Time to go....have some fun!

     Okay, here is what has been taking up so much of my time lately.  About a month ago my bestie asked me if I would be interested in making a mini album for one of her co-workers who is retiring.  I've been wanting to make a mini FOREVAH so this was the perfect excuse.  Now some of you are familiar with my minis and some aren't.  First off let me say that I think this one was created in record time for me.  I am a top of the line OCD perfectionist so these little projects usually take me ages to complete.  However, the lady who this is going to is not a scrapper and I figured the full bells and whistles mini treatments would be a bit over the top for her so the book is fairly CAS.  I did have to have some fun though so I managed to sneak in a bit of mixed media fun as well as some cool scrapping techniques I found on the web.

     I'm going to give some deets about each page so if you want to skip the jibber jabber and just check out the pics be my guest.  I hope to have a video up on YT for it within a day or two.

     The whole album was constructed using a chipboard album from the Michaels $1 bin.  The pages are covered with some really cool textured paper I found a Mike's.  It was rather a pain to adhere things too, but it was worth the trouble for the texture.  The brick work came from a tutorial you can find on the amazing Lisa Gregory's blog.  Love this ladies scrapping!  They are created with a stencil, ink, and modeling paste.  The Tim Holtz clock was die cut in two layers of chipboard and one of paper and then covered with Crackle Accents.  The hands were left unpainted and edged with gold ink.  The vines were sprayed with water/gold Perfect Pearls for some shimmer and the leaves were edged in gold ink.  I gave the flower a few squirts of the PP too and colored the stamens with a Copic.
     Here's a little closer look at the clock face and brick work.

     I don't do personal photos on the Internet and I respected the privacy of the people in the photos I used by blurring their faces in photo shop.  For this page I made a faux pocket using a Tim Holtz On the Edge die that I layered and paper pierced.  The album was created from Pink Paislees Cottage Farm Collection.  All the DP and paper ephemera are from the collection.

     I didn't show all the tags in this post, but you can see them all sticking out from the edge of the page.  Four of the pages have a large photo mat with a picture on it and all but the cover page have at least one journaling tag tucked in.

     Lots of machine stitching throughout the album and all the photos are matted in gray and black to accent the designer papers.

     I took the difficult path to do the stitching on this page.  I wanted the darker paper to look like a recessed channel, but it really didn't come off that way IRL.

     I broke out the modeling past and another stencil for this page.

     I was really surprised at how much the paper shrunk up when I sprayed it with water to soften it for the wrinkling.  I wish I had made the stitching a bit smaller and closer together.  Hind sight and all you know.

     Had to throw some fishtail banners in there somewhere.  hee hee

     This was the first place I used the bricks and I liked them so much I had to put some on the cover.

     And finally the back.  I had originally planned to put this card and frame from the ephemera on the front, but couldn't get it to work until after I had already glued down the clock. grrrrr  So it went on the back with a cute quote about retirement and my personalized stamp tucked in on that little gray snippet peeping out.

     Hope you liked the album even without all the bells and whistles.  Have a great day!