A Work in Progress

First and foremost, let me apologize for the photos. I took them late last night and the light was obviously less than perfect. With that being said, on with the show.

I checked out the March/April issue of Creating Keepsakes from my local library. I hate to say it but out of every issue, I usually only find one or two layouts that I end up liking. Most of the others just aren't me. I found My Other Passion on page 81 created by Jen Jockisch and immediately wanted to try it. It's bright, it's colorful and it's about one of my passions as well... books! Jen's layout was done in 12x12 but I decided to do mine in 8.5x11.

It all started with some 1" round punches of various colored cardstock and paper.

Jen's background is solid white and I wanted to incorporate books into mine. I opened Word and using the CK Alis Hand font, I added books I've read until I filled the page. I then printed it out on bright white cardstock.

I know I've read a lot of books but I didn't realize how much once I started listing them. This page is about a quarter of the amount of books I've read. Or ones that I have listed on Goodreads.

Once the cardstock was printed I trimmed about 1/4" off each side and about 1/2" off the top and bottom and I also rounded each corner. I decided to use black textured cardstock as my background and cut that down to 8.5x11. I then glued my text page onto my background.

I played around with the positioning of the circles until they all seemed to fit. I then took a photo so I could remember where each one went once I started gluing them down.

Jen had her circles all down the left hand side. I tried this at first and wasn't pleased with the way it looked. (I'm also using smaller circles than she did.) So in the end I decided on a cluster in the bottom left hand corner. It frees up some more space for me to use.

I'm still waiting on a Cricut. Maybe I'll get one for my birthday next month. The only thing I would really like it for is to do letters. Anyways, since I am Circutless I found some stickers that have been kicking around for a while. The were all different colors so I grabbed my trusty old black Sharpie and went to town. These ended up in the top left hand corner.

And so we have our finished-for-now product. This last photo looks so much better than the others. I took it outside this morning in natural light. I still have to take a photo of some of my books and I'll add some journaling as well.

I'll keep you guys posted.

Happy Hump Day!

My Many Projects

I've had this sketchbook kicking around since last semester and I figured I'd finally put it to good use. I've been doing random collages in it. So far I have the three below. Eventually I think I'm gonna start following The Dares and just do them in here so they're all nice and neat and in one place. (Click on any of the photos to see a larger version.)

The first is a random jumble of current obsessions. You'll find everything from Starbucks, Sephora, my iPod Touch, a bitchin' pair of boots from Journey's and tons of crazy other stuff. I'd say I'm about 80% done with this. I keep finding small items to add.

This second one is all things beauty and mostly cut from my Sephora and Benefit catalogs. I looooove me some Sephora! I'd scale this one at 80% completed as well. I think I'm gonna add some jewels or glitter to really make it girly. Some text will probably get thrown in as well.

This one is pretty much self explanatory. I wreaked havoc on my game informer mags. 70% done. I need to add more pics and find something to go in the bottom left corner.

Initially I was going to lump my Provincetown and whale watch stuff from last August into one but I've got so many good photos that I decided to break it up into two. Or maybe three. Who knows. We'll see how it goes. I'm on the fence about getting another sketch book for my travels or getting a snazzy three ring binder and doing them on 8.5" x 11" paper stuck inside page protectors.

And yes, we really were that close. It was amazing!

And going back even further (I'm a total slacker, I know) I still have all of my goodies from when Dan and I visited MFA last March. We had so much fun and I stayed in the Egyptian section for probably over an hour.

I'd love to go again next time I'm back home.

Lastly, this was started forever ago. Last April or May, maybe. As I completed each task from my 101 Project, I was planning on scrapping a little page on it. These pages are about 6"x9". As you can see they're all still blank.

Never a dull moment. And you know what they say about idle hands...