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!

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!