Scrapbooking/ Mini Albums

50 Days of Journaling – Day 1

October 5, 2011 by Jess 3 Comments

Here we go! Day 1 of 50 days of Journaling 🙂

I have chosen to do my journaling in an Art Journal as it is something I’ve never tried making. If you are joining me in this challenge, you can do an art journal, a mini album, a regular scrapbook page, or any type of journal – it’s totally up to you! The journal prompts I’m going to post will simply be to help inspire you and give you some starting off points.

So once again:

For anyone who wants to join in, each time you post a comment here on my blog on any of the journaling posts, you get one ballot into a random draw for a copy of my book: “Outstanding Mini albums”

You can post your answers to the questions if you wish to share, or you can just write them in your own journal. If you wish to share photos of your art journal that is ok too 🙂 I will post any photos on here of your work if you’d like to share, along with a link to your website or blog. Please email me any photos to jess.acs (at) gmail.com

Ok let’s get started!

1. What’s in my purse

Go ahead and dump out your purse to see what treasures you have stored in there! You might be surprised at some things you find in there!

2. Good Things (from last week)

This is a good one to journal about each week. Try to think of little daily pleasures such as having a quiet moment sipping on your favorite latte, or warm towels from the dryer. This is a great recap to remember all those great moments of the week that has just passed by.

Here are my journal pages about the above topics:

I started by painting some gesso onto the page with a foam brush and when that dried I brushed on a few different colors of acrylic paint, slightly watered down. I stamped the letters for “Purse” with foam stamps in acrylic paints then outlined them with a black fine tipped felt pen once dry. I added a couple doodles and the stars at the bottom with watercolor paints.

I started this page out the same as the first with the gesso and then watered down acrylic paints. Then I doodled and wrote all over it and added a lot of watercolor paint. Once it was all dry I spritzed it once with glitter spray. I’m really enjoying this art journal thing, I love using my paints and getting a little messy 🙂

Where does it all go?

September 22, 2011 by Jess 2 Comments

Time, that is. It seems to pass by in the blink of an eye! I really need more hours in the day to get stuff done. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we didn’t have to sleep? I’ve tried staying up super late just to make use of the extra time, but then getting up early as usual in the morning, well – it doesn’t work out so well. *sigh

So until then, here are a few snippets of little things that have happened in my day to day life the past few weeks.

Moose and Angus chillin together on their chaise. Angus’s leg is bandaged up cause he had a little bump removed.

A trip to the Lego store in downtown Chicago with my sister, my brother in law, my nieces and Steve. Of course we also visited the American Girl Place which was right next door.

You never know what you’ll find at the library!

Trixie, our Flemish Giant rabbit, weighing in at 12 pounds already and she’s only 6 months old! She will most likely make it over 20 pounds eventually and then she’ll be bigger than all 3 of our dogs. Already she is much bigger than little 7 pound Moose.

The newest member of our family: Scarlett, our 4 year old, 30 pound, Colombian Boa. She is so cool!!

And now here are the layouts and the mini album I made for Bisous Zoo:

Bisous Featured Designer

August 29, 2011 by Jess Leave a Comment

I’m so excited to announce that I’m going to be the September/ October featured designer for Bisous! If you don’t already subscribe to their newsletter, you should hop on over there and sign up quick – they are packed with fabulous ideas and great deals too! I loved working with their products – so colorful, funky and fun! I think I’m hooked now on their PDQ 12 x 12 papers, as I was able to get an entire layout done in no time at all. Here’s a few sneaks of some of the projects I did for them and I’ll post full photos once the newsletter has been released. I also did a little mini album and tutorial which will be in the newsletter 🙂

Need some mini album inspiration on this gorgeous Monday afternoon? Swing by my Outstanding Mini Albums blog to see who today’s featured mini album artists are!

Have a wonderful Monday everyone 🙂

Back to the Scrapping table!

