Monthly Archives: September 2017

Halloween Blog Hop

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Welcome to another Blog Hops with Heart Blog Hop! If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time then you know that Halloween is my favorite holiday to scrapbook, so I am happy to be the starting point of our Halloween Blog Hop! You can make your way around the entire hop by clicking the link at the bottom of the post. My dear friend, Amie Kiger, has a complete list of hoppers in case you get lost along the way! So let’s go ahead and jump straight into my project…

I LOVE scrapbooking Halloween! I think it has something to do with the playfulness of the products, and it’s almost like seeing new product for the first time because it all has been tucked away for almost an entire year. I do have to mix old with new each season and I recently purchased the Pretty Little Studio Goosebumps Collection designed by Ashley Horton and knew that is where I wanted to start. The largest paper size that Pretty Little Studio offers is 8×8 so I needed to go digging through my stash to find a 12×12 patterned paper for my base. I stumbled across a gray and white polka print from the retired CTMH Jeepers Creepers Collection and knew it would be perfect. It had just the right amount of pattern without being too distracting or overbearing.

I knew that I wanted to add a bit of color to the background so I first applied a layer of Clear Gesso to the background. Gesso will prep the patterned paper for the wet media and help prevent any tearing. I grabbed a Mango Gelato from my stash, mixed the gelato with water and used the packaging technique to apply the color to the background. I wanted the color to be fairly rich on the background and I just wasn’t getting the coverage I wanted with the gelato. So I grabbed an orange acrylic paint from the Illustrated Faith Acrylic Paint Set and mixed it with a deeper orange gelato from my stash. I watered down that mixture and applied it to the layout using the packaging technique.

After the mixed media was dry I moved on to my title. I used the Open Letter Alpha Cut File from The Cut Shoppe to create the title, Halloween Parade. I used a variety of patterned papers from the 8×8 Goosebumps Patterned Paper Pack, including part of the packaging, to back the letters of the cut file. I grabbed my two photos, added a layer of tissue paper, and tucked the photos behind the word Parade. The photos I used for my layout are from a Halloween Parade that my son’s primary school put on each year for the parents. Sadly this fun event ended when he graduated from the primary school and moved into the elementary school. The photos are a little blurry because he was in motion, but I wanted to document the memories nevertheless.

I then moved onto embellishing….

I created a cluster above the word Halloween using a web die cut from the Goosebumps Spooktastic Die Cut Pack, a 3 dimension bat from my stash, and a cloud from the Bella Blvd Spooktacular Clips. I also added the word “Spooky”  to the title using die cuts from the Crate Paper After Dark Collection. I also wanted to add a little embellishing under the photos to create visual triangle of embellishment clusters. Under the left photo I added a couple chipboard candy pieces from a Little Yellow Bicycle Booville Collection, that has been in my stash for years, and also a sticker from the Goosebumps Spooktastic Sticker Sheet. For the photo on the right, I added an additional chipboard candy piece from the same Little Yellow Bicycle Collection and another clip from the Bella Blvd Spooktacular Clips.

For final touches I added my journaling with my We R Memory Keepers Typecast Typewriter. I typed the journaling onto a scrap piece of white cardstock, trimmed the journaling into strips and adhered the journaling to my layout using my Xyron Sticker Maker. I also added black machine stitching to the top and bottom of the layout, along with a few splatters of Black Heidi Swapp Color Shine and a few enamel stars from a retired CTMH collection.

Now you can take a look my YouTube Process Video!

Next up on the Halloween Hop is Jayma Malme! Thanks so much for spending part of your day with us!

This post contains affiliate links, meaning I will receive a commission (at no cost to you) from some of the items purchased these links.

4×4 Chicago Mini

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I think this is my final summer project that I want to share before moving onto my Fall and Halloween themed layouts, and this project is a little different from my norm. 12×12 scrapbook layouts are my true love, but I’ve been adoring the mini albums I’ve been seeing and wanted to give one a try.

For a short time Close To My Heart was offering 4×4 mini albums and page protectors. I thought this was be the simplest way to start out my mini album adventure since I’m already using albums and page protectors for my 12×12 layouts. I think one day I will venture into the mini albums made entirely of paper, but for today we will stick with the safe and familiar world of my pages being tucked into an album! HA!

4x4 Mini Album

I used a the 4×4 denim colored chipboard album from CTMH and adhered the Shimelle Starshine Marquee Alphas to the outside cover. This album documents our trip to Chicago when we visited Navy Pier and went to see the Broadway production, Aladdin. I thought the marquee alphas were perfect because they remind me of the marquee signs you see outside of shows.

4x4 Mini Album

I was really inspired by Paige Evans for the intro page. Paige includes a lot of hand stitching in her albums, including stitching the country or place she visited.  I grabbed a scrap piece of acetate and used my Cricut Explore and .04 Black Cricut Pen to draw a miniature USA map on a piece of printer paper. I used washi tape to hold the printer paper to the acetate and used my paper piercer to create holes in the acetate for hand stitching. After the hand stitching was complete I used a puffy heart to signify where Chicago is on the map. The intro page overlays a picture of the city.

4x4 Mini Album

To add a little extra fun to the album I also included little see through elements. Where you could see photos from the future pages showing through openings. Like the photo from a future page is showing through the 2×2 heart insert or through shaker pockets and acetate pieces pictured below.

4x4 Mini Album

4x4 Mini Album

4x4 Mini Album

For a majority of the pages I used the retired mini album inserts from CTMH. The inserts consisted of full 4×4 designs and also 2×2 designs to fit into the 2×2 pockets. I also included memorabilia in the album, including the tickets to the Broadway show.

4x4 Mini Album

4x4 Mini Album

The thing that I love most about mini albums is the ability to work outside a page protector and to add tactile extras between the pages. I did include a few acetate pieces from the Heidi Swapp Serendipity Collection and also created a couple of my own inserts using acetate.

4x4 Mini Album

For the first insert I used White Modeling Paste and mixed blue acrylic paint to create a dusky shade of blue. After I had the color to my liking, I used the The Crafter’s Workshop Mini Urban Stencil to create the background of a city skyline. Once the blue paste was dry I went back over the skyline using the same stencil to add detailing with white modeling paste.

4x4 Mini Album

For the second acetate insert I used white modeling paste and The Crafter’s Workshop Mini Believe Script Stencil. After the modeling paste was dry I then adhered ribbon along with coordinating colored buttons.

4x4 Mini Album

I’ve included photos of a few of my favorite pages in this blog post, but you can view the entire mini album in my flip through video!

This post contains affiliate links, meaning I will receive a commission (at no cost to you) from items that are purchased from those links.