Vintage Carnival Book

Hello friends!  Today I'll be showing you a lovely vintage circus themed book that was a class at a local art studio.  The minute I saw this book I thought "I HAVE TO DO IT!"  I had been saving some special circus pieces and I still had photos from 2010 when I went to Barnum & Bailey. 

In the class we did the following:

• distressed pages using coffee infused water to age the paper
• distressed pages using Tattered Angels Mists and Ranger Distress Sprays in various colors
• cut out vintage circus photos and ephemera to use in the book
• cut out tags to decorate
• assembled the monstrous book

 

These are the tags we made for the book --each one is unique, no two alike in the entire class.  I'm basically a "give me the tools and get out of my way" kinda girl.

I referred to the book as monstrous, but I'm not joking!  There's 50+ pages in this book!  Although we were given ephemera, stock photos, and I had a small collection of my own items to use, it just wasn't enough for this huge book.  I opted to purchase digital vintage circus backgrounds and other ephemera from Etsy --at very reasonable prices too.  When you purchase digital downloads, you instantly receive the files.  I was then able to resize them and print them for my book.  Once you download the files, they are yours and you can print as many copies as you need.

Rather than post a photo of each page, I made a video to show you the completed book.  I hope you love it as much as I do.  Thanks for stopping in...take flight! 

xoxo

Ms. Ruin

Say Cheese!

Hello bloggers!  As most of you know, I love-love-love to take photos!  So when I saw all of the new neat camera related papers and embellishments and chipboard out there I was beyond stoked.  Fortunately for me, the ladies at The Crafty Scrapper hooked me up with brand new Bo Bunny Mama-Razzi 2 papers  and brand new Maya Road!  This album was beyond fun to put together...I hope you love it too!

I don't often get to make mini books about my trips so I thought I'd take advantage of this opportunity.  Last year I went on several trips including a very dreary trip to New Orleans.  It rained THE ENTIRE TIME we were there.  :(  But I still managed to get out and about and snap a few photos.  Although I didn't get to some of the places I really wanted to revisit or visit for the first time, I think I still managed to capture the Spirit of the Big Easy with the time that Mother Nature allowed.  The first thing I did was pick out all of the photos that I might possibly use.  The next step was converting them to square images and adding a Polaroid border.  Since the Maya Road Say Cheese Camera Album looks like a vintage Polaroid style camera, I thought it would be fitting.  Although I scaled the images down so that they were not full size or Polaroid size photos, they were still super cute and functional for this "mini".  Once I had the photos reformatted and printed, I was ready to get started!

But wait!  Before I get into the nitty gritty, I really want to showcase the following papers from Bo Bunny's Mama-Razzi 2 line because they really made the project come together beautifully and if I had not bought these, I think my project could have had the potential to fall flat.

From left to right we have the Mama-Razzi 2 Stickers, Contrast, and Darkroom.  I used A LOT of these stickers to make my own embellishments and I used the papers to make pockets and overlays on just about every single page.  Okay, NOW we can truly get started...

***DON'T FORGET THAT YOU CAN CLICK ON EACH IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT!***

 This is the cover of the mini.  As I mentioned before --the chipboard album is by Maya Road and it is the "Say Cheese Camera Album".  The entire book is covered with Bo Bunny paper from the Mama-Razzi 2 line and all of the edges were inked up with Vintage Photo Distress Ink by Ranger.  The paper speaks for itself, it's beautiful.  The only thing I added to this paper was the stamped image on the upper right side of cover (around the flash).  That stamp is by Bo Bunny, also from this line.  The tin in the center is by Maya Road and I added a sticker from the sticker sheet I shared above.  Kudos to The Crafty Scrapper Manager, Gena Glover, for giving me that idea.  The image in the tin is a piece of film that makes a heart --clever!  I did cover the flash with Mustard Seed Distress Ink and then lathered it with Distress Crackle Rock Candy.  The green film strip is also a sticker from the Mama-Razzi 2 line.  I adhered it to a piece of cardstock and then glued it right onto the cover.  As for the cover photo, I wedged it into the cover to make it look like a Polaroid camera releasing a photo.  You can see closeups in the images below.

 

I'm not going to show you every single page I think this book makes anywhere from 10-12 pages (I don't remember).  I do however want to highlight the stamps that I used on this particular page.  These stamps are by Maya Road from the Picture Perfect stamp set and the Perfect Shot Arrows stamp set.  Now remember I said I used a lot of elements from the Bo Bunny Darkroom and Contrast papers?  Well, I cut out these films strips from the Darkroom paper and then put my photos in the boxes.  The strip that is shown in this photo had three boxes--I put photos in the top two and then folded the bottom one to use it on the next page...you will spot it in the following photos.  ;)

I love this page.  It has a lot of attitude and all around "fun" to it.  Again, I used an image from the Darkroom page and I was careful and cut around the miniature Polaroid which I stamped the letter "d" on.  This allowed me to stick a photo behind it.  You will see this technique throughout the entire project.  The "Oh Snap!" is from Bo Bunny's Mama-Razzi 2 stamp set.

