Bringing back the blog.... Sharing My Favorite Mini Book Kits I created

I've been helping Susan at EMI Scrapbooking with the store blog... it's looking great!  The store is looking great too - so many new product lines, of course every one of Teresa Collins lines are well stocked, crops, & the mini books & kits business is booming.  New kits will be added to the blog when they are available for sale & will have a paypal purchase button right there.  Hope you check back often or sign up to follow EMI - lots of inspiration & happenings posted daily.  If you're in the Atlanta area drop by & say hello.

This is a picture of the Teresa Collins section from a couple months ago

I'm still creating mini books & kits for EMI.  I've been so bad about sharing them here on the blog... I added pictures of the covers over to the right on the slide show.  

Here's a few of my favorites.

Making Memories Valentine line (I miss that company... 

Their scalloped ledger paper is an all time favorite background - I still have 1 piece left & waiting for just the right project

Echo Park collections are always great to work with.

Love the sticker embellishment sheets 

This is an all time favorite using Graphic 45.

I cut out the "window" & hinged it so it would open to reveal another beautiful image inside on the cover.

So many great embellishments can be cut out of the papers. 

several of the pages.  Filled with half pages using the postcards 

that filled one of the piece of patterned paper

This one was a labor of love.  

Each page is an envelope & I hand laced the book together for each of the kits. 

My favorite Glitz line ever - love all the soft colors & vintage prints... very shabby chic

Here's the inside of  one of the pages.  

I put tabs on the card enclosed in each envelope page

Rhonna Ferrar did a cool line for My Mind's Eye

I love the kites 

I used canvas fabric for several of the pages - stitching near the edges but loving the fraying

another of the pages - love the pre-designed clusters on the paper 

Teresa Collins collections are so well designed & thought out - I love

how easily the mini book comes together

Another Teresa Collins collection - classic colors but fresh shades of green & red

This one is so different than my usual 6x8 size....

Tall & skinny using Studio Calico school collection

Perfect for teen boy photos

I did several of this accordion bound spine books

using My Mind's Eye's collection.

Loved this boy one with Navy & Gold

another MME more feminine book

Simple Stories collections are fabulous - they give you so many 

journaling & embellishing images just on a piece of patterned paper.  

Budget friendly without sacrificing the style & layers we all love.

6x12 in mini gives plenty of room for the photos of new little one.

Another My Mind's Eye...

I love the colors & patterns in their Lost & Found lines....

However the glitter became a running joke - after creating 3 mini book kits

I had inches of glitter on my desk & all over not just my scrap room but the whole house.

I was covered in glitter for days since their glitter.

You're probably thinking so..... but I'm not a glitter person lol 

I will not even buy greeting cards with glitter on them.

So Susan knows better than to ask me to create with glitter paper 

I have a ban on it.

This album was beautiful though glitter & all

Well I hope you enjoyed looking at the covers of some of my books.  I'm hoping to post a couple times a week what I'm creating for the store & for myself.  

Take some time to be creative today,

Happy Mother's Day & What's Up

First I wanted to say Happy Mother's Day to my Mom.... love this picture of her taken a couple years ago when she treated me to a couple weeks in Destin FL (I love the beach)

Brandon will be taking me to the zoo... it's the last day to see the panda twins before they are taken to China to live.  I'm a crazy person yes I picked the zoo for my Mother's Day treat - a kid at heart when it comes to animals.  Pandas, elephants, anything from Australia & of course owls are some of my favorites.  They were so cute when they were little - I hate that I didn't get their earlier but I'm getting to see them that's all that counts right.

