~ Fun Family BIA Blast ~

My little cousin Annie is had her graduation party this weekend.

My Mom and I *snuck* in to her house last Sunday afternoon while she was away and took pictures of her cat and dog so my Mom, her Aunt, could create a collage picture frame gift for her ~ ~ ~ It turned out supah' cute ;o) I also took the opportunity to snap a few pictures of the rest of the family -- Mom, Dad and brother doing silly things that our family does. It was just a blast taking the pictures but even more fun putting this brown bag album together!!

I, of course, had to use my bind-it-all machine again for this project *wink wink* Here is the front of the album (yes -- there really is a spiral under 'neath that ribbon!)

This is a simple 'brown bag' album. This album is done with the normal size brown bags you would buy at any store. ((In earlier posts you have heard me *er I guess 'read about' me* talking about the little brown tea bags --- I didnt use those for this project.)) Just simply take a brown bag and fold it in half. That 'pouch' then becomes where you can insert a tag or something of that sort.

Throughout this album I used the Stampin' UP! Timeworn Collection Relics Paper as my 'theme' paper -- it worked really well! I cut those in squares and just randomly mounted them to each side of the page using my ATG adhesive gun. *LOVE that adhesive by the way!* I personally mounted all of my paper squares to each page and then used my bind-it-all to punch the holes and spiral bind the book. THEN I started to insert my pictures and decorate the front and back covers. The reason I prefered to do it this way is then I knew for sure where the spiral would be and I could work around it with no problem. Otherwise I may have attached a picture too far over into the 'binding zone' and ended up with 'holes' in it --- make sense? Doing it this way worked out great for me personally.

Like I mentioned before, this was intened to be a silly book -- and that it was so the pictures are fun!

We took some sticky post it notes and cut them into a mustache and gotee and started to color them in and then placed them on Annies picture on the wall and Tom colored them as I snapped his pic --- *messin' with his baby Sistas' picture ya' know* lol

When I developed some of the pictures for the album I had them done in 'Sepia' and some in 'Black and White' while of course others were done in color. That gave the bag album a different effect in itself.

This is the back of the album. I used the Cricut to cut out the Sun. I printed out the saying "The future is so bright it burns my eyes" on my computer and printed it out on Only Orange cardstock and then cut it out with my oval cutter.

Here are the tags that I did that actually slipped into the openings of the bags. I used a total of four bags for this book -- thus four openings. (I didnt post all the picutes of each of the pages of the book here, just a few to give you an idea of the what the book looked like)

So each brown bag would have 'four pages' technically. So this book had 16 pages from beginning to end.

I matched up funny sayings with the pictures for that page that the tag was going in. The base of my tag was done with a large Sizzix die. I then mounted it to another piece of cardstock and cut around it to make it larger to 'fill up the bag space'. I then added ribbon and cord to finish it off. I printed out each of the sayings again on my computer -- in Word using two columns and different fun fonts. I used my SU! Cutter Kit distressing tool around each of the sayings just to add a bit of texture before mounting them to the tag face. Here are my sayings, including the one on the front & back covers as well as one from I used on the inside pages --

Crazy is a relative term
in my family

I know you are but what am I? You’re not the boss of me! I’m telling mom! Mom said! I called it! It’s mine! I dare you. Get out of my room. Can I have a bite? He’s touching me!!!

Families are
like fudge… mostly sweet
with a few nuts.

Life is a great big canvas and you should throw all the paint on it you can

We do not remember days, we remember
Moments

Life isn’t just the front page – it’s the comics, too

The future is
so bright it
burns my eyes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Annie loved this little gift -- she has the sense of humor that the rest of her Dad's side of the family does too ;o) She even took it to her graduation party and had it sitting on her table with the rest of her treasured belongings from growing up. I had many people come up to me at the reception and tell me what a fun and awesome book it was -- and ...?how did I do that? ... how fun!!

~TFL & Enjoy~