Fadedwords

…I’ve been pretty busy the last few months working on a really big project for someone pretty darn important to me.  It’s Bethany!  Her birthday is tomorrow (woot) and I wanted to get her something really nifty that she would like a lot.  I decided way back in about August that I wanted to create a Disney scrapbook for her, which I knew would be a pretty big undertaking because there were quite a lot of photos.  I had been thinking about my own album, and knew I would end up splitting it into parks because I plan to use pictures from all of the people who went!   I knew that I wanted what I did for Bethany to fit in one album, and I wanted to focus on us rather than my family… although I also knew there would be some shots that I had to include of my family just because they were a pretty important part of the trip.

I started the album in February (I think) and have been working on it steadily since then.  It began with a monumental trip to Archiver’s to get supplies (paper, stickers, album, etc) and morphed into working 1-3 hours every night that I had free to get it done.  This isn’t a complaint, just an observation of what goes into a project like this.  I loved making the book because it allowed me time to reflect on one of the best times I’ve ever had.  The past few months have been incredibly stressful, and I haven’t had a lot of time to spend with Bethany.  Doing this album reminded me of such a wonderful time and that even though we are both super duper busy, she is my best friend… and one of the best friends I’ve ever had.

I gave her the book this morning, because tomorrow will be busy for both of us even though we’re going to be in the same place for much of the evening.  I wanted her to have it and be able to see her reaction.  I wrapped it in a huge box filled with packing peanuts so she wouldn’t be able to guess what it was right off.  The album is so heavy that she had to get on a chair to get it out!  When she realized what it was she looked at me with big eyes and said, several times, “You can’t give this to me!” Hehe.  Silly girl, I already did!  Obviously there hasn’t been time to look at it, but she’s told me every time she sees me how much she loves it, which is good because for awhile I wondered if she would hate it! (ps- I’m slightly insecure about myself sometimes).

I posted pictures of the album on my shutterfly account.  If you have the password, super!  You can go look.  If you would like the password, let me know and I’ll get it to you.  Here are some highlights of the book though!

It’s pretty big… 90+ pages.

This is from the day when we found Chip and Dale!

Animal Kingdom… this is one of my favorite layouts from the entire album.

This was the coolest parade ever.

I ended up adding the title ‘Favorite Things’ to the Clydesdale page after I had already snapped the photos of all the pages.

A page from the Epcot day.

It came out really, really well… when I was finished I was very proud and I just hoped she would like it.  She really does, and I can’t wait until she has a real chance to sit down and look through it and see everything.

I will do an album for myself of the trip, but for now I’m taking a break from Disney photos!!  My next scrapbook project is going to be my horseback riding album.  I am doing a big crop on Memorial Day with some of my favorite scrapaholics, and I’m looking forward to starting that.  Also on the list of scraps-to-do is to get caught up with scrapping Merlin’s photos (I’m incredibly behind).  I have an album to do for my Mom as her belated Mother’s Day gift too, as soon as I get the photos.  She and my Dad went on a cruise and I’m going to do an album for her.  Bethany asked me the other day to make her an album of the trip she and her boyfriend took to NYC over spring break, and I will do that one as well!  I would like to scrap my recent trip to Biltmore, as well as starting the girls’ album.  Right now I don’t have a ton of pictures for that, simply because there aren’t a ton of pictures that have been taken so far this year!  We’ll need to work on that.

So in case you were wondering, I have been a busy scrapper the past few months.  It was well worth it though, because Bethany really liked the album.  It gives me such great joy to make something like that and have someone love it.  I’m looking forward to doing some of my own projects for a little while, and then starting in on some more that will go to others.

It’s been a productive morning.  I finished my Zoo album.  I realize I went to the Zoo 9 months ago, but I had several other projects that had a deadline!

Click on the image to visit the album!

I also took the time to take photos of my Wrightsville Beach 2009 album that I finished several weeks ago…

Again, click on the picture to go see all of the photos of the album.

I have several projects that I need to start working on or finish up now, including finishing Merlin’s last year album and starting this year’s.  I want to do an album that will house all my horseback riding photographs from when I was a teenager until now.

I’m tossing around the idea of doing a portfolio of all of my photography.  I would use this as I move toward a place where I will start charging a fee to do portraits for people.  Still not entirely sure what I need to do or how to do it.  We’ll see.

In other news?  It snowed again last night!  I woke up to this:

I didn’t take many photos but you can click on that picture to see all of them.  Thankfully this snowfall did not come with 2 inches of ice on top of it.  I should have no problem getting out and doing things this weekend, and we shouldn’t lose any more school days.  I wish that it hadn’t snowed though; I really wanted to ride this weekend.

It’s been awhile since I updated my Scrapbooking Layout album in the gallery, so I took some time to do so today.  You can prance by and see:

Andrea’s Wedding Album

The Girls 2007-2008

Kate and Jake Year 3

I’m working on a very large project right now, and about 1/3 done with it.  Keep your fingers crossed that I get it finished in time.

I couldn’t post about these earlier, as they were gifts for people who read the blog.  I made both Jake and my Mom scrapbooks for Christmas.  My Mom’s was a large album full of all the baby pictures I have of me.  She didn’t have these photos, and I wanted to be sure she did.  You can find the pictures of this album here.

For Jake I did an album of his motorcycle trip that he took with his friend Brian in October.  It’s just the photos he took, as Brian hasn’t posted his pictures yet.  :-p (hint hint hint).  I’ll add them as soon as he has posted them.  You can find pictures of what I’ve done here.

They both seemed to really like their albums, which makes the months of work absolutely worth it.  I was most worried about Jake liking his, as a scrapbook isn’t typically something I’d make for a grown man.  *shrug* He said that he liked it a lot though, so that made me happy.

Tonight we are going to my friend Bre’s house for a New Year’s celebration.  It should be pretty laid back and fun.  Happy New Year everyone.

So last night I couldn’t sleep.  I’m not sure why, but at 1:30 I was out of bed and coming out to the living room to get on the computer for a bit.  I started looking at craigslist for some scrapbooking stuff, because Bre was mentioning to me that she had gotten some great deals on things from there.  As I was surfing I saw a headline that said “Cricut and two cartridges for sale.” I glanced at the date and saw it had been posted near the beginning of August.  Even though I was pretty sure it had been sold by now, I emailed the seller.  I went back to bed awhile after that.

This morning I got an email from the seller telling me that it was still available!  I was shocked and immediately emailed back asking when/if I could come by and take a look at it.  She said that this afternoon was fine.  So I took Jake with me… because you never know who the serial killers are until it’s too late.

The seller actually lived in the subdivision that two of my friends from work live in, across the street from one and around the corner from another.   The woman selling the machine was incredibly nice, and not a serial killer.  I asked if I could try the Cricut out and she got me some paper.  It made a good indent on thick cardstock, and I guessed that the blade might need changing.  So I asked if I could try on some thinner paper.  She got me a piece of that and it cut instantly and perfectly.

So today I got a Cricut for a ridiculously good deal.  I paid only $150 for the machine, cutting mat, essential toolkit, and two font cartridges (Jasmine and All Mixed Up).  I haven’t bought one previously because the cheapest I’ve seen the machine is $184 at Wally World.  The cartridges even there are $59.  I got a really, really wonderful deal.

I stopped by Michael’s after we ate lunch and got two new cutting mats and replacement blades.  I think I’m also going to bring it to work with me to see if Bre can help me get it set up properly.  Be prepared for a list of font cartridges that I want to appear on my wishlist!