Itty Bitty Love

I've been working on a special project to give to my mom on Mother's Day - it's less than two weeks away, boy that's coming up fast! Ever since these Itty Bitty Books showed up in the Holiday mini, I've been wanting to play with them, and I finally got to it. These ship flat, so you do have to make up the box that the book slides into for storage, but some Terrifically Tacky Tape makes quick work of that. This book came together fairly quickly. There are 10 page protectors, so 20 pages. I just started cutting the adorable two sided paper, Petals & Paisley, from the spring mini. I chose this paper because I thought the fun, bright colours and images would work for both recent pictures and older pictures that need a bit more of a retro look. AND I've used up almost all of my Au Chocolat paper! I started cutting 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 inch square of the Petals and Paisley paper. Because the pages are so small, the embellishing isn't heavy in this book. I matted some photos, but not all of them. I made use of the slot punch, brads, lots of dtp, and some ribbon on a few pages, glitter on one, and that's about all little pages like these can hold. Stamps included words from Everyday Expressive Phrases, Everyday Flexible Phrases, Warm Words, sayings from Polka Dots & Paisley, and Summer by the Sea, as well as a some of the corner flourishes from the Doodle This set. The front cover of the book is inspired by an idea presented in a recent copy of the monthly Stampin' Success magazine sent by the company to all demonstrators. It's a great place to get the creative juices flowing. When I started my version, I didn't have the same stamp set that SU! used but thought I'd use the flowers from Doodle This! I didn't like the pointy look of the flower once I had it cut out for this project, and the smaller flower seemed too small and so it just wasn't cutting it either. I started my work on this book at my friend, Christa's, and she gave me this textured chipboard flower. So the bright pink flower, which works well with the colours in the paper, is layered onto the book that is covered in the 2 sided paper. I stamped the greeting "home is where your mother is" from the spring mini set, Just So Sayings,in So Saffron, cut it out and glued it on. The "m" comes from the big deal alpha set - it's stamped in craft white on white cardstock and heat embossed in white. I wanted just a bit more gloss yet, so I also went over it with Crystal Effects. The photo is probably not showing all the stamping on the box - I used Doodle This!, Alphadots, Burst into Bloom, and the hostess set, Riveting. The bling on the For You piece are 4-pronged gems meant for use on clothing and they pre-date my joining Stampin' Up! They weren't easy to work with, so I will definitely be looking forward to playing with the new Fire and Ice rhinestone brads joining the accessories section of the upcoming 2007-08 catalogue. Check out the link to a previous blog entry if you missed this bit of news, or want to see those again. Hope you like the book, and even more importantly, I hope mom loves it - I'll let you know after I give it to her on the 13th of May.