Sprinkles cont.

During a busy weekend without much time to scrap, I managed to squeeze in some time to finish the second part of the Sprinkles section of the cupcake crawl book. With this one, I had to cram in a lot of pictures (all vertical or square), but I didn't want the layout to look too cookie-cutter or dull. So I used my circle punches to make the dots Sprinkles uses as its signature cupcake garnishes and as its code for flavors. Running them down either side of the layout gave it the punch (no pun intended!) I was looking for and just kind of brought the whole thing together. The Sprinkles dots reminded me of the design at Dylan's Candy Bar in New York. When Sara and I did our scrapbooks from that particular trip, she had the idea to make the dots with the punches, and I copied her. It was her idea that inspired me for Sprinkles, too. Thanks, Sara! :-)

More ... Sprinkles!

1 trip to Hobby Lobby + 1 50% off scrapbooking sale = 2 3-packs of Tombow refills for $13. Not bad! Best of all was being able to scrap again on Monday night. I polished off the final More layout, which included a trio of shots Sara took of me trying the Bacon Bacon Bacon cupcake, which I ended up hating. I kind of look like I'm enjoying it in the final photo, but I think it was taken before my brain had had a chance to catch up to my tastebuds. When I saw that More specialized in eclectic flavor combinations, I knew I was going to have to try one for the SJ-R story. Bacon Bacon Bacon was the odd choice of the day, so that's what I went with. You can read more about it on my cupcake blog, http://extremecupcaker.blogspot.com/2011/08/bacon-and-cupcakes.html, but the gist of the story is that the cupcake was top-to-bottom bacon. Bacon in the frosting. Bacon in the cake. Bacon in the brittle garnish. I love bacon, but it needs to stay in its proper place next to the pancakes and eggs.

Upon wrapping up More, I moved on to the first of what will be three double-page Sprinkles Cupcakes layouts. I was looking forward to this one because of all the whimsy and dynamic color that define Sprinkles. On the left-hand side of the first layout, I used a round sheet with a scalloped ring and colorful sprinkles that I took to be cake- and cupcake-related when I picked it up at one of the scrapbooking stores. I used it to frame one of my favorite pictures from the crawl, an overhead shot of the salted caramel cupcake I bought at Sprinkles to take home for a later snack. I didn't sample it for the SJ-R story, instead splitting a cinnamon sugar cupcake wtih Sara for the evaluation. Two photos of that cupcake are included on the right-hand page, along with the vanilla coconut Sara bought as her to-go selection and another photo of some of the cupcakes in the Sprinkles display. I used Ranger brand Liquid Pearls in White Opal to add some oomph to the cream-colored background paper and to evoke the look of frosting.

If I can resist the temptation to eat cupcakes as I'm scrapping them, I'll return to my scrapping room soon and finish out the Sprinkles layouts. It's a good thing glue on my hands makes eating unappealing!