storage for my paper projects...come take a look!

27 February 2012

Where the rapids are grand.

Happy Monday, y'all!
We had a busy weekend (taxes - fun! cleaning - funner! grading - funnest!). I'm down to one pile of essays, so I'm feeling a bit less stressed on that front. Whew!

That's not what you're here for, though, so how about a mini? A month ago, Andrew and I went upstate to Grand Rapids for a few days -- he had a conference, and I usually go along. The rapids haven't been grand for something like a century (they wanted to use the river for commerce, after all), but the city itself is pretty nifty.

Before we left, I decided I'd like to document our trip, so I threw together this mini from, essentially, the scraps that were in reach! The cover is leftover Kraft Funday from MME, on which I embossed the title (love that Lawn Fawn alphabet!) and did a bit of mist splattering. The whole thing is about 5x6 or so.
Inside the cover, I adhered a section cut from a bag -- as you'll see, Vertigo Music is one spot we try to hit at least twice whenever we're in town.
{click any photo to enlarge}
Here's a few of the inside pages -- while we were on the trip, I adhered everything but the photos (I'm not that hardcore -- no travel-sized photo printer for me!), but I did put in little notes indicating which photos went where. I took a couple rolls of fun tape, little scissors, my Smash pen (which has a glue stick on one side), scraps of paper and cardstock, some small letter stickers, and a bunch of labels from Martha Stewart's collection at Staples. Everything, including the album, fit into about a quart-size ziploc. Simple! Clockwise from top left: my favorite photo (and the last one we took) at HopCat, some photos and ephemera from the Public Museum, a handful of photos from Vertigo (I had a lot to choose from), a couple random photos along with some ephemera from the conference.
Here, you can kinda see how I made the album itself -- basically, I cut some scraps down to vaguely-appropriate sizes and then scored and stitched them right down the middle. They aren't all the same size, which I think is kind of interesting. Additional flaps and smaller pages were stitched in afterwards (didn't want to kill the sewing machine, after all). I even stitched in a little glassine bag from a Thai takeout place once we got home, which you can see in the second photo.
I tied some of this twine around the spine to emphasize the travel-y-ness, and stamped the date here on the back. There's something about the variety of page shapes and patterns that makes this a lot of fun to look through -- and it came together so easily! I just spent a few minutes on it each morning in the hotel room, then printed and added the photos when we got home. I liked preserving the memories while they were still fresh, and this is something I'll definitely do again. Yay!

Ok then, time to get back to the real world. Have a great day!

5 comments:

Cook Scrap Craft said...

I like the way you created this mini album from scratch. I need to make friends with someone who owns a sewing machine, so I can have them sew together an album like this for me. :)

Lindsey said...

I dunno, Ang -- if real life includes cleaning, taxes and grading, maybe you should just stay here in blogland. I think this mini album is absolutely awesome! Maybe I should try this next Vancouver trip...
(And as an aside... Martha has arrived in Canadian Staples stores, too! Yay!)

Liz Michaud said...

Love this mini! Looks like you had a great time in Grand Rapids. I have been ther a few times and it's a fun place.
What kind of ink did you use to get the white to stamp so crisp on the front page? Love the alpha stamp too!

Sue Althouse said...

Very cool mini! I like how your scrapped on the go, but kept it simple. Grand Rapids is a fun place. One time we stayed at the Amway Grand during a Sweet Adeline's convention. Wish I had some pictures from that!

Emily Leiphart said...

This is so cute, Ang! I love how you used your new stamps and I did notice the pretty glassine bag. I really need to attempt a little album like this!