One of my favorite elements from this page is the wooden Polaroid frame which is from the "You've Been Framed" by Maya Road.  I stamped the words "Say Cheese" from the "Picture Perfect Cameras" stamp set by Maya Road and I stamped that on the film strip frame that I folded over from the previous page.

This page has a lot of charm too.  The cork board tag is by Little Yellow Bicycle.  Okay, how cute is that chipboard camera?!?!?!?  It's so cute it's downright ridiculous!  That's also by Maya Road from the "Say Cheese" collection. 

Again, I cut out images from the Darkroom paper and cut around the cameras to make a pocket that holds about 5-6 mini Polaroids.  This will allow onlookers to pull the photos right out and look through them.  Then they can simply tuck them back into place.  Mini pockets rock!!!  Okay, that was super nerdy, wasn't it?

Yet another pocket made to share several photos per page.  This pocket was made possible by the Contrast paper.

And another pocket!  This particular pocket was made using the Contrast paper as well.  I simply cut a slit along the top portion of the banner and was careful not to put glue on it when adhering it to the paper.  Instant pocket!

Same technique with this pocket.  This particular pocket was made using an image from Darkroom paper.  The stamped filmstrips are from the Mama-Razzi 2 stamp set.

FIN!

I hope you enjoyed my project as much as I enjoyed bring it all together.  Now go out and get this paper and all of the products I used because they're waiting for you at The Crafty Scrapper!  

Peace, love, and camera stuff...

Ms. Ruin

Heart for Art

When I saw this paper by Bo Bunny I absolutely fell in love with it.  I cannot wait to get the entire stack!  Because I need more paper??  Anyway, for this layout I used Weekend Market Antique as the mat for my self-portrait and the backside of Weekend Market Rulers as the 12x12 base.  Both are shown below from left to right...

This Vintage Daisy is by Maya Road in Mauve.  Just lovely.  And you kind of get the illusion that I'm wearing it in my hair, which is what I was going for.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Maya Road has lots of "little things" that allow me to make clusters of goodness.  So here is the cluster I made for this page using one of the Vintage Wood Doilies which I painted gold, kraft tickets, Vintage Wood Bird which I painted black, an Organza Primrose in Cream and the word "heart" is also chipboard.  The buttons on the tickets are from the Farmhouse line by October Afternoon.

Here is a closer look at the word heart and my little bird friend.  I used Gold Fine Glass Glitter for this.  Isn't it beautiful?

My journaling is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson which reads "In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire."  Such a true quote, so very true for this artist.  ::big smile::

I have about four more layouts to create tonight and tomorrow night so I'll have those for show and tell at some point.  Thanks for looking at my work! 

Layout Madness

One of the perks of being on a design team is that you get to play with the latest lines of paper and embellishments before they arrive in store.  In the next few posts you will see some of the new paper lines from BoBunny and American Crafts as well as flowers by Prima, and lots of loveliness from Maya Road.  All of the material used in these layouts is/will be available at The Crafty Scrapper.  

This first layout features my very handsome five year old nephew, Anthony.  He’s a looker, isn’t he?  In this layout I used the following papers by Bo Bunny:  Weekend Market Dot, Weekend Market Vintage Labels, and Weekend Market Stripe (shown below from left to right).

So here is the layout...

I used the Weekend Market Vintage Labels backside as the base –leaving it at 12x12.  I then  used Weekend Market Dot as an oversized mat.  Since Anthony’s photo is an 8x10, I wanted a large mat, otherwise the picture would swallow the entire layout –a large mat diffuses attention from the size of the picture.

I’m sort of an intricate cutter, you will see in my layouts that I cut a lot of paper in detail and use it to embellish.  That’s exactly what I did with the Weekend Market Stripe Paper.  I used the backside which had a beautiful edge on it with all sorts of delicate looking flowers and scroll work.  I cut that portion out of the paper and used it as an edge on my layout.  To give it some dimension, I used pop dots rather than just adhering it down flat. 

Here’s a close up of the embellishments.  The great thing about Maya Road is that they have so much “tiny” stuff that you can cluster together and make beautiful little islands of loveliness on your projects.  That’s what I did here.  The piece of chipboard on the edge of the envelope was distressed using Broken China distress ink and then I stamped over it with a script stamp by Tim Holtz.

Thanks for looking –lots more to come!