Crafting Goodness

To say I had a bad week last week would be fair. So, I spent time this weekend crafting which tends to focus me on the blessings in my life and bring me joy. What a better way to craft than with a child or scraplifting someone else's idea since they've already done all the heavy lifting or even better complete a project you've been working on for months. If you haven't guessed, I did all of the above.

The last few months I've been picking up the magazine Creating Keepsakes and while doing so came across a project by Ali Edwards in the May issue using a Chipboard Word Mini Album. I loved the project and decided to pick up the word Happy during an afternoon visit to The Scrapbook Barn .

It has sat in my small projects box waiting for the right pictures. Well, I got the pictures Friday afternoon that screamed Happy to me. It also helped that Ali had posted more detailed pictures and instructions at the request of her readers on her blog that I could refer to.

Long story short, here is what I spent Saturday on. To be honest, printing the pictures was probably the most frustrating part. This was a great project to put down and pick up, due to toddler interruptions, because I broke it into steps. I shamelessly scraplifted the project but still put on a few touches of my own.

The best part is that Garrett thinks "This is a nice book."

But, before I made the Happy Mini Album, Garrett and I made a sail boat in the morning. Earlier in the year I picked up a special issue/magazine put out by the editors of Martha Stuart Living called Good Things for Kids. Pretty much it has a bunch of crafting projects made of things around the house.

Garrett thought it was so cool to flip through it and ask if we had what we needed for a project. It was so much fun to go around collecting our supplies together. Here is Garrett's crafting goodness. Next weekend we are going to make "new" crayons from broken old ones.

I completed my crafting goodness by finally completing my Photo Album Scrapbook of our Shanghai visit back in 2003 on Sunday. I really think I've had this in process for about a month or two. However, considering I scrapped a ton of pictures that really isn't that bad.

Photo Album Scrapbooking is FANTASTIC and was introduced to me in my Library of Memories class. Basically, you use a photo album but alter it a bit if desired and add some journaling cards with your pictures. You can be as creative as you like but for me the bottom line was getting a ton of great pictures and my story in the same place. Before this, these pictures lived in the envelopes they came home in.

Here is the final product, finally! Out of six rolls of film, I now have 110 pictures scrapbooked. I used beautiful cardstock, buttons, ribbon, chipboard letters and some rub-ons to alter my photo album.

A couple of cool things happened. I cropped my pictures to focus on what I thought was necessary, gave it structure by grouping my pictures by place with an opening journaling card and captured my random tidbits that I like to share about our visit to China throughout the album.

I've got another project in mind that I'm reallly excited about and will now be working towards that. More crafting goodness coming soon!

lovemon