I know. I'm a drag.

I feel like lately I've not had much exciting stuff to share. Like I'm slacking off - forcing to think of something interesting to share besides scrapbook pages.

Sorry. I guess I've just had my mind in a boring place lately. I need to get back on track... whatever the "track" might be.

I do have some interesting news, I'll share tomorrow or Monday. I just want to vacillate on it a little longer before I share.

In the meantime... another wedding page. This one about how we played croquet. Not my best work - actually it was a complete scraplift - and everything single thing was old product - but it's done.

Go me.

{Sticky Wicket}

We are Berry Good Together - Pink Paper bag album

While cleaning my scrapbook room, AND giving a pile of stuff to Amber, I realized I had so many mini albums, or albums in progress, that I needed to be more commited to, or maybe "justify" lol.

A couple *years* ago, I bought some pink gift bags with the intention of making a paper bag album. After moving things around, and almost just sticking them in the gift wrap box, I decided that making this album would not take me long.


If you've never made a paper bag album before, they are super easy, and pretty fun. There's a ton of variations on this theme, but this is my version.

With each bag laying flat, I cut off the thick end that normally would be the bottom of the bag. To make it more interesting, I made each back progressively longer than the next - a stair step effect.

Some of my new fav paper is the berry line from K&Co. I bought it in a stack at Michaels. complete with glitter. yay glitter! :) (fyi, I like K&Co glittered products because it doesn't come off!!)

I cut a strip that was approximately 3 inches wide. I then folded that in half lengthwise and folded it over the cut off end.

I then sewed along the seam making it stronger. Do this again for each page (I have 5 pages).

I have my own binding machine, not a Zutter, but a good old office binder I bought years ago, before it got so popular to bind your own stuff. Sheesh I always knew I was on the forefront of this industry... why aren't I rich dammit? I wire bound the book, but you could also use notebook rings, ribbon or sew across the edge to bind it together.

*anyway*

I then made pages that can slip out of the bag pages. I used flowers that matched the berry paper as a "pull tab" to pull out pages.





I'm using this as just a book with random pics of Gene and I. I suppose it will be an add as you go book as we don't have a *ton* of pics together, and with the inner pages, front and back, you have about 15 places that you can add pictures!



Viola! Scrapbook album for around $3-$4 worth of paper and materials!

Page 4 of the 365 scrapbook project. I sat down yesterday and did 6 days at once. Oops. I let myself get behind a bit. I'm trying to do 2-3 days at a time. This one snuck up on me. The blog helps remind me what I've been doing!

I don't know how I found this cool link today, but it looks fun.

Fusing plastic bags to make a cutable/sewable "fabric". I am going to try it, and make some recycled plastic scrapbook albums, and I think also some grocery bags totes - which I need to remember to do more!!

I always have a ton of bags and hate to throw them away, but never remember to recycle them!

You look like you're going to a funeral

maybe I am....

Maybe I Am.

A new page for the wedding scrapbook. I love this line from Walk the Line. Every time Gene dresses in all black, that's what I say to him. (his part is "maybe I am, Maybe I *am*). Soooo, of course it's more funny when I dress him all in black for our wedding.

Journaling:
"This is one of our favorite quotes from "Walk the line" - the life story of Johnny Cash. It seemed appropriate when we bought Gene's clothes for the funer... I mean, wedding. hah. Black wranglers, black dress shirt, black suit jacket, rattlesnake boots, and of course, his black Stetson. OK, not exactly a "funeral" but you have to admit, he did look cowboy fabulous."

Background paper is club scrap. I used my cricut for the lettering and the circle. The diecut paper is colorbok? I can't remember - the medallions are from SEI.

Quick, fun and EASY scrapbook project

I bought this little card box/album a while back, and while going through my stash giving Amber some stuff, I found it again. I decided since the beginning of the year, I kinda need to justify a few of these purchases. LOL. {fyi, I've never bought from the California paper goods before - I just used it to show as an example}



I covered the box with some of my favorite paper from K & Company - Wild Saffron - I buy it in a stack, and found it at Micheal's.

The chipboard "sticker" is also K & Co (actually Marcella by Kay from Target). On top (not shown) is a sticker from Club Scrap that says "family"

Inside the box is 8 chipboard "pages" with a hole in the corner for a ball chain. I took it apart and used just plain old glue stick to cover each page and attach my paper.

I used letter stickers from wordsworth and put each person's initial on the front of the paper, and their pic on the back. Each letter I outlined with a black pen. A tip: Shade your letters (I always do right side and bottom) with a platinum colored brush marker. It really makes your stickers pop.

On the back of the card with each person's initial, is a photo of them. Not necessarily from the past year, but pics of them I really like.

Couples, I put their pics together, as well as their initials. I also used just a plain black pen to write out each person's name next to their letter.

Reassemble and viola! You're done. The longest part of this, was finding the pictures. It's something I literally could have done in an hour, with one sheet of paper!

Project 365 - page 2

Page 2 of the 365 project.

