my muse

Good Day & Good Morning

So today I want to share this mini that I made for my best friend for her birthday. I made this last fall with the idea to give it to her for Christmas but then came up with the boxed mini gift instead so I saved this one until now.

I think that I've mentioned this before that I use Tami sometimes as my guinea pig, so the idea of this book came as a trial to doing the soccer & golf albums for my nephew.  I wanted to tryout my idea for the pocket /tag pages to see how well they would work after being bound up and well... as you may very well know if you checked out the soccer post.... it turned out better than I had hoped.

So for this mini I used the Mariposa collection from Die Cuts With a View and really enjoyed the bright colors once again, so I'm excited that I still have a ton of this collection left to do some other paper projects with.  I chose this collection for a reason...more often than not if I want to attempt something new I turn to my muse and this collection represents her in a very real way to me.

So from working with this paper and also watching a ton of You Tube videos I decided to get away from my norm, I did some 'fussy cutting' *which I avoid like the plague* grab the extra sheet of one of the pattern papers and cut out the bird cage.  Once I had it cut out I used pop dots to adhere it down to it's own image on the other sheet and then used jump rings at the top of it to represent the chain it would hang from.  I really like the underlining meaning of the cage being 'empty'.

I did mention that all of the pages are pocket pages correct?....well aside from that there are several pages that also have an additional slash pocket to help smaller items remain in place: ticket stubs, receipts, mini photos, etc.  For me it just added a whole new level of dimension and some more texture.

I did however leave a few pages alone, well rather just decorated without the added pocket distraction because at some point within the mini your eyes are going to need the 'rest' or 'break' from all the chaos going on.  

Admittedly this mini is a very busy little mini.

Here is a close up of one of the pages, where other than the pattern paper all I added was the two feathers and the multi-layered flower.

Here is a close up look at what I added to one of the slash pockets, two little ticket die cuts that I left blank for the intended purpose of Tami jotting down some little detail that is important to her. 

Another of the less busy pages with not a lot added to the pattern paper.

And then finally here is the close up of the cover, I still haven't figured out what I want it to say within that label so for now I have left it blank, maybe I'll just leave it blank and let Tami decide what she would like it to say.
So that's all for today I do hope you like my mini (*or rather Tami's mini) and again Thanks for humoring me with my crazy paper crafting obsession.
just B


*Feel free to leave me a comment or a suggestion anytime and I will get back to you as soon as I can*