Well, this has been a surprisingly difficult challenge for me.  Difficult, and very fun that is.  These days, all my scrapbooking energy has been thrown into my daughter’s baby album.  It seems like she is the only one being photographed in our family anymore, because let’s face it…babies are just a lot cuter than anybody else.  On the rare occasion that I am not working on her baby album, there are so many other things to make like cards, layouts for other family pictures, etc.

BUT…for this challenge, Emma asked me to make something…a layout, mini book, etc…all about myself.  Very hard to do.  But when I asked google for ideas (a habit of mine), I found that the “Book of Me” is a pretty common concept among scrapbookers.  I didn’t want to do a layout since I don’t know what album I would put it in, so I decided to go all out and create a mini album (my first!).  The concept is, that the album will display several of my “favorites” – books, movies, music, etc – to give a little snapshot of my personality.

Here is my disclaimer…I’m not actually finished with the album.  Not by a long shot!  But, luckily, Emma is a kind friend and since I’m doing an entire album for this challenge, she has agreed to give me until next friday to finish it.  So this is actually only a preview of what will be the finished album.  For my slowness I will blame…surprisingly not laziness this time, but actually it’s just the fact that I’m a “slow scrapper,” something I hope to remedy through these challenges.  It just takes a while for me to get the creative juices flowing.

The album is aptly named “A Work in Progress,” not just because I’m slow (haha), but also because the phrase is a pretty good description of both my life and my personality.  I don’t claim that I am “done,” but I hope that I will continue to change and progress as my life goes on.

On to the pictures.  I apologize for the bad quality, as I don’t have a fancy-pants camera like Emma (yet).

Front cover

To make these flowers, I cut out the shapes using my Slice, inked the edges with my Ranger Ink Tool, crumpled/bent them, and glued them together with a pearl in the middle.

To make the letters, I cut them out with my Slice, and again used the the Ranger Ink Tool with a slightly different “dabbing” technique to get the heavy bronze look.  It’s actually just plain brown paper.

The first layout…featuring my good friend Moomintroll and a paper doll of me that my mom made when I was little.  I printed Moomintroll directly onto the background paper, and I love the effect…looks like a rub on, but it can basically be any black and white image I choose.  Again, google is my friend.  I plan to use this idea on several more pages which you will see next week.

I’m also planning on attaching some ribbon to each layout in order to have a messy ribbony effect at the end.  I will probably put something on the rings too.

I made the butterflies with…guess what?  My Slice.  Seriously, love my Slice.  Not very expensive and actually a money saver since you don’t have to buy all those punches in different sizes instead.

Anyway, so I cut out the butterflies, doodled on them, and inked them with gold ink (Ranger Ink Tool again…I will post about it sometime because it deserves a post all its own).  I wanted to use butterflies since they have a special significance in the Moomintroll books, but it’s kinda funny because the paper started out purple, but now it’s pretty much just brown because of the gold ink, and brown butterflies are actually bad luck in the books.  Sorry, Moomintroll!

The next layout had a Linnea theme, which is another favorite book of mine as a child.  My mom actually made me an outfit just like Linnea, and took this picture of me which she won a prize for. The images to the left are from my computer, including the cover of the book and some Monet paintings (my favorite painter, and Linnea’s too).

Well, that’s all I have so far, but I will post the rest of the album next friday!