40 Days of Love

Our church is doing a 40 days of love spiritual emphasis ~ starts Sunday. I have decided to shower a little girl that I sponsor through Child International (AKA Christian Children's Fund) with love. I am going to mail her one little thing every single day for 40 days. These will be cards, ATCs, mini books, stickers, tags, just little things. I'm going to include letters and Bible verses and hopefully remind her of God's great love for her as well as my own. I will have to mail two on Fridays and two on Mondays because our little post office is closed on Saturdays, and of course Sundays. And I don't know what will happen on her end, if things will pile up before they give them to her or if she'll get them each day. I think I'll number them for her in case they pile up a bit.

Handbound journals

I have been making a few handbound journals using a chain stitch on the binding. Here is one I actually sold on Etsy. I love these papers and you'll never guess where I got them ~ wallpaper sample books that I got at a garage sale for $1.00 each. (I purchased three of them.) There are so many gorgeous papers in each one. I love them!

Fabric Mini Books - Yum

I have been so getting into making fabric mini albums of all types. My biggest inspiration has been the book, "Make Spectacula Books" by Sue Astroth. I love using up all these pieces of fabric I have. And next year when I'm out garage sale shopping I'm going to grab all that fabric I always see and think, yeah, that's great, but what would I do with all that fabric? NOW I know! Here are a couple of matchbook mini albums I've made.

Valentine's Fat Book Pages

We're always having fun on our mini-booksYahoo! group.
Lately we have been very much into fat book pages. These are 4 x 4 pages. Each member makes a page to send to the other members who signed up and when you are done you can bind them all into a little book. These here are all the cards I received for our Valentine's Day fat book page swap. I love each and every one of them so much. And they come from all over the world - Haiti, Ukraine, Luxumbourg, England and the United States.

Vintage Christmas Fat book pages

Our Yahoo! Mini-Books group is doing a fat book swap with the theme of Vintage Christmas. Here are all 8 of my pages that I sent out. I'm getting them in now from the other group members and they are gorgeous! I can't wait to put them all together into a mini album!

The Creative Memories Way

I'm reading a really good book right now, "Creating Keepsake Albums and Building Your Family Legacy ... The Creative Memories Way." I actually started scrapbooking through a Creative Memories party that my sister had at her house. Funny thing is, she didn't really take to the scrapbooking bug like I did. Of course, I've gotten sidetracked into all sorts of fun papercrafts! But this book has really reminded me that I need to be doing my albums! I need to be recording that family history for future generations! I have done 6 pages since starting to read this book. I'm so proud of myself! The link above is for half.com. It's a great place to get used books. I don't know if you'll be able to find this book on there, but it's the first place I always check when I want a book. The prices are fabulous!

Open to Suggestions

Do you remember those gum wrapper chains we used to make as kids? Well, a friend of my daughters has this really cool purse she got in Mexico that is made out of gum wrappers. So I got on the Internet and found some instructions on making a gum wrapper purse. I guess people are making them out of potato chip bags, cookie bags, magazine strips, etc. Well, I have a ton of magazines sitting around for collage and such so I decided to use those. I started making the purse, but as I'm plugging along I thought, oh, I could make an art journal or a mini book. So I made this for the front, and I was going to put some watercolor paper inside and make another like this for the back. My plan had been to bind it with my Bind-It-All machine, but it is too thick! I know they have a new machine out that might be able to get through it, but it's a bit pricey and I don't have one yet. The Big Bite would also probably work ~ but I don't have that either. My hole punch won't go through it. So I am open to suggestions on a binding for this book. In the meantime, back to my purse ... By the way the magazine papers are cut to 4-1/2 x 2 and you sew the rows together with fishing line or I got some Tandy black waxy thread at Ben Franklins. Please help me figure out how to bind this book! I'm looking for ideas!