Stamps & Stretchy Pants

At the start of April I posted on my private group stampin’ page a request for those who wanted to participate in a card mailing challenge for the month of April. I set up an exclusive page for us (12 members in total) and each day our goal was to post a mailbox selfie of us sending out a card. Let me tell you, these ladies rose to the challenge typically sending more than one card a day for the ENTIRE month. One of the members sent 150 cards prior to Easter to her church family! The best part of this challenge was it gave many of us a purpose during this challenging time. It forced us to leave our homes every day to post a picture at our mailbox or post office and I looked forward to seeing everyone with their pets or their kids assisting in sending out these cards. Think of how many happy smiles were on the other end of those cards. I have been known to say that a card is a “happiness with a fold in the middle”!

I wanted to share one of the cards that I made in bulk to send out over the course of this month. Many of these cards also had pictures inside of me and the recipient as well as I am someone who regularly prints photos and I wanted to share some happy memories with them!

This card features products from the new Ornate Garden suite and Designer Series paper from the Peaceful Poppies Suite.

The sentiment is from the Sale-a-bration stamp set Rise and Shine

When cleaning and reorganizing my craft room lately, I came across a mini album I had made a few years back and was inspired to recreate it with some new supplies. I used the Copper Dotted Treat Bags as the base. I love using a bag or envelope as a mini album base because it comes with built in storage for pull outs so to speak. I decided to use the Ornate Gardens Specialty DSP and colour palette to embellish my album. Of course you can use any DSP and coordinating colors.

To make this album you will need 5 Copper Dotted Treat Bags. This will allow you to have 8 pictures in your album as the cover bag does not hold any photos.

The spine to wrap around your album is a 4 3/4 x 4 piece of card stock scored @ 2 on the short side. I then ran each edge through the Ornate Layers die to give it a bit of detail. You can use a punch or any die to add a decorative edge. I stacked all of the bags together and used Tombow adhesive to glue the spine to the front and back bags. I then secured each inside bag with Tombow. The ribbon died around the spine is purely decorative, it does not hold anything together. It is the new Ornate Garden ribbon from the Ornate Garden Suite. It comes in a two pack with Old Olive and Terracotta Tile.

The outside photo mats are 4 1/4 x 4 1/4 so you can add a 4 x 4 photo to them. I always try and keep my measurements simple for my stampers. I then embellished each page with pieces of DSP and some floral images and sentiments that spoke to the pictures. The Gilded Gems are awesome and I couldn’t resist adding a few into the album. Overall, the album is very flat, I did not want a lot of bulk.

The pullout pages are 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 and I trimmed the photos to fit. I added tabs using the Circle Tab punch in Whisper White so they blended into the album. And I kept all of the embellishments flat (no dimensional, a real challenge for me!) so they could slide in and out of the album easily.

I chose a sentiment for the front that was neutral for whatever photos I wanted to add to the inside. It is from the Capture the Good stamp set in the Idea Book & Catalogue. I layered it with some circle punches and the Label Me Lovely Punch (from the Occasions Catty).