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Sunday, September 25, 2011

a week in paradise: 12x12 beach album

hello all my lovelies! i know it's been a few days but it has been kind of a unusually crazy week for me and i haven't updated as much as i had hoped i would. Good news is my 'weekend' is coming up Tuesday so just one more day of work in this 7 day stretch and I can get back to scrapping!! But have no fear... i am back and have an ENTIRE ALBUM that I just completed last week to share with y'all! Aren't you excited?! I also tried a different technique on taking pictures of my LO's this time since I am using my bf's camera...which isnt' really that great but it will do for know until I can get my Olympus fixed. I am really excited to already have a few followers and lots of visitors! Keep 'em coming! Okay, let's get to it. Here are some pictures of a 12x12 album that I did for my Aunt as a birthday gift. She rented a beach house for us this summer for a week, it was my 2 aunts, most of my girl cousins, and a boyfriend or two for a week. It was so much fun! Since we are all between 18-28 years old we had lots to catch up on from years past. It was the best time and I thought it would be a great gift for her since she isn't really the picture taking or artsy f artsy type. I know she will love it and I think I did pretty good getting it all done within 3 mos in between my crazy retail hours. Have a look:
this is the title page to the beach album. the name of our beach house was "Paradise" so It thought i would use that as part of the title. On this page I basically colored in all of the flowers that were already printed on the patterned paper with markers and highlighters, then added some bling and a few more flowers. Also i matted both of the photos in brown card-stock and used a white gel pen to go around the edges to make it look like a wooden frame. Then I added chipboard accents for the title and journaling block. 


this 2 page layout is next. it's pretty simple, I used my tear tool to tear some blue patterned paper and layered that on top of a green circle background. i matted and inked all the photos, using white card-stock and colorbox chalk in deep lagoon. for some of the other paper accents, i cut out on my cricut with the beach cartridge and then inked around those. i added a few more stickers and then a page divider with a sticker flip flop border. The 2 square pieces are cut from a large sheet of patterned paper from GiGi's that i inked and used as an accent.


the next page was super fun, cause I love hippy stuff! for the background, I used one sheet of paper that kind of looks like tye dye from the Basic Grey 'lime rickey' collection. I thought it went perfectly with the photos. I cut out some large circles using my large circle punch and inked those and the pictures in black. for the embellies, I used some felt flowers and some glitter stickers i had from different packs. Then for the title I made my own layered square and wrote the title out by hand then added the 2 bird stickers. I love the colors of this page!
 for this page I really wanted a seafood-restaurant kind of feel, so i used some kind of nautical stripe looking paper as the background. I also added copper brads, some orange string, and lots of fishes! for the fishes bubbles i used the robin's nest dew drops in light blue.
near the middle bottom of the page I overlapped another type of paper that had seashells on it. I really liked the contrast of the dark teal up against all the peaches and whites. Over top of that I used a cricut cut out from the beach cartridge that i cut out in mustard-colored card-stock and then inked and wrote over the title words with a brown fine tipped marker.  
 for the main attraction, the title, I made my own little restaurant sign. I used regular white card-stock and cut out the edges of the paper to make it look like wood. then i folded it in 2 places to make the edges of the boards. To that i added ink, colorbox chalk in chestnut roan. Also i went back over it with a regular brown colored pencil and a brown crayon very lightly. On top of the 'boards' I put a double layer title that I cut out on cricut, inked the letters, and then added a fish sticker and some more orange twine. 
This was one of my fav. pages in the whole album! took me like 3 hours to do though!
 This page was all about 'the little zoo that could' aka gulf shores zoo. for the background page, i mixed a green graph paper page from basic grey's 'origins' collection and also some playing card animal page from Tim Holtz 'lost and found' line. i thought they went really well together and the theme was the zoo so I really wanted to use the animal paper!
 the white letters are from the same basic grey line, but I inked them with colorbox chalk in dark chestnut. also the ivy looking border is from that same pack too, but i wanted to add more color so colored every other leaf with a red marker and added some robin's nest dew drops in pale red. 
 the red fern cut outs are from the cricut beach cartridge, I cut them out and colored the stems in brown and then added Tim Holtz Distressed stickles in 'fire brick'. 

