Mother's Day Mini

I have to admit I do feel a bit behind on photos lately.  Perhaps I am just wanting to print too many!  That was one thing I loved about digital.  You didn't have to decide on the size of your photo and have it printed.  You just put it on the layout and adjusted it/cropped it right there to the perfect fit.  It might also be that I'm having some fun experimenting with new techniques too.  Either way, I had a lot of fun putting together this mini album for my Mother's Day photos.

I almost exclusively used Heidi Swapp's Favorite Things collection.  I remember when I got this collection I thought it was bright and pretty but wasn't sure how I would go about using it.  Specifically, there was one paper with a word jumble in the shape of a heart that I thought was cool but was unsure how I would use it.  Well, I looked at it with fresh eyes amid my Mother's Day photos and had an idea.  I used a craft knife to cut about two thirds of it apart.  I kept some of the outer paper in certain areas (such as on the side).  That seems like a lot of work but it was actually pretty easy to do.  I used that bit and some other embellishment for the cover.  I created the cover using chipboard and covered it with papers.  I first put down the pink triangle paper and then the portion of the word jumble heart I wanted to use.

To create some additional interest I used a diagonal stripe stencil and clear magic medium on the pink triangle portion.  I then spritzed it with pink color shine.   Next I mixed some white acrylic paint with cherry color shine and dabbed it around the edge. I then used the plain color shine and dabbed the corners a bit.  Some embellishment and stamping in the corner and my cover was set!

The inside cover utilizes the rest of that heart word jumble.

I decided to put all my journaling into these little pocket pages.  It's a piece of paper folder over and then the holes punched.  Inside is a journal card which is attached to the small tags and ribbon.  Those hang over to hold it into the pocket.

On the backside, I tucked a photo into some ephemera. 

For this picture with my husband I started with a plain background and used a similar color color shine along with a chevron stencil to create a soft pattern.

I made sure to get a picture of just me with my parents.  I mean, how often does that happen now that I have kids?  Here I did some stamping on the plain paper to give it a soft background.

Another journal tag is hidden within this pocket.  It's a bit hard to see but on the tag I used some word stamps and then filled some of them in using my watercolor pen and some color shine.

 I decided to add a pocket page to include a few more photos and a journal card.  Not all my photos fitted the orientation of the page so I just created a mat for them and attached them to the top of the plastic.

And here I found another use for that heart paper!  This time from the 6x6 paper pad with a chipboard word on top.  That's most of the album.  It really was a lot of fun to create.  I used lots of pink!