Mini Smash Book

 I've been hearing a ton about smash books lately. Apparently, EK Success has a blank version of a smash book out that you can buy and make your own. I decided to give it a try. I came to realize that I've been making "smash" books for quite some time and just hadn't been calling them that.

I used my Bind it All, a bunch of scraps from my paper bin, and CTMH Roxie Acrylic Stamp Set to make this one.

There are probably way to many photos here, but bear with me, I wanted to show you some samples of where I stamped and the different sizes of papers I used in this book.

I stamped a little too hard on the left page and got a smudge of CTMH Cocoa Ink. Ordinarily, I'd rip out the page because it wasn't perfect. However, because this is a smash book, it isn't ment to be perfect, so my mistake just may turn out to become part of something special.

These are a set of little half pages I put in. If you've ever got those paper stacks of cut up papers from a local scrapbook supply store, you've probably seen these or have some in your stash.

 Most of the pages in this book are 5 1/4" square. But you'll find some are 3" and 4" wide x 5 1/4" too. I used mainly pink and hot pink with a few ivory pages.

I have this habit on not being able to throw away left over scraps of ribbon and paper. Bug wanted to help, so I left her use my stamp sets and stamp out some roses, hearts, and other images that we cut out of white card stock. Then we took a handful of tags, embellishments, scrap ribbons, and stickers and stuck them in a little clear bag to cooridnate with our smash book. Bell added a fuzzy pen and asked if she could have it as a christmas exchange gift for one of her friends in girl scouts.

What a neat idea. Don't you think?

Suzy
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Elegance Wedding Guest Book - Custom Order

Remember the design from a last week's post titled, The Design Process?

Well, I finished it yesterday.

What do you think?

I don't want to show you too much of this wedding guest book album, as you will be seeing it again on one of my June 19, 2011 posts. 

However, I couldn't help myself from showing off the triple binding in trio colors.  I have to say, this was the first time I'd tried to bind in three different colors and am quite impressed. I love the color varation. Don't you?

Clear Stamp Storage Solution

First, I have to say that I have become a big fan of clear stamps. They take up less room then the wood block stamps and you can mix and match them on the clear blocks for ease of designing your pages. However, when you keep acquire more and more of them, they tend to take up space.

Mine, until now have been piling up in a plastic storage bin along with my wooden stamp sets. It becomes quite a mess when trying to dig through and find just the right stamp when I'm designing a book. So the other day I was cleaning my daughters' room and came across one of my oldest daughter's Pokemon card holder sleeves.

As you can see, these baseball card sleeves (affiliate) are the perfect size for holding those small stamps sets. You know the kind that you pick up for just a few bucks at your local craft store.

The second nice thing about them is that baseball card sleeves are prepunch for fitting into a 3-ring binder (affiliate). So, not only was I able to organize my clear stamps, but they're nicely collected into a 3-ring binder that I can flip through and find what I'm looking for in just a few minutes. Total, I think it cost me less than $10 to get over two hundred stamps organized.

Leaf Page Designs

Today I thought I'd show you the designs for the leaf guest book album I recently finished.

I wanted to give this book an elegant touch by placing a thin see through first page. So I thought the embossed papers that you can usually pick up in any craft store, but I wanted mine to be unique to the book itself.

So I decided to experiment with some parchment paper, stamps, and glitter pen(affiliate link).

As you can see, the wetness of the ink caused the parchment paper to slightly wrinkle. It actually added some nice texture to the paper. I went over the stamp with a glitter pen.

Then I decided to try out the stamp and glitter over some of the photo pages. Add a little sparkle around those cherished moments in this album.

They have to lay out over night to dry. Don't want any pages sticking together!

Stop on by tomorrow, and I'll show you the rest of the pages and how this album turned out!