celebrating 42 - mini-album!

I finished my mini about my birthday a couple weeks ago! It was fun to scrap pictures that were brand new.I had them developed about 3 days after they were taken and started the mini-album that day.
It took one week to make but it was a busy week and I just did it in snippets here and there.
It's just fun and simple and it and doesn't tell a story, but it captures a moment in time and a memory.

I don't have much journaling in this because everyone in the photos is in my family and let's face it - we all know who Grandma is, right?
The front cover tells the date - I am 42 so 2012. 'Nuf said.

Here it is! Hope you enjoy!

I have a huge armoire drawer FULL of blank mini-albums (more on that later) so I pulled out a 7Gypsies that was 4x4 since my pictures were small. I had the pics printed 4-up on 5x7's.
I have one stack of papers that are "my favorites" and new-ish so I started by going through that and quickly found this fun, My Mind's Eye paper with banners on it.
I love the colors and the blue polka dot on the back so I quickly decided to base the album on it.

When I saw the pictures and decided to make a mini - I knew I wanted it to say this on the front.
I envisioned a large 42 and something else saying "celebrating."
After picking the album, I took the binding off, traced the covers on the back of the pattern and cut those out, then went thru the rest of my "favorites" paper and pulled some with similar colors.

As you can see, all of the papers do not match perfectly but they're fun and have the feel I wanted.

So I cut the inside pages down to 4x4 and then using one of the original inside pages as a guide, I traced the slits on the edge and cut them out with an exacto. That was the most time consuming part of the entire project.
Once I had all the papers cut and glued back to back, I slid them in the binding, pushed it shut and started adding the pictures, journaling and embellishments.

Here are the inside pages:

As you probably guessed, I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the 42 on the front and the blue journaling frames. Everything else was just little bits in my stash.

This week, I'll be sharing about how I ran things thru the printer, lining them up perfectly and how great it was to have my color bins to choose my tiny embellishments from.

Truthfully, I could have probably kept tweaking and adding to this project for another week but I'm trying to let go of wanting to make things perfect and just have FUN. What a concept!

Now my desk is one big mess!!!! Gotta get on that quick so I can start something else.

Happy Tuesday!