The next 2 page LO is mostly beach pictures. I didn't do allot of journaling or embellishment on this page because i wanted to let the beautiful pictures speak for themselves. 
 
 for the title, i did use one of the scenic beach pictures ( one of the many!) and actually cut out the title using the picture. The letters aren't really proportional but I like the look of using a picture for the title. I traced the letters with a sharpie and added a few small flowers and a chipboard embellishment for more color.
 more chipboard embellishments from the same pack were used at the bottom and for the flower center I used another robin's nest dew drop in caramel. I also inked all of them with chestnut roan cat eye. 
the next page is simple, but I really like the striped paper in the background which ties all the colors together. i used several different types of flower embellishments and stickers, and funked them up again with guess what-- INK! in case you haven't noticed I freaking LOVE INK!!! I INK EVERYTHING! LOL
 this the overview of the page. Some of the pictures were left over from the other beach page, but I still wanted to make them important so I made a single page LO with them. for the square 'shell island'  and 'sunny vista' sub titles, they were cut out from the same patterned paper that i got at GiGi's. i inked the edges of those too. Then I added some shell stickers I add, i think they were Jolee's and also some multicolored twine. 
 to the top of part of the shells, i added liquid glass to make them stand out. I am new to that stuff and I have to say I absolutely love it!! it makes anything look cool and better. 
 for the title. i had some leftover letter stickers from the inset of another album and I went over the letters with liquid glass again. I also added some brown blingys to make them look punched into the paper.

for the next 2 page LO, I put a large journaling block in the middle which came from the same cardstock embellishment pack. It already said 'vacation' on it but I added the 'fun' to the bottom of it and then journaled. That was the focal point of the page, so i layed my many, many more beach pictures around that. 
 here is a close up of some of the paper flowers and shell stickers I added. I also put a few blingys on there to add some jazz and color! 
 
 this next one is a one-page LO that is probably my second favorite in this whole book! it was really easy to do but it just turned out so much better than i originally thought. it only took me about 40 mins to do total.
i matted all the photos on royal blue card-stock and rounded all the corners. normally, i'm not big into rounded corners but i think it worked really well for this page. all of the pictures were vertical too so I was able to fit them all on one page. I basically stacked them together by size, then added a card-stock journaling block on the side. I think the background paper goes perfectly with the green and blue dresses that we are wearing in the pictures!! That is why I chose it.
 here is a close up of what i did on the side of the page where the swirls on the paper were. I didn't want to cover them up so i traced them with stickles in Aqua after adding a few fish stickers. I also traced around the journaling block with the stickles.
 for the title, I used some chipboard sticky letters that i already had. they actually had yellow and brown flowers on top of the blue background, which didn't really go with my color scheme so I colored over the yellow parts with a green sharpie to make them match. I also lightly traced around the letters to add visual impact with a royal blue sharpie. To top it all off on the title 'Makin' Waves' I used tattered angel's glimmer mist in 'lily pad' as a finishing touch and it was perfect!! Just the look i wanted!

for this page, I used alot of pinks, browns, reds, oranges and yellows. i love this color combination. Here is the overview of the whole page:
  


for the embellishments, I mixed paper flowers, chipboard accents, brown brads in glitter and also some brown flocked brads to add texture. I also inked several of them for the weathered look. The photos are matted in white cardstock and inked in colorbox chalk in lipstick. for the main attraction, the title, i made my own little sign again. I used 2 different patterned papers and layered them. On the bottom one I gave it a more jagged edge and inked it. Then i added 2 palm tree's from Jolee's to frame the glittered chipboard letters. I didn't have all the right chipboard letters in brown glitter, so i mixed them up. I thought the silver glitter ones were too silver though so i sprayed them with some smooch spritz in caramel latte and let them dry. Then i glued them to the paper sign and sprayed the whole thing again with smooch spritz 
in caramel latte.
for the last and final page, I wanted to write my aunt a letter and tell her how great the whole week was for all of us. i found some paper that actually matches the outside of the album really really well so i wanted to use that as the final page in the book. i lightly traced the outside of a large Dollie and then cut out 2 med sized circle with my circle punch and added those around the larger blue circle. At the bottom, I matted the last picture I took of the sun setting the last night I was there. It was such a great pic that I wanted to add something special to it. so on top of the pic i put a clear frame from K & Company. First time using one of those too but I think it was such a perfect touch for this page. 
 on top of the green circles, I added several different kinds of flowers, some are cut out from cricut, others are just ones I had from random packs and I used several different things for the flower centers. some of them are just bling, others are large and small jewel brads, glitter brads, and even one robin's nest dew drop.


i also cut out some sea turtles and put them swimming out of the flowers...even though i know that doesn't really make sense that they would be swimming there, i thought they were cute. they came from the cricut beach cartridge too and i funked them up by using robin's nest dew drops in light blue for their bubbles and also tracing their outline of their shell with stickles in aqua. for the teal plumeria flowers, i traced the stamen of the flowers with Tim Holtz distressed stickles in spiced marmalade. i inked the edges of the whole page and then hand journaled inside the large circle. 
whew! I'm beat...trying to remember all that stuff i did to those pages. Well at least it's done now and will make my aunt debs very very happy! hope y'all like it! give me some comments/suggestions/tell me what you think!! Okay it's about time to hit the hay....until next time my frandz...love y'all ~ VV 

1 comment:

  1. wow.... thank you so much for sharing this project. I am sure your aunt will love it and treasure it forever. Love the words and all the details of your pages. Great job!!!!

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