A Creative Week

Hello friends and fellow crafters!  This week has been quite slow for me at work, but craft wise, a productive one! 

I was able to finish a scrapbook album about my family called the Family Moments Album.  I've been wanting to finish this for quite a while, but I waited until after my most recent trip in the Philippines in April/May.  Here, I did a lot of stitching using guides from Bazzil In-Stitchz.  Making a family album is not that easy because it requires effort, especially with picking the right photos.  I had to ask my Mommy and sister to send me our old family pictures back from when we were kids.  And I had to search for a lot of photos based on each theme of my pages.  I would say that my favorite page is this one.  Everytime I see these photos, they make me smile and laugh, and they bring back all those happy and fun times.

As you can see in the album, there are a lot of journaling inserts, but I didn't do my journaling yet for the sake of uploading the pages here.  I will definitely start my journaling soon.

This album is actually the last of a series of album kits I bought from QVC back when we were still in Japan.  It's actually a product by Lisa Bearnson, and she demoed them on QVC.  The first one is an album about myself (All About Me), next is an album about my DH (Celebrating You), followed by a year-in-review album (Year-O-Graphy), and finally this one about my family called the Family Moments Album.  Each album comes in it's own "case", and all four cases come in a special box.  The entire package is perfect for display in the living room to share with family and friends.  I would say that this kit is the best I've ever bought.  And now that I finished all four, I won't mind buying more of Lisa Bearnson's album kits because the instructions are very simple and easy to follow.  Not only that, if you're an experienced scrapbooker, there's always room for your own ideas on each page.

For more photos of all four albums, click here.

What else???  I was able to make 2 cards too!  These are for 2 swaps I joined, again in Splitcoaststampers.  The first swap is called "Non Traditional Colors of Christmas" where we were not allowed to use the traditional Christmas colors.  That was pretty hard.  But I always like challenges, and I ended up creating this card.  I was inspired from a color combo used in a commercial I've been seeing on TV.  In this card, I used the Fleur Di Lies stamp I received as RAK/PIF from SCS.  The center embossed image is a stamp from Club Scrap.  The punched the corners with Fiskars Heritage.  The silver CS is from DCWV, while the glitter CS is by Best Occasions (Walmart co.).  The "tis the season" image is from one of the many Studio G dollar stamp sets.  The center ribbon is Martha Stewart and the fiber is Bernat.  I attached that star sequin to give it that christmas feel, being that I used non-traditional Christmas colors.

 The next card is for the "Christmas Unusual and Creative Folds" swap. 

I was brain dead while thinking on what to do for this swap, but thanks to Susan's Paper Engineering Secrets Book, I was able to jumpstart on something.  The first thing that came to mind was "snowflakes."   With my Cricut, I started cutting snowflakes from the Doodletype Cartridge.  Then I punched more snowflakes with Emagination Crafts punches.  I stacked all my snowflakes together using a white snowflake brad.  I also got to use one of my latest purchases, the Fiskars Threading Water border punch.  The embossing is by Cuttlebug, and the bg paper is by DCWV Christmas pack. 

This card has three folds.  The photo on the right shows you how it looks like with the first flap opened.

 

And on the left you can see how it looks like when opened all the way.

I got a bunch of cards this week too from 2 card swaps.  You can check them out here.

'Till next blog!