Hello Fellow Stampers :-)
Happy Monday! Time to kick off the week! It was a busy and "short" weekend! As I indicated on Friday, Saturday was the day I set aside for my Mom. We had a really wonderful day together. We kicked it off with breakfast at a special place that we go to on this day each year, The Original Pancake House. They have such wonderful food there and a lovely and lively ambiance to the place. She and I agreed - we really do love our annual trek to this restaurant.
Then we went shopping -- LOL!! Mother / daughter shopping is always dangerous. We like to visit Steinmart on this special day we set aside each year; and we had a lot of fun trying on clothes and picking out outfits. Needless to say, we walked out with quite a bit of . . . um, well, . . . nevermind!! LOL Let's just say, Mom treated daughter and leave it at that!! LOL
Next, we set off for the garden center and strolled among the beautiful plants and flowers. Both of us are looking for new and unique things and are planning the planting of our gardens for this spring/summer season. I picked out some fun new items, and mom did too. More to come in the weeks ahead as we start planting in earnest shortly!!
Finally, later in the afternoon, we settled in at home for a little light dinner and some time in the Studio to work on the Heritage Album we started several years ago - and just are moving through way too slowly. I'm hoping to pick up the pace this year and see if we can hit this in earnest now -- we want to culminate with a week in Vail later this Summer/early Fall when we can just get away and work hard. I hope to have made some good progress by then so that we might be able to get to the next "chapter" of our work at that point. When you're trying to capture a literal lifetime of photos, it's a little overwhelming!!
So today I just want to share with you the next 2-page spread of this album that I spent some time prepping yesterday. It will give you an idea of where we're at on this project, and just the special look I'm trying to give to this album.
We've been working our way through the "maternal" side of the family and we have officially entered the section that gives a spread to each sibling of my grandmother - we're ticking them down from oldest to youngest - and each of those sibling's children. So basically, my mother's Aunts/Uncles and cousins. For me, this would my great-aunts/great-uncles and my second and third cousins.
It's been a little bit of a challenge to figure out exactly how to correlate each section of the album and tie things together with some continuity so it makes some sense to someone else looking at it. I think we are doing pretty well with keeping things in some chronological order as well as finding some continuity between all the faces and family ties.
We finished the prior 2-page spread (not shown here) on Saturday evening which was the first and oldest daughter of my Great-Grandparents, and her husband and children.
Then I spent some yesterday setting up this 2-page spread for the next daughter. This enables my mother and I, the next time we get together, to concentrate on sorting out the pictures and figuring out how we want to lay them out.
It's a little bit of a challenge to have a "traditional" scrapbook page spread, with pictures that are very old, in some cases odd sizes (many very small - others very large portraits), but I'm trying to compensate and keep things looking somewhat "pretty."
This spread was partially inspired by Rachel Tessman, who gives me lots of wonderful ideas for album pages.
The difference is that I'm working with Creative Memories album pages, and this gives some different dimension and tricks to making things work.
Since I'm working directly on black album pages, I don't have a set 12" x 12" background sheet, and I also have to be careful before I tack things down permanently that I'm sure everything is going to go where it goes.
This page has basically 3 rows of matting and decoration to which we'll work the writing and photos in and around.
I am using a beautiful pack of Creative Memories designer paper in this section, and I discovered that a series of those papers had a beautiful paisley print in it. I immediately thought of our soon retiring Paisleys and Posies stamp set and dies and so I went to town creating this design.
I have incorporated our new Merry Merlot color in this design; as well as the soon retiring Sweet Sugarplum. Both colors along with the Early Espresso go perfectly with the designer paper from Creative Memories.
I also discovered how much I love the Early Espresso with some of these old sepia photos -- it's perfect and makes them look rich in color.
It's too bad we don't take graduation photos like this anymore . . . so nice!!
I'm hoping you can pick up the paisley pattern in some of these close up pictures of the designer paper.
Here you can see I pulled out some long retired items from my stash - but they worked perfectly for this design.
The Sweet Sugarplum shimmer ribbon, and the glimmer paper from several years back make this so yummy!
I added "contraband" pearls from Michael's in varied pink shades and some of our soon retiring Petal Passion Embellishments.
This is the "center" panel of the 2-page spread that is split between the two pages to create continuity.
Here I have stamped the daughter's name and then handwritten some other information
Sigh . . . I don't always like my handwriting! But I keep reminding myself what we were always told in our Creative Memories workshops years ago - the personal handwriting is a capture of who you are for generations to come!
So I do some writing, and mom does some writing - I think it's important we have her as a deep part of this process.
You can see here the stamping and dies cutting I did for this - and a better glimpse of the paisleys on the designer paper in the background.
I stamped in Soft Suede, Merry Merlot and Sweet Sugarplum for all the stamping on these pages.
This is the far right embellishment design.
I am carrying the embellishments upward here into the top row for continuity-- and have a bunch of extras that I hope to add into the lower section after we have sorted and set the pictures. I want to see how those pics lay out before I add any more die cuts.
I hope you have enjoyed our MIx-It Up! Monday project today - and that if you are a scrapbooker, you feel a little inspired. I also hope you enjoyed Mother's Day weekend as much as we did!! Paisleys & Posies is retiring soon, along with those beautiful embellishments. Get your stash today before it's too late!! Shop Online Here!!
Until Next Time . . . Puppy Hugs!
