Tinseltown

With the cupcake crawl album finally finished, I took a short break to regroup and figure out what to tackle next. I've been feeling like I need to dive into an old-photo project, and I have a generic travel-themed scrapbook that I bought a while back and never found a use for, so I decided family vacations was the way to go.

I have pictures from several trips, although nowhere near all the trips we took when I was growing up. (I didn't start taking my own pictures on vacations until I was in my early teens, and I've decided, for the sake of keeping things as simple as possible -- for now, at least -- not to delve into my parents' vast collection of trip photos.) The vacations I have to scrap include two summer voyages to Colorado, a Los Angeles trip and two treks to Washington, D.C. Since I wrote on the back of all my Los Angeles prints (and since I love California and am excited to scrap all the beach photos), I'm taking on that one first. Here is my intro layout and the layout from our first L.A. stop, Hollywood:

I'm keeping these layouts pretty simple for the most part because I don't want the scrapping process to take forever for these older pictures. In many cases, the quality of the photos won't warrant special treatment anyway. I like having the chance to use the themed paper for the trip locales, though.

Cupcake crawl completion!

In a rush of energy (and time!) last night, I was able to finish the cupcake crawl album. I wrapped up the lemonade stand layout and the opening and closing pages, as well as the little window on the cover of the book.

I'm not thrilled with the opening page -- I didn't have a photo specially printed for that page, so I ended up using a leftover that wouldn't fit on my More Cupcakes layout. And I'm not sure I'm crazy about the overall design of it. I tried to take a risk and be different by angling the title, which I'm not sure worked. It adds character, I suppose. And it's done, which is the biggest thing.

The closing page is a pocket page that holds a couple copies of the piece I wrote for The State Journal-Register, along with clippings of a front-page promo and a stats box showing that the "guest column," as we called it, finished eighth for most-read stories on the SJ-R website the week it ran. I left some space just in case I get lucky and place in one of the contests we enter each year. I haven't entered it in anything yet, but I figure I might as well give it a try since these opportunities to write don't come up very often for me.

For the book cover window -- again, because I had no photo to use -- I wound up improvising with a dimensional cupcake sticker on a piece of cardstock trimmed to fit.

I'm more than ready to move on to the next project. I have a few more cupcake projects to work on, as well as a couple of favorite-things food pages -- my mom's strawberry shortcake and pumpkin cake. I think I need to break up my favorite things album into two books -- one for food and one for everything else! There's not a lot of "everything else" yet. I also really need to get back to focusing on my older projects, like family vacations, which would be the ideal project to start because I have a spare album that is thematically appropriate and I've already made the trip to Scrapbook Your Story to get paper and stickers. I also want to do an SJ-R book. And that's only the tip of the iceburg. It's a long to-do list!

The last stop

The Molly's Cupcakes section of the crawl book is done! I'm so close to finishing this book, but I'm taking a short break for a special project that I can't talk about quite yet. :-)

Here are the pics from Molly's:

This one came together pretty easily. I used a cupcake stamp from one of my Stampin' Up! sets on the page above, just to give it a little something extra. I really liked the combination of colors -- deep blue, pale green and fiery orange -- that these photos inspired.

Sleep deprivation and Swirlz

It's late and I'm tired (from staying up to finish the Swirlz section of the cupcake crawl book), so I'm going to keep this one short and sweet (no pun intended!).

Swirlz took three double layouts to complete, and it came together fairly quickly. It was a fun one with a lot of vibrant colors that reflected the atmosphere of the shop. The third layout is my favorite. I love the polka-dot paper and the combination of brown and green. I used the row house paper on the first layout to represent the residential area we passed on our way to Swirlz.

Next up is the last stop of the crawl: Molly's!

At last, Sweet Mandy B's ...

And now for my favorite stop of the crawl, Sweet Mandy B's.

I couldn't believe it when I found out there was a bakery with my name in Chicago, and Sara and I knew immediately we would be visiting this one. I could tell based on the website that it would be amazing, and it surpassed all my expectations. Spacious and painted in a lively pastel color scheme, it was pretty much how I'd imagine my own bakery if I were to open one. It was one of the largest bakeries we went to, and there was plenty of space to sit, eat and relax, unlike most of the other shops. We were able to watch employees mix colored frosting and ice cupcakes. Plus, there were all sorts of other goodies with the cupcakes in the huge display case, which spanned about half the length of one of the two rooms.

The cupcakes were, of course, delicious. They were the same size as a cupcake I might have made in my own kitchen, and the price was just right, too. At about $2 per cupcake, they were almost half the price of cupcakes we had at other places. And Mandy B's was the only cupcake I was able to eat in its entirety, rather than packing up some to take home. My lemon cupcake with raspberry frosting was sweet but not too rich, and the cake melted in my mouth. The frosting was a delicious buttercream.

Since Mandy B's was such a momentous stop for me, I decided the layout should reflect that. I had more pictures for it than any of the other bakeries, so it lended itself to more pages. I created an intro layout of sorts, with the Mandy B's headline and just a couple of photos as a window into the rest. A window, quite literally: The 5x7 I put on the right-hand page is a shot I took of a decorated window looking out onto the street in front of Mandy B's.

Next I focused on the storefront, along with my favorite photo that Sara took of me posing in front.

Finally, I fleshed out the atmopshere of the inside of the two-room shop.

Mandy B's had character and then some. I hope to be able to return sometime and try more of the cupcakes and the other amazing-looking sweets. Until then, at least I have my scrapbook!

Smash progress!

I wrote a few days ago about my new mini Smash journal, and how it's meant to be a catch-all for mementos and scraps that don't fit into a bigger scrapbook. It's also meant to be completed quickly and without much effort -- I can testify that this is true. I spent a little time gathering ticket stubs, magazine clippings, fortune cookie slips and other miscellaneous souvenirs earlier this week and spent about an hour gluing it all into the mini-journal with the glue stick/pen that accompanied the book.

Granted, the journal isn't filled yet; there are some themed pages I'm saving for certain items, and I need to do some journaling. But I made considerable progress on a weeknight, while watching a TV show, by just grabbing and gluing. It's not completely organized, but it looks the way the Smash website tells me a Smash journal is supposed to look -- random. "Because you like it, and that's reason enough," is part of the brand's description on its homepage, http://www.eksuccessbrands.com/kandcompany/smash/. An example of tthat in my book would be the panel I cut off an empty tissue box just because I liked the pattern. Nothing is too silly, too insignificant, for your Smash book. And that's why the concept has won me over.

Here are some of my finished pages:

I think I'm officially hooked! My next goal is to buy one of the original, larger books for some of my bigger mementos. I love this small one, though. The portability is a plus. No more losing movie stubs in the bottom of my purse!