Playing with the Stamp of the Month

I just adore the "Illuminate" stamp set - the stamp of the month for November. I had a lovely play with it last week and here are some of the things I produced:

The Stamp of the Month is only available for a limited time, so if you love it, buy it NOW! You can pay $29, or only $5 when you make a purchase of $75 or more.

A full album in 3 days

A full 15-page album in three days? Not possible, I hear you cry! But it is, and it wasn't because I did nothing else for three days. Read on and you will learn how it can be done.

Besides being a quick album, it was also very affordable. The whole album cost less than $60 to put together. And again, it wasn't because I was scrimping. I didn't buy my supplies from the bulk bin at the Warehouse when they were all tatty and on sale. I used quality Close to My heart products and I love the result.

Okay, here's the back story: My uncle turned 80 this month and to celebrate the occasion, most of the family got together - cousins, cousins' children, aunts and uncles. You get the picture. One of those events which are few and far between because the families are so far flung these days. You really only do it for funerals, and who's got the camera out then? But this was different: a lot of fun; a weekend full of joyous moments. So I snapped constantly, and I ended up with just over 100 photos that were usable.

I printed them off and waited for the album to arrive (this was the longest part). This is what I bought:
Outdoor Denim 12x12" Faux Leather Album - $23*
It comes with 5 sleeves, and I only needed to add one more - $1
I added 1 x portrait sleeve - $1.45
I added 8 x landscape sleeves - $11.60
Tommy paper packet (6x cardstock and 6x papers) - $17
I added 4 extra sheets of Colonnial White cardstock - $3


The total cost for the finished 15 page album was $57.05. Brilliant!
I didn't buy embellishments - I made these using stamps. I only used one paper packet, choosing instead to create a texture if I wanted one. I have now four sets of background stamps - distressing, geometric, etc. It gives me a wide variety of backgrounds to create in my chosen colours.
Additional supplies which I already had include my three ink pads, my Outdoor Denim Chevron Ribbon, snips, my stamp sets, my blocks, and hemp.

The key to the speed was choosing which photos to turn into scrapbook pages, and which to simply add to the album in the multi-pockets. I made three group photos into enlargements and made nice pages of these, plus I chose a few more key photos that I thought were beautiful or deserved journaling. In the end I only made 10 actual scrapbook pages, the other photos were added in to multi pocket sleeves - either portrait or landscape.

The other thing that helped with the time factor was having a layout in mind. This ALWAYS helps me. Here I turned to my big stash of layout sketches, plus the "Make it from the Heart" books. They are easily adapted and come with such clear cutting patterns.



Creating co-ordination across the album was easy: I simply kept to the Tommy colour range. My three colours of ink were Outdoor Denim, Desert Sand and Ruby, matching the cardstocks in the paper packet (Cranberry would have been better, but I had Ruby and it worked fine.)

* I got my album half price... this is a wonderful saving! All you have to do is be a hostess for a party. Get a few orders together and have an "online" party, or an "actual" party where we make a project.