10 Months Layout

This is the latest of my far and few between layouts...

Another altered notebook

Here's another altered notebook I just finished for a friend's birthday gift. It's one of those dollar notebooks from Michael's. Actually, I think I got it half price on clearance... with the intention of covering it up and making it cute.

CD Mini Album

This is the CD mini album I tried for a swap in a Cafemom scrapbooking group, I'd been tempted, but not quite sure what I thought of the idea. Then I saw Retta's, and hers were super cute, and I could see beyond my limited notion of what it would look like using CD's for an album. So here's what I did for my swap partner- she wanted lots of pink and butterflies, I did my best to fulfill her request. My best buddy Katherine used one of her Cricut cartridges to cut out the butterflies for me, and all I did was glue them on and Stickle them. The embellishments are pretty minimal because there's not a lot of room to work with and I wanted there to still be room for the pictures. The mat for the pictures is 3 1/4 inches square, so, not a great amount of room for a picture. ... and being honest, I tend to be minimalistic anyway with my embellishments, more out of " I can't figure out what to put there" than a less is more mentality. So here's the finished product, with a few pictures from the inside. I made little tags to slide in the top of the mats ( I only glued 3 edges to allow for this), so she could journal, or even add a smaller picture if she wanted.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose! Bud Vase Holders

This is the MOPS craft we did today- a bud vase holder made from a "repurposed" glass bottle that originally held vitamin E capsules, and copper wire. I had to purchase the copper wire at the hardware store, and cut it to about 25 inches long and wrapped it around the bottle and made loops with my hands/fingers and used needlenose pliers to curl the ends in.. I got the idea from a friend at church who had given us a bunch of the glass bottles and an example of a bud vase, I figured it was a great time of year to try something like this, and it also made something pretty out of something that might have just been tossed. She actually salvaged some copper wire scraps from her husband's construction site. "Saving the earth.. one craft at a time!..." Anyhow, I used the glass pebbles that you can find at the craft store, and threaded small beads onto a length of wire and looped and twisted it to make a leaf, then wrapped that around the copper wire. I'm actually pleased with how this one in particular turned out, especially since I was just playing around to see what I could come up with for different example ideas... The ladies seemed to really enjoy it- especially since we had a lot of different beads that they could use, and it was great seeing all the different variations of people's ideas. It's always fun seeing what other people come up with.