Vintage Book Paper Wreath

Good morning! I'm sure we've all seen those beautiful wreaths that look like a flower, made from old book paper right? They're all over Pinterest, and I desperately wanted to make one. I thought about making this a tutorial, but decided to just link the video that helped me make mine at the bottom instead. This particular project is better with a video tutorial than a photo tutorial.

I had already taken apart the book for a couple of other projects (I'd used a few pages in my 100 Happy Days album) and so I had a stack of pages just waiting for me to use them for something, so I found a tutorial online, and got to work.

I spent a couple of hours before work on it, and it took me about three days. I'm satisfied with how it turned out, but I know I could have done better. The book paper was a little thicker and didn't want to roll very nicely, so my cones turned out different sizes. It could always be worse, and I'm just happy that I tried something new. I stopped procrastinating it and just did it. I'm glad I did. I feel so much better about it, and know I probably won't make it again anytime soon.

I wasn't sure how to go about filling in the center so that it looked good, so I just took a rosette I had left over from another project, and hot glued it to the center.

The paper was a little on the thicker side, so some of them didn't roll as nicely as I'd wanted them to, but I worked with it. I hid most of the evidence of the paper folding more than rolling, and I'm pleased with the outcome. Now I just need to figure out how to hang it up.

Here you can see that the rosette has nothing underneath it. I just glued it to the pages that it touched. I also really love looking at it from this angle. The pages I used were from a book that was published in 1911. I'm so glad I could re-purpose them into something new.

Thanks for coming by today. I hope you'll come back on Monday to see my Project Life spreads, and share your own in Karen's link up!
Have a great day!
-Alexandria

A Gift Full of Love

Good morning! Today I'm sharing the one gift this year, that I was beyond excited to GIVE. My niece and I spent a lot of time together in 2014. I made an effort to see her at least once a week, even if it was only for 10 minutes before her T-ball practice. I love taking pictures of the things we do together, and I have all these pictures of her that I wanted to share with her. I know I could have just created a photo book, or put them all into a photo album and gave that to her, but I wanted to put some love into it. Every single page of this book has a memory, something I love about her, and/or something I hope she holds onto when she's older.

She just turned 4, so she obviously can't read yet. But my hope, is that when she's older, she realizes just how precious something like this is. All the products are from my stash, all the cutfiles are from www.iheartstudio.ca or are from the 30 Days of Me class at Studio Calico. I'm not typing too much in this post, mostly because there's a lot of photos. I snapped all of these really quickly before I gave her the album, so some of them aren't the greatest, and if I'd had more time I would have split them up into two page spreads to share each week. I would have also loved to have shared the products, and a few suggestions, or techniques, but if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me.

This pocket page is from Studio Calico. One thing I hate is that the pockets are weird sizes, like 2 1/4" square, and 3 1/2" square. I made it work by printing the photo larger and trimming it down to fit. I used scrapbook paper in the other pockets and just trimmed it to fit. I added a sequin pocket in the colors from this page and the next.

I had printed these pictures first, and just mounted them on white cardstock and slipped them into the pockets.

For the see-through pocket on this page, I found two circle stickers that were the same size and just stuck them back to back and sewed the pocket shut so it wouldn't slide out.

This is another pocket page from Studio Calico. It has six 2 1/4" pockets. I printed some photos and trimmed them down. I added a triple heart die cut and some sequins to the pocket next to the journaling.

One of my goals for 2015, is to do more traditional scrapbooking. I have a bunch of embellishments, and given that my Project Life style seems to be pretty clean and simple, I need somewhere to use all those papers and pretty embellishments I keep hoarding!

Thank you for coming by to see this album. I put a lot of love into it, and I hope it's something she treasures for years to come.

-Alexandria

Project Life: Week Forty-Nine

Good morning! Today I'm sharing Week 49 of my Project Life. I had planned to share this last week, but being that I was sick, I pushed it to this week instead. I promise that I'll eventually get finished sharing my pages from last year, and start on this year. I think I'm going to stick with weekly spreads, running Monday - Sunday so I can keep the weekends together. I just haven't taken many photos for week 1, or 2 yet. I'm not even sure what week we're currently on.

This week, I used a variety of things, mostly from my stash, but a few that I bought specifically to make a few Christmas-y pages (though most of them aren't over the top Christmas-y). To introduce the month of December, I made this two page spread.

On the left side, I used a cutfile from Wilna over at iheartstudio.ca. This file was included in her Heartfelt Christmas Workshop, but can be purchased in her shop. I made it big enough to fit inside of the wreath that was already on the patterned paper, and cut it out of some red cardstock. I glued it to the paper, and then cut the paper to fit into the individual pockets. I love the way it turned out.

On the right side, I trimmed a piece of 6x6 paper from the My Minds Eye Sleigh Bells paper pad. I cut some more pattern paper for the top right and bottom left pockets, and added a chipboard frame to the top right, and a little tag with important December dates to the bottom left. I added a sequin pocket with a resin present from the Freckled Fawn Very Merry Embellishment kit. The sequins are from my stash. I cut some patterned paper and added some washitape to the card next to the tree. I adhered the tree cutfile from iheartstudio.ca to some red paper.

Here's a close up of my washitape tree. Originally, I was going to use this as my first Washitape Wednesday project, but I'm still not sure if I have enough washitape projects, to make it a regular feature.  The star clip at the top is from Freckled Fawn.

Here's my actual Week 49 Spread. I used the gold foil kit from We R Memory Keepers, and a few cards from the Midnight Edition.

Here's the left side. You can see the back of the sequin pocket. I used the lucky card as my title card, and added journaling to a couple of photos because I had minimal space for journaling cards.

Here's the right side. The top photos are the two attempts we made at dying my sisters hair. I don't have an after picture, so I just used the two of the process. A few things we learned that day were to never believe the internet, Kool Aid doesn't change the color of your hair, I'm still terrible at getting even coats of dye (in this case bleach & dye) on her hair, and box dye doesn't always generate the color they advertise. It was a learning experience, but even after three years of dying her hair for her, I suck terribly at it. So grateful I'm not a hairdresser, or I'd actually have to be good at it.

 

This week, I'm taking part in a Project Life link up hosted by the lovely Karen Drummond over at Day to Day. (Click the above image to go to her blog). My goal is to add my link to her blog every week, and I might miss some weeks, but I'm going to try my hardest because Project Life is always better when you share it with like-minded people!

Thanks for coming by to see my spread this week. I hope that you'll pop over to Karen's blog and add your link to the party! I'd love to see what you've made!

-Alexandria