Fire Station Mini Album

I just shared this mini album on the IBSS blog, but thought that I'd also post here. I made this album for Mr. Moonie's first trip to the fire station. It was a very exciting morning and I needed to document it for him in a special way. He loves this little album. I mainly used the IBSS May kit, Hope Chest, but added a bunch of the little goodies from my own stash.

You can see that I reinforced the holes by adhering small circles of contrasting pattern paper.

I placed the left side picture askew so that I wouldn't punch a hole right through his face. When you are making a mini, you must be aware of where holes and staples will go before you adhere everything. That is why I always punch my holes first and if I need to adhere something over the hole, I'll repunch. That way, I don't have any surprises.

One of my major techniques is to balance various colors and elements. You can see on the page on the right that I have a triangle of red circles. I placed them around his pictures so that you are drawn to his face. If you look closely, you can see that I did this with the white buttons too.

On the back page, I used some black chenille pipe cleaners as photo corners. The texture is lost in the picture, but it was fun to add such a different supply. I simply stapled them in place. (I stapled onto the picture then adhered the picture to the mini-album, that way I didn't have any random staple rears on the other side of my page.
I'm still in the middle of studio organization and clean-up. I've been going through all of my supplies and getting rid of boxes of stuff. (Actually, I'm donating it to the Toodles and Sweetpea scrapbook supply. All I have to say is that they are lucky girls!) It feels so good to purge supplies that don't make me happy anymore. I'm realizing that all those things that I keep that don't bring me joy are only holding me back and cluttering me emotionally. A few months ago, I did the same purging exercise in my clothes closet and it was a liberating feeling. I may have less pairs of pants, but the ones that I have, I love and I enjoy wearing. Now dressing isn't such a major chore in the morning. I'm hoping that when I'm done with my studio, I have the same feeling of lightness and joy.