May 2, 2011 by Jess 1 Comment

With the end of my schooling very near in sight (next week – ahhh!), I’m really looking forward to jumping right back into scrapbooking!! I have so many little projects started that I plan to finish once we get to our new home in Chicago (and set up all my craft stuff!). So exciting! Also exciting is that Hobby Lobby and Archiver’s will be nearby, neither of which I have ever lived near. I’m very excited about being close to both! If anyone is from or knows the Chicago area well, please please let me know if there are other stores I need to visit. I’m looking forward to exploring the area.

To celebrate a whole bunch of fabulous things, as well as my getting back into the industry, I’m going to offer my Techniques 101 class again this summer for FREE!! I’ll post more information on that soon, but if you have any questions or want to sign up, leave me a message here or email me.

In the meantime, here is a little peek of a book that I made not too long ago:

Here’s another mini that I haven’t posted on here yet:

more scrappy stuff

October 25, 2009 by Jess 7 Comments

Since we’re smack in the middle of Fall, I thought I’d share a Fall mini I made that was featured in the last issue of Memory Makers Magazine last month. Fall really is my favorite time of year and this little book means a lot to me. I actually made it about 8 months ago and it’s with photos from last year (obviously, haha). But it is full of all my favorite Fall things, and all things that I had back home in BC, none of which I have here in Southern California. It’s a very different Fall here – it’s still very green, and warm! It’s been in the 90’s all week, and it’s almost November!

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This month’s prize, a new challenge, classes and a tutorial!

September 30, 2009 by Jess 14 Comments

This post is strictly scrapbook related! I will post an update post in a few days – about the fires here last week, another new ratty baby, zoo life and more stuff : )

First of all, September’s challenge is due by tomorrow (also if you just want to enter the draw for this months prize, please post your comment by tomorrow night at midnight (Oct 2). All challenge entries get 2 ballots.

Here is the mini I finished for this challenge – sorry for the awful quality of the photo – I’ll take some better ones – and also of the inside pages – when its light outside tomorrow and post them up later.

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I did a tutorial on how to make this mini if you’re interested – it’s really quite quick to make (and easy and cheap – what could be better than that?) The tutorial is posted at the bottom of this post, so scroll on down : )

Here are a couple other entries for this challenge:

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Hop on over to Leigh’s blog to see all the other pages in this adorable mini! Isn’t her pup just the cutest?

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Here is Rose Stannell’s awesome mini about changes in the homes that she’s lived in. Great idea Rose!

Now for Octobers Challenge!!

Theme: A week in the life

Mini Book style: Accordion – there is a tutorial here for this particular type. (If you use this tutorial, just add a couple extra pieces on so you have 7 pages in total)

These are the most fun to look back on I think, as our lives tend to change so much, even in the span of a few weeks or months. Do it on a week in your own life, your kids life, or your pets life! Have fun with it!

Remember for this challenge, you can choose to do both the theme and mini book type, or just one or the other.

I will post a picture of October’s prize after September’s winner is announced on Oct 2.

Online Classes are coming back!!! I will be offering my series of FREE techinque classes again with Techinques 101 starting on October 12. If you’d like to sign up please send me an email or leave me a comment here. There will be 4 weekly lessons and you can do the class at your own pace. Techniques 102 will start at the end of November and will run for 6 weeks, then 103 will be offered in January and is also 6 weeks. I am thinking of adding a new class in the new year – Mini Book Techniques. : )

Now for the mini book tutorial:

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You will need:

– Crafty board or chipboard sheets

– various papers

– binder rings

– crop-a-dile to punch holes through chipboard

– various embellishments

This is a great project to use up scraps! A very low cost and quick mini album to make.

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1. Cut you chipboard sheets into squares measuring 4.5 x 4.5″

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2. I like the look of rounded corners right now, so I rounded all 4 on each piece

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3. For these pages, I kept some just as straight chipboard as I love that natural look. For the others, I covered them with patterned paper and trimmed the corners off.

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