Week of Dollar Store Projects - Mini Album

Today starts a week of projects and tutorials on my blog featuring items I found at the dollar store. Like I have said before I enjoy finding cheap items and turning them into something crafty. Today I am going to start with something a little familiar - it's a little like the book I made last October from a children's book I found in the Target dollar spot.

Sneak Peek

If you have been following the blog you know I like trying to find items at the dollar store to transform into fun crafty projects. So yesterday I went on a dollar store shopping spree - well it was the dollar store so it was like a $15 spree but still. Next week I am planning a week of dollar store projects (with tutorials) on the blog. And to give you a little taste here is a sneak peek of one of the projects:

More butterflies...

I was liking yesterday's art journaling post so I decided to turn it into a tag:

Art Journaling

Muffin Tin Wall Hanging

I spent Saturday at my favorite antique store picking up lots of good stuff. I found this small muffin tin for less than $2 and knew I had to get it and do something with it. The spaces were the perfect size for my circle punch so I decided to punch some patterned paper and photos to create this wall hanging:

London Calling Cover Tutorial

This is the tutorial for aging the London image on the front of my London Calling mini book. Sometimes I like to find new items (like these cards) and age them to make them look older/vintage and to blend with the paper I am using. This is more of a look into my thought/creative process rather than a tutorial - you'll see I try things - some of which may or may not actually do anything...

London Calling...

So we have an excessive amount of empty cardboard boxes laying around. I think they are leftover from online shopping for Christmas gifts and because we don't know where to recycle them they just sit there. So today I got the idea to cut up one of the boxes and use it as a base for a mini album. This is one of those projects where once I started I worked like crazy - I was "in the zone" and couldn't stop until it was done - 5 hours later and 1am in the morning here it is:

World Traveler ATCs

I love making ATCs (artist trading cards). I think I do my best work on smaller spaces. These are easy and quick to make. I made this World Traveler set using one of my Tiny Ephemera Kits available in my Etsy store. It's the perfect amount of vintage materials to make 4 ATCs or create fun embellishments for scrapbooking or mini albums. For these I added some kraft cardstock from my own stash and some vintage photo distress ink and here is what I came up with:

Happy Valentine's Day!

If you know me you know I don't do cards - tags, atcs - I've got those down but for some reason I can't make a card to save my life!! But here I am making one for Valentine's day - it's simple but I like how it turned out!

Dressed Up Valentines

I like to regularly stop by the dollar tree to check and see if there is anything I can alter - turning something cheap into something cute is always a fun challenge. Dustin and I were there the other day and I was about to leave the store empty handed when I saw these candy boxes and thought - "Hey! I can make those cute and turn it into a blog post!" (and Dustin said " OOOOH candy!" lol). So here are my dressed up valentines:

Beautiful Day Mini Album

So I spent the weekend working on this mini book. It's bright and cheery - part vintage part new and super cute. I filled it with photos from my nephew's 1st birthday party.

The rest of my weekend...

I'm planning on spending my Super Bowl Sunday putting a couple of finishing touches on a project I'm pretty excited about. I will have a full post tomorrow but here is a sneak peek:

Tea Time!

Yesterday I spent the day crafting with one of my favorite product lines from 7 gypsies. I just LOVE the 7 Gypsies Lille line. I love anything vintage and their paper is packed with vintage images perfect for cutting up. I decided to alter a tea container with the new papers and have written up a short tutorial for you to recreate if you like:

A little about me

I was trying to come up with a great "About Me" section for the tab under the title of my blog. And after thinking about it for weeks (and really longer because I have avoided the about me section of my blogger profile and facebook profile for years) I have come up with this random list of facts about me. It may be more than you ever wanted to know:

• I look like I’m 14 even though I’m actually 28. Most people say I will appreciate this when I’m older. I am about 99% sure that as soon as I turn 30 this age thing will reverse and I will instantly look 80.
• I once climbed to the face of Crazy Horse (the world’s largest mountain carving) in South Dakota. It was one of the worst ideas I’ve ever had… just ask my sister Danielle… she climbed it with me and I’m pretty sure she’ll never forgive me.
• I have the most fantastic husband. He’s a super smart Electrical Engineer and resembles the characters in the show, the Big Bang Theory (especially Sheldon). He’s very proud of this.
• I once spent the night outside in a cardboard box in November… it was cold and hard to sleep and I wouldn’t recommend it if you have any other options.

I can't think of a title

My least favorite thing about blogging is coming up with a creative