I decided that if I had a day that I wanted to put more than one photo, I would use the entire photo as the background with the date and a tiny bit of journaling. Saturday was busy, so there were several pics I wanted to use.

I missed a day, Friday, but I don't mind, I'm not sweating if theres not something every single day.

FYI, yes, that's my bare skin. Can't see nothin' but I liked the pic so I said screw it, I'm using it :p

Christmas - a week in the life at the Cease's house

Over on Ali Edward's blog, she created a Christmas album that was 1/2 created in advance, (the backgrounds) and then she kinda plopped in pics and journaling as she went. Now, that was kind of the plan here, but... a.) I was only going to do it christmas week, because I knew I would not be able to keep it up for the whole month and b.) I wanted my backgrounds done in advance, but only part were.

I finished it up today.
Finally.

I can't fathom trying that for an entire month.

I used an 8 x 8 album from SEI. It's an older album that I bought at Hobby Lobby I believe, probably $3-$5 half price. It had a green cover, so I decided to go with pink/green as my main colors, accented with turquoise blue and red. Sorry, but I love those colors and apparently so because I had a huge pile of christmas stuff in those colors.

Here is the cover, I used vinyl and my cricut for the first time to decorate it. I didn't do too bad considering I had almost zero instruction on how to do it.

Tags by me - circa 2004, prima flowers, making memories journaling thingy (dunno the name), ribbon from american crafts, a really old accent piece and some kick ass reindeer paper.

My new favorite letter stickers. I have 3 sheets, I'm going to buy more when I make it back to archivers. They only have brown. Good thing brown goes with anything in my book. Glitter stickers by Martha.

Some days I had no pics for that day, so I took pics later of the decorations and filled in with that.

These flourishes rock the awesome sauce. K & Company. The glitter DOES NOT come OFF!
*get out*
*push*

No really.

Couldn't have an album, without a little glitter... and stitching

Amber looks oh so excited to be washing dishes. Methinks someone needs a dishwasher.

More flourishes. Shopping with Amber. Founds some cute stuff that I couldn't live without. I printed the star pic out twice, and cut out the star in front, and used pop dots to lift it up to make it more 3D.

Damn I'm good.

Get down with my bad self.

Sorry, first pic is blurry, but I'm seriously way too lazy to get out the lights, the camera, upload again, resize *again*. Picture it, only crisper. Feelin' it? OK great.

I also realized, that I have hardly anything with numbers on it. I had to improvise a bit.

OK, this one is a bit of a quiz. Paper look familar at all? Take a moment. Search the recesses of your brain (this only works on scrapbookers btw)

HA.

Stumped ya.

As I was looking for a quick layout idea, I saw this AD from MAMBI (Me and my big ideas). I thought "oh, that'd be cute paper". *lightbulb* Nothing important on the backside. *RRRRRIPP* Paper.

Viola

Seriously

A bunch of circles. Great way to use up my scrappy bits.

Reindeer is a leftover from the 3 cards I mailed out. He's cut on my cricut and covered with stickles.

Another riddle.
That frame... what the heck?

From Heidi grace back when no one know who Heidi grace was. She released a bunch of acrylic stuff. Remember back in twenty-dickety-two when acrylic was in? Well, you know what. I liked it. I still do. I didn't toss it so nehhhhhpft.

For those of you following along.

Cease means stop. Which was a cooinkydink because it's also my last name. In case you were wondering why it just says "CEASE" at the end of the book :p

I will probably do that again next year. I feel all the pressure is off to scrapbook all those pics now. I'm going to print everything and stick the rest in a regular old photo album, which I do a lot more of now. IMO, that's as good as scrapbooking.

You suck Wednesday. Bite me.

The post office blows. Apparently, contrary to what the USPS website says, my package to TX is exactly 1 inch too tall. That one inch is $54 extra.

Um.

No.

I was so irritated, I'm not spending $75 to mail something that is definitely not worth $75. *never*again*ever*

So, the package came back home, will be squished down a bit (I put about 3" of filler in the top just to fill out the box) taken back into town and remailed for $24). *sigh*

Wednesday sucked.

I decided to kick Wednesday in the junk and have a do-over. Unfortunately, they don't let you do over the same day, so here I am at Thursday. Woke up early by {insert biz that wants to sell me advertising}. Hello, I believe I said call after 10. So why ya calling 2 days in a row at 8 a.m.? Plus she claims she's called me "several times" yet I only had 2 calls. Let's define "several" ok?

I badly want to tell her to pound sand now.

I think I will.

*hold please*

OK done. Not exactly a "pound sand" but I did get to say my piece. Man, what ever happened to customer service? dude. Seriously.

*deep cleansing breath*

I realized last night, I forgot to share a couple scrapbook pages with you. Each year for around 5 years now, I've taken the boys school picture, and made a double page spread (along with some pics of them from that year) about the type of person they have been, mom advice, what they are into, etc.

