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!

CHA, almost!

Hi all!

Blogging from Chicago (hooray for free wifi in the hotel!). Drove in today with Chris (owner of Scrappy Chic) and Katie (faithful and talented employee), checked into the hotel, checked in at the conference:

an official welcome banner!

an official pass, on a lanyard even!

ate some chow at the Taste of Rosemont (who knew Rosemont had a taste?):

food=happy faces.

headed to an event at a nearby hotel:

wait, is that an Oompa-Loompa? Why yes it is!

but stopped first for a quick visit with an old friend, or something like that, kind of:

ran into Susan Opel from Paper Crafts magazine -- she was my student teacher once :)

the event was very colorful:

wait, is that Willy Wonka? Or Wilhelmina Wonka?

but we didn't win anything during the drawings :(

Not even a gumdrop centerpiece -- cute though, no?

Still, a fun night was had by all:

Way to throw a party, Moxxie!

PS: yes, I'll edit the shadows out of these photos eventually...

And tomorrow, the real show begins!! Stay tuned....

"April is the cruellest month..."

...and today, it's extra-cruel -- it's snowing out! Boo! I don't think too much of it will stick, but it's still a far cry from springy-feeling :(

So, in protest, or maybe in hope, here's a page featuring quite the opposite: My first evening in Atlanta. High 70s, beautifully sunny. My good friend and I were exploring neighborhoods on foot, and we wound up here, in Piedmont Park, just as the sun was barely beginning to set, silhouetting the buildings of midtown in the distance. Folks were jogging, playing softball, throwing around frisbees and playing with their dogs and whatnot -- and Jen and I had just had very, very delicious handmade popsicles. Ahh....

The page features some papers from GCD's Melody Ross collection that evoke a vintage version of exactly this kind of weather. I trimmed the daisy-sniffing lady from one paper and added it to the impressionistic floral I used as my background -- I think it looks like she's always been there, though :)

The rest is very simple -- a nice long title (AC Thickers and Basic Grey small alphas), a few embellishments (Prima resin flowers, Pebbles pearls), and a date stamp (Technique Tuesday). I really just wanted the photo to be the focus here. I think it worked! 

You can get all these fun goodies at Scrappy Chic, where you can also see this page in person. Might help you forget all about that stupid white stuff falling from the sky. 

Here's dreaming of warm walks in the park...have a lovely day!