What a Fun Afternoon!

Aloha, all!

     Today my husband and I were treated to a visit from a fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrator from my home state of Ohio.  Connie Babbert – one of my favorite Stampin' Up! designer demonstrators – and her husand, Eric, are visiting on our island and drove over to see us.  As with most visitors, the first item of business is to tour my husband's garden.  Then we had a lunch where we all got to sit around and chat and just had a wonderful time.

     While we had a short "tour" of my Craft Room, there was, alas, no crafting on the schedule.  When it's just a demonstrator visiting, that's fine. We couldn't ignore our husbands for that long, though. But we did carry out a traditional sharing of handmade gifts.

     For my gift, I walked around our garden yesterday and took photos of places in our garden that I was sure they'd see and like to remember.  Then I made an accordion fold album to hold the photos.  Rather than add a title to each photo, I printed out the name of each item featured in a list that I put on the back of the album. 

     This is the front of the album.  As you may remember when I've made these albums before, I've made a separate cover with chipboard to hold the album.  But, by the time I finished layering each photo up with cardstock, the album seemed to be sturdy enough not to need a separate cover.

     At first, I couldn't decide what to do in terms of a design for the cover. Then I had a teensy brainstorm, and went over to the Create With Connie and Mary blog to see if they had a sketch idea that might work.  Sure enough, this week's sketch was just right!  My version of the sketch isn't fancy, but it accomplished what I wanted it to accomplish.

 

     This is the envelope that I made to hold the album, using a sheet from the soon-to-be-retired Backgrounds Designer Series Paper Stack.  The little palm tree is one of the stamps in the Greetings From photopolymer stamp set.  This is a fun little tree, and I've used it often, especially as it's one of the rare current tropical designs that Stampin' Up! sells.

     I chose as the colors for my album Wild Wasabi, Tangelo Twist and Hello Honey.  The colors seemed to do a good job of accenting the photos that I took for the album.

     Definitely fun getting ready for Connie and Eric's visit, and lots of fun being together. Just not enough time!

Retiring Product Alert

The only products used in this project that will be retiring are the Backgrounds Designer Series Paper Stacks, both the Wild Wasabi (used for the envelope) and the Tangelo Twist (used for the belly band around the envelope).  The Greetings From photopolymer stamp set isn't in the Stampin' Up! catalog.  But it, and many other sets not in the catalog, continue to be available while supplies last from the Stampin' Up! website.

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