Only lack of adhesive shall stand between me and my scrapping

I struggled a little with the second part of the Sugar Bliss Cake Boutique section of my cupcake crawl album. I had used most of the photos in the first part but had just enough left to warrant a second double-page layout. So I arranged. And rearranged. And rearranged again. I dug up some flower border stickers that were close enough to the Sugar Bliss color scheme that they worked. And I found my first use for a small but adorable cupcake stamp I found at a crafting booth inside the Grandstand at the Illinois State Fair. One thing I love about scrapbooking is that, no matter how challenging a layout might seem, there's always a way to pull it together if you can be resourceful with your supplies. Granted, that's not to say the layout worked in the end -- everything's subjective. I probably could have done better, but I was reasonably happy with the way it turned out. (It's hard to see them in this picture, but the little cupcake stamps run vertically down the left side of the left page and the right side of the right page.)

Then I moved on to More Cupcakes, our third stop on the crawl. It was such a small, minimalist store that I decided to go with a similar type of layout for that shop's two sets of double-page layouts. No patterned paper I had seemed appropriate for the sparseness of More, so I went with solid black for the background and skipped the embellishments. I did use the menu along with several photos, though.

I was in my zone and ready to keep going, but then the worst thing happened to me that can happen to an in-the-groove scrapbooker: I ran out of adhesive. I plan to make a tape run tomorrow, but until then I'll just have to hold my scrapping thoughts.

Sugar blissfulness

After a long, drowsy day at work and a tough workout, I was thrilled to be able to come home to dinner in the crock pot and extra time to work on the cupcake crawl album. After a quick bite to eat, I retreated to my little corner of heaven here at home and dove into the first half of my Sugar Bliss Cake Boutique layout. Sugar Bliss was the second bakery on the crawl, in the Loop not far from Crumbs.

I loved the atmosphere of Sugar Bliss, a modern shop decorated in shades of blue and brown. The cupcakes themselves were a design element, with their flower-shaped frosting toppers. We had the option of standard-sized cupcakes or miniatures, and the minis were a real plus in light of the lengthy list of stops still to come.

Here's the first part of the Sugar Bliss layout:

With any luck, I'll have the second part posted soon!

Cupcakes + scrapbooking = heaven!

If you're a reader of both my blogs (LaVonne, this is directed at you! :-) ), you might battle with your self-discipline when you see the photos of cupcakes I regularly post on Extreme Cupcaker. And you might, if you have the time, come over to Mandy Scraps for some fat-free, calorie-free relief. Unfortuantely, LaVonne, there's no escape anymore. The cupcake crawl scrapbook is in progress. (Insert evil laugh here)

I know, I know. I'm awful! :-)

After completing several small projects during my staycation last week, I finally decided to start the crawl book. I'm going in chronological order, starting with the first bakery we went to that sweet morning, Crumbs Bake Shop. I ended up with three double-page layouts for Crumbs because I had a lot of pictures from that one, and I had a hard time eliminating. On the first two pages, I coordinated colors to the color scheme of the shop itself -- pale yellow and pale blue. I love scrapping bakeries because they're so whimsical and colorful.

The assortment of cupcakes at Crumbs was photogenic, to say the least. There were so many I wanted to try but couldn't, and that's what these pages were dedicated to -- the ones that got away. :-) It's hard to see from this shot, but some of the featured cupcakes are the grasshopper, cookie dough and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

The final spread for Crumbs is a pocket page to hold the copy of the menu I picked up and wanted to keep as a souvenir of the store's offerings. I added photos of the cupcakes we actually tried -- the ones that made it into the piece I wrote for the SJ-R. The picture on the right side -- taken in mouthwatering detail by Sara, who is a photographic genius -- is the cookies and cream cupcake we split. The much smaller picture on the left page is the other one we tried -- the milkshake. Sara favored that one, while I was partial to the cookies and cream. (It worked out for the best because we knew who would claim the leftovers -- we needed to save room, after all, so we each took just a few bites from both cupcakes.) The frosting, to me, was the best part of the cookies and cream. It was a scrumptious, generous slather of buttercream. The milkshake was a marble cake with "marble" frosting, meaning a mix of chocolate and vanilla. It was good, but it didn't speak to my tastebuds in quite the same way as the cookies and cream.

I like using the pocket pages. They come in different sizes, patterns and colors, and I can see myself using them quite a bit. Sara was the one who gave me the idea to try a homemade pocket in my 2008 New York album, and it worked out fine, but I still like having the pre-designed pockets.

I'm having so much fun with this album so far. Now that Crumbs is finished, I'm organizing paper, photos and embellishements for the next section, which will be Sugar Bliss Cake Boutique. I need to come up with an intro page for the whole thing, but I tend to leave those for last, when I've established the overall feel of the book. I hope to get rolling on Sugar Bliss this week, and when I finish it, I'll post photos.

Thanks for reading!