The past 12 months have been really challenging.  Having my elderly aunt (who's a fellow "sicky") & dealing with a new blood condition from lupus.  It's branching out from my kidneys to "party" elsewhere in the body & it's no fun.  I've never felt such profound exhaustion before.  All my life I've been a person who didn't require lots of sleep now I have what I call "Rip van Winkle Days" where I do little else but sleep - literally 14-17 hours a day no sooner waking up from a several hour nap to immediately fall back asleep.  This is so NOT ME!  Adding this to the other health problems that I've had for years has forced to realize my physical limits.  Denying it just filled me with stress & frustration.  I have good days & bad days.  Right now even though the doctors haven't hit on the perfect treatments to give me I'm doing ok.  To tweak my outlook I started looking for "One Fun Thing" to do daily... it's a relative thing depending on my energy/pain level for the day but it really is helping me stay positive.  On a bad day it may be to just sit out in the yard but that's ok.  The next day it may be to go somewhere (as long as I don't get too close to other people since I pick up EVERYTHING).  I wear masks sometimes but for some reason breathing in my own exhale gives me asthma (and I'm not going on O2 if I can help it lol) so I'm always scoping out who is around & assessing the risk then making mad dashes away from people.... scientific probably not but so far so good.  If I do something one day the next is "pay the piper day" where I lay low & rest because I have no choice.  Hopefully the treatments will start working soon - auto immune problems are so hard to deal with & control.

I've been enjoying the flowers & shrubs waking up in the garden.  The roses are going like gang busters.  The boys used to buy me an heirloom rose bush each year when we lived around the corner from Natures 5th Season in Lawrenceville.  They closed that location & in 2012 closed the Dacula location too.  These roses come with us when we move.  Here's photos of a few of them

This opened to look like.... 

This beautiful peony looking rose that smells amazing

It's bigger than a grapefruit  

This climber will be covered in a few days with pink blooms

that smell nice on the front porch

This one is peach and doesn't look like much

but the smell is heavenly

To protect them naturally (we had some aphids) I released some 

Lady Bugs that Pikes Nursery was giving away last week.

Per the directions I stored them in the refrigerator until

evening & I watered prior to their release so it would be

a good environment for them to stay

Eating the aphids right away  

Get on out you last few stragglers 

It took no time for them to start moving around & "getting frisky" 

to create more aphid eating bugs.... 

Can you tell it doesn't take much to make my "one fun thing" list

I was able to create a few mini books that EMI Scrapbooking will be kitting in the near future.

Here's a sneak peak using the new lines by My Mind's Eye

Hope you have a happy mother's day

Kits & Pre-mades & some enabling.....

I dropped off some kits & pre made mini albums last week at the store.

Here are a couple of photos if you are interested in purchasing contact Susan at emiscrapbooking@aol.com for more information.  Follow EMI on Facebook to know all the latest news here.

The first one is a cute little boy book.

Premade (it comes with rings I was just out of them here at the house)

Chipboard Cover 

Lots of heavy weight double sided patterned paper pages 

Here are photos of just a few

This one is a kit all precut & easy for you to put together

The entire mini has chipboard pages.

Here's the cover. 

The theme is perfect for those 4th of July photos

And a few of the pages

Now for some enabling....

Joann's is clearing out a bunch of products

I caught the tail end of the sale but still got some good tools that I will so use.

Look at these big Fiskars punches $4.97 each perfect for journaling spots

Lots of Tim Holtz dies for $3.97

I thought this smaller zig zag would be great for mini book edges 

I love cogs & gears for guy pages so I was excited to get this punch on the left for $3.97

To make your own chipboard just punch on kraft 4x and adhere together then punch again in whatever you want the top to look like & adhere.  Very inexpensive way to get the look we love.

I couldn't believe how cute Heidi Grace new lines were.

I love the colors & those packages of die cut fabric flowers will save me so much time on my Brave Girls Funky Flowers art journal.  I've been cutting out individual petals by hand. (they are more artsy looking cut by the petal but I don't need to spend that much time/effort on each page)

They were on sale 40% off

I love Jenni Bowlin punches by Fiskars.  

I will use this roladex style a lot 

I used my 40% off coupon to get this one

Teresa Collins released a ton of different unmounted rubber stamp sets with Fiskars

Each collection is so pretty & very usable.... 

they sure will be getting inky & not just sitting around in anyone's stash 

Thanks for stopping by