Project Summer - and the sneak night giveaway

Last year I created an album capturing all of our summer adventures in one place as part of my summer assignments from Scrapbook and Cards Today magazine.  My family has enjoyed it so much, I thought I’d make another one this year.

Say Hello to Project Summer.

The idea is simple.  If you are on a vacation at the beach, document it.  Staying home this summer?  Did you have a fun day in the backyard or at a community event?  Document it.  The 4^th of July?  Documented.   And then highlight those fun times in a summer mini album.  It’s a little bit of Project Life, a bit of Project 12, and takes the pressure off individual albums for each event, or that feeling like you need to capture every little detail on a separate layout.

When I saw the journaling books in the shop I was excited about them.  Chipboard covers and 40 journaling pages inside makes for a lot of of memories that can be captured.  I chose the 8x10 Chevron album. 

One thing that tends to keep me away from mini albums, however, is the wear and tear.  These books get looked at.  They get used.  And with a summer album, I plan to take it places, which increases the likelihood of use.  To alleviate some of that anxiety, I decided to protect the cover of my album.   

1. First, I spray painted it.  Well, first I splattered a bit of ink, didn’t care for it, and then I spray painted it white. 

2.     After it was painted, it was time to add confetti.  I used two different hole punches, as well as a butterfly punch from Martha Stewart, and added a bunch of confetti using the Take Note Collection.

3.     I needed a title, so I created one with my Silhouette.  You can download your own .studio file here.

4.     I layered my title piece over a doily, placed it on my cover, sprinkled it with the confetti, and slipped the whole cover into an 8.5 x 11 page protector.  And then I sewed it shut.  And sewed around the edges.  And sewed around the circle.  And created grid lines so I could keep my confetti spread out a bit.  After sewing, I turned the page protector over, pulled the top thread through the last stitch, tied knots, and trimmed the ends.

5.     Except for the paper bits and some of the stitchery, I did the same thing with my back cover.

6.     Because the album is smaller than an 8x5 x 11 page protector, I used a blade and trimmed the edges.  Then I used my cropadile to punch two holes in it and added some binder rings, and voila, Summer Mini Album begun.

TIP:  I found some old 6x8 page protectors I thought would be fun for memorabilia, so I made sure 
to keep the hole placement on those in mind when  punching the holes for my album.

7.      I want to keep the journaling pages with my album, so I punched two holes with my cropadile in those and added the whole notebook to my album.

I’m still in school this summer and will be missing a family reunion that my hubby and the girls are going to be attending.  I’ll be slaving away with the books while they will be lounging by the pool with their cousins.  HMPH.  With that in mind, I wanted them to be able to document their adventures without hassle, and without me there, so I put together some of the inside pages for them so all they had to do was think about photos and do some journaling.

To create this page I trimmed some patterned paper for some color, and added some washi tape over the the holes to add some reinforcement to the journaling pages.  I also created some pages with fabrips, which work great!  To add some extra oomph I stitched down the left between the punched holes and the edges of the paper as well.  Then I simply added some fun Hero Arts/Studio Calico stamps to make the pages fun, and a few mini staples.

With photos in mind, my immediate thought was to use Postal Pix.  You can order them from your phone so my husband with his Iphone 4s (and a better camera than my Iphone 4, double HMPH) could snap photos, add an Instagram wash (Earlybird is my favorite) and then upload them to Postal Pix to quickly and easily add to our albums later.

My favorite size is 4x4, so with that in mind, I created a couple of templates so that when it came time to document the day, they could be placed on the page en lieu of the photos themselves so that journaling could be done around them.   He can trace around the templates with a pencil and maybe note inside the box what the photo will be of.   When the photos show up in the mail, it’s then just a matter of adhering them.  No need to fuss over photo placement, etc.

Seems simple enough for documenting on the road.  Hopefully Steve can figure it out.  J

Another reason I wanted to keep those 40 journaling pages with my book is so that my kids can contribute to this family album.  We went camping over Spring Break, and it was fun to just hand over a sheet of paper and have the kids document their trip.  Morgan’s favorite part was riding her scooter.

I’m really looking forward to this album, and will have more to share with you as the summer progresses.  I'm going to be posting both on the Studio Calico blog and here.  If you want to see all the posts as the summer moves along, just chose the "project summer" label.  :)

Want to play along?  I hope to see your Project Summer album pages in the gallery.  I’ll be looking for them!  Link them here too!  My kids just love looking through mini albums, and I'm excited to put one together that we all contribute too.  What fun that will be to look at down the road!  

With that said, the Sneak Night giveaway has been generously donated by Postal Pix, to help make that summer mini album a more affordable success!

Check it out.  

Have a great Wednesday!  Davinie