It's also a good way to keep track of their school picture too, as I only get 2 5 x 7's each year. Seriously - I'm a photographer, I'm not giving a lot of $$ to Lifetouch when I can take more interesting pics myself. Isn't it sad that school pics are sometimes the only pics get of themselves *the whole year*? (and sometimes christmas pics. sigh). Travesty.

I played with the new lens for about 10 min this afternoon. I've just been busy doing other stuff and not had time to play yet.

But here's an example:

My neighbors across the way, via my 18-55mm kit lens

Via my 70-200 mm.

Not that I am going around taking pics of all the neighbors houses or anything. I can be weird, but not *that kind* of weird.

And lastly, went to weight watchers today, it's been nearly a MONTH since they had a meeting due to holidays and weather. I only gained .2 pounds. I told her I would take it, and with a smile. I wanted to finish the year out strong and lose a few, but you know what, I'm going to see that as an accomplishment and move on. (cuz It was.. dude... you should see the crap I ate at christmas. Ppl can attest, there might even be pictures. Perish the thought).

Anyway, feels good to be back on track. Seems like it's taking forever for things to go back to normal.

Speaking of which, which one of you is gonna come over and take down my tree for me? I have all the ornaments off. I just have lights and the tree left. Someone yesterday tried to talk me into putting snowflakes and hearts on it.

NO WAY.

A teaser - just to get me all worked up.

Since this post is getting an absolute ton of hits, I'll give myself a little plug. Be sure to visit the rest of the blog - Mz-Cellaneous.

***

I got my continous lighting system today! Whooop.

I saw the Fed Ex guy pull up, and I was hoping it would be my lens, but it was this instead:

It's a simple system, I actually thought continous lighting would be good for me, since I'm "entry level" into lighting systems. I didn't wanna overload myself all at once. I mainly like to shoot natural light, but SOMETIMES, that does not happen ya know?

Like now. It's dark. Sometimes that happens.

If I shoot by a lightbulb, this is what I get:



the only thing I did for this pic, was to light through a white umbrella. I didn't even turn the incandescent light right next to it off. (straight out of the camera)


Not freaking bad for $35!!
Looks almost like natural light. OK, I'm hooked.
I bought it on amazon, search for "continuous lighting system"

I also wanted to show you the 365 scrapbook I was telling you about. Here's the album, an american crafts D-ring album. Purchased at Hobby Lobby 1/2 price. Seriously, I will never understand why ppl have to have a $1200 wedding album. Even if I'm selling $1200 wedding albums.



Inside, I put page protectors (12 x 12) that are divided for 4 x 6 photos. Each photo printed has the journaling and the small square photo included. Since I blog pretty regularly, it will be easy to just plop in some of the journaling and a photo from the day I blog, print it out, round the corners and stick it in. Done.


5 Down, 360 to go.

Scrapsplosion

Most of Sunday, (well, and evenings almost all week long) was spent in my scrapbook room. See, I had it all fixed up once (I shared it a while back) but that's before *everything* had to come out of the storage pod in the driveway. When it came out... PLOP it went back into the scrapbook room.

For months, I've had several big boxes of stuff that had to be sorted. I'm really not good at sorting stuff when it gets down to a certain point, I can't figure out where to put stuff. I think I'm kinda ADD.

Anyway, I've taught myself a method that works well when you find yourself in a cleaning situation where you have a lot of things that need to find a home.... I count to 10.

I stole the idea from Flylady, she has the 27-fling boogie, where you pick up a trash bag and find 27 things to throw away. When you do that every day, at the end of the year, you've gotten rid of 9,855 items you no longer need. It works! Anyway, I just make myself count to 10, and put away 10 items. That's it. Then, I do it again, and again. Once you get on a roll, you stop counting, and things just seem to find a home quickly.

So I switched my shelves from wooden braces, to a bracket system, which is a B*%^&X($ to put in so they are all even - especially over a 9 foot span, but I got it. I added a 3rd shelf and now my bear collection can be seen, but up high so I have more space.

I told Gene that now I have to go buy some new stuff to fill that shelf. LOL. Somehow I think it will fill itself.


I like ribbon.
Ya think?

The black shelf with all the cubbies is the shelf Gene got me for Christmas.

Only a fraction.
*sigh*


Before

*explosion*
I added another shelf on the left, so I'd have a deck to store my totes and bigger crap above it.

You know what's sad? I STILL have stuff to get done in there! Moving out my armoire, building a computer table, more shelving, curtains for my desk to cover the paper. BLEH.

And for the record, I do actually scrapbook in there. No really.

{100 Percent Sweet}
I had to find an excuse to use this paper that I HAD to buy!

And here's the start of the 2008 Christmas week album:

Seriously, I really hate printing pics, so I only have the one page done so far. I'll just sit one eve and print out everything I need to finish it and get it done already!

It's in pink, bright green, red, brown and turquoise blue. It looks better than it sounds. Seriously.

The album is a plastic SEI album that I bought on sale years ago, the cover Is going to be decorated with vinyl, I've never done that yet.. Yay for Cricut die cutting machines!