You Are Mine Mini-Album Swap and Catching Up

Hello, finally! We have NOT abandoned you! Life throws some curve balls sometimes, or bumps in the road, or in this case we should say that physics + gravity vs. Sam’s hubby + bike had a battle and her hubby did not come out the winner. It’s not really my story to finish telling, so I will just say that he’s doing fine and is on the mend, and Abbi and the granddog had a nice 4-day stay at grandma’s house! That was actually event #3 in the upcoming list… 

Then, of course, Sam’s now 3 weeks from her due date for the Jelly Bean’s arrival and there was a baby shower thrown by ME :) (event #4) I took advantage of the event to jump start my spring cleaning and get some projects done around the house (and reminded myself of all the ones left undone — ack!) You’ll see some pics of that event coming up. I had so much fun planning and decorating and making stuff! This shower was for her family members, and they all rock! 

Before that, I spent three days in Bellingham, WA, where my son goes to school and had an art showing — two art shows, in fact! That was a great weekend that also included attending the Seattle Sounders FC opening game of the season in Century Link field, a great end to event #2. I had only been home for 4 days from event #1, our two-week vacation to Arizona and New Mexico which started all the way back in mid-February, right after I sent off these 7 sets of mini-album pages. Well, 6 — I kept one for myself, of course!

So, busy busy busy me, right?! I suddenly realized that neither of us has posted in forrrrr-eeeeverrrr because of all these happenings, and I had a couple things sitting in my files waiting. Time to take a few minutes and share the pictures of the pair of pages I created for this mini-album swap! I sneak peeked it here and now you get to see the “bigger picture.” 

Left hand page above, right hand page without the tag inserts below, and then with the tag inserts… 

I really enjoyed planning these pages! I set my engineering brain to work to figure out how to make these heart cutout pockets lined with acetate film for tags to slip in. I hope that people will put pictures of their loved ones on the tags, peering out through the hearts  :)

I want to thank the wonderful worker at Scrap-A-Doodle in Bellingham, WA for her great advice and filling me in on acetate info. Plus, for the store actually having it on hand along with cute paper that was perfect for the look I wanted. 

I picked up the crocheted hearts from the La Conner (WA) Quilt Museum in January. It let me off the hook (the crochet hook!) for making them and I think a few cents of my purchase price goes to support the museum. What a wonderful visit, and what serendipity to find pink and green crocheted hearts in their gift shop. 

My Cricut was hard at work cutting embellishments and windows for these pages. Making 21 of those heart-window pockets after figuring out how to do it made me really really glad I know how to use all the features of that machine! I had taught enough people in the Cricut classes I used to hold, that I remembered all the tricks after a 2-year hiatus of Cricut-ing. I only own 4 shape punches and 4 border punches, so everything you see here was done with the Cricut or by hand.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my Love Mini-Album swap pages finally. I look outside and see lots of pink and green as things are budding and blooming so I think it’s still a timely project. Also, Love is an everyday, any day thing, too, right? I certainly enjoyed the swap pages I received in return — such an eclectic collection from paper artists with so much style. I Love my Love Mini-Album Swap! 

Happy papercrafting!

Gail