work on for the rest of the week, so I'll post photos of it next week, most likely.

In the scrapping department, I finished a mini album documenting the Aloha themed bridal shower that was thrown for me back in March.  I'm super excited about this little album.  It might not be anything fancy, but it was so much fun to put together.  I don't do a lot of mini albums, so this was a wonderful break from my usual 12x12 layouts.

I got the album itself from Farmhouse Paper Company, which is a new company.  It's the cutest little thing, with little pockets and inserts as well as several chipboard pages.  I love the variety of the inside pages.  And all of the paper is from Graphic 45's Tropical Travelogue line.  The front cover was made using parts of two of the invitations.  I found out long after I had glued them down that my sister somehow ended up with no invitations, while I had two (which is kind of funny since she never mailed one to me), but it's too late to give her one now!

I used every bit of available space to include images from the party (except the backside of the back cover), because there were so many I wanted to keep.

Hmm, pretend the image above has been rotated 90 degrees.  I made several of my embellishments stand up off the page with foam tape or pop dots.  And of course, there's lots of inking on every page!

Using the 6 tabbed pages, I divided the album into 6 sections: Food, Friends, Family, Games, Gifts, an Memories.  The front tab was covered with blue crackle paint, while the back side of the tabs were either inked or covered in white crackle paint.  I used a tiny crystal swirl on every tab except for 'Memories,' which was too long for the crystals to fit.

The food and drinks were delicious.  However, my hostesses definitely had a mischeivous side.  They snuck Spam sandwiches onto my plate (Spam is very popular in Hawaii, our honeymoon destination and the inspiration for the shower theme).  And they also spiked my punch with rum.  I am very fond of rum, but I thought it was a little wicked of them as I was rather sick with a cold or some such at the time of the shower and already feeling floaty enough as it was.

I know most of you are just skimming through these images and aren't really interested in the method behind my madness, but if you happen to make an album and add some images that only fit sideways, make sure that you turn them all the same direction so that the viewer only has to tilt the album one direction in order to look at the sideways photos.  Here, all of my vertical photos are laid out so that their bottoms are on the left hand side of the page.

See what I mean about the little pockets and inserts?  My photos showing the door prizes and room decorations can be tucked neatly inside of the little map image (this came in very handy later on in the album as I will explain later).

You can't tell we're related, can you?  : )

One of my friends gave me a sheet of Jolee's stickers as part of my gift.  I used most of the sheet in this album, and my favorite sticker was the lei.  I cut a portion of it off an added it around my neck.  Then I used the three leftover flowers to add a lei to Melissa's neck as well so that all three of us would be sporting flowers.

I really am so very fortunate to have such wonderful friends from so many areas of my life.  

Okay, that's half the album, and a ton of photos!  I'll post the second half of the album by the end of the week.  I am thinking that the next thing I will tackle scrapwise are the photos from our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.  I am seriously tempted to make another mini album for those photos.  Of course, I'd want to find another Farmhouse album.  Wonder how hard that will be.  Til next time, I hope everyone has a little time to be creative!

My Bachelorette party

If you're looking for stitchy photos, you can skip this post.  It's all about scrapbooking today.  For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on a small, 8x8 album documenting my bachelorette party last March.  The party was a total blast, and the album was fun too make too.  I made the album using the "Fashionista" and "Let's Celebrate" lines from Websters Pages.  I was able to use loads of bright, fun papers for this album, more so than I usually seem too, and I really enjoyed the change of pace.  So without further blather, here are a few of the layouts:

We all posed for one photo at the end of the adventure:

 We started with a limo ride from Lumberton to Fayetteville.  It took a ridiculous amount of time to get there, but we didn't care.

We were quite jammed into the limo.  We sang along to 80's music, played at full blast.

 Fortunately, we had some delicious drinks to enjoy during the long ride.

 At the spa, there was delicious food, massages , mani/pedis, and gifts.

 You can't tell from our expressions how much fun we were all having, can you?

Not all of the layouts are posted here so as not to overwhelm you, but I wanted to share a taste of our fun, silly afternoon.  It was just what I needed to relax from the stress of wrapping up my caseload, moving, and planning a wedding in such a whirlwind.  I love these women.  They took such wonderful care of me during my 10 1/2 years in Lumberton.

That's all for today.  Scrapwise, I'm moving on to another mini album for my Hawaiian themed shower.  Stitchwise, I've been doing a good bit of model stitching.  I think everything will be released by the middle of next week so I can hopefully share some photos by the end of the month.  Til then, I hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful weekend!

Everything but the Kitchen Sink (August WIPocalypse #!)

I've got a little of everything to share in this post, but I'll start with my WIPocalypse update.  What's the WIPocalypse you ask?  Read about it here. 

This month I have not one, but TWO finishes to share.  Hooray!  First up, Sous le Soleil de la Lune is done. As a reminder, here is where I was at the start of 2012:

And here she is all stitched up:

I stitched this piece with the called for silks on 40 count "Linen" linen from Weeks Dye Works.  I love the little cherubs at the top and the middle vase!

My second finish was not on my original WIPocalypse list.  I pulled it out in June when Mom and I were sorting through my stuff to do some framing.  I started Janet Gibson shortly after she was released (2006, maybe?  I'm not sure).  I finished her up this week:

I love everything about this sampler, from the house, to the color pallette.  My two favorite bits are the swan:

and Adam and Eve.  It was Adam and Eve that took me so long to finish.  Look at the hair in this last photo. It's a bit of braided cording and it totally intimidated me!  I finally took the plunge last week, and it only took about an hour to finish the whole thing off.  I can't wait to get this one framed and on the wall.

Speaking of framing, Sarah Hatton McPhail is all framed up:

That's it for the stitchy updates.  I'm working on a model for mom for the next week or two, and then I'll probably turn back to the giraffe sampler.  

I also finished one scrapbook project this week.  This is a wall hanging that came from a project kit I bought a couple of years ago.  Eventually, I will put this up in our bonus room/my craft room.

And finally, I leave you with three more images.  Lucky being his usual adorable self:

 Spike chilling in the window (while Lucky supervises):

And a surprise visitor in our backyard near sunset last week.  I was trying to feed the squirrels in order to keep them away from my garden and instead attracted this:

And by the way, my plan to distract the animals failed miserably.  They have taken all the cantaloupes.  : (  There's another batch of tomatoes growing away right now, but I don't think it's very likely that we'll be the ones eating them.  Sigh.  I don't know how to stop them.

That's all for now.  Hope everyone is enjoying the Olympics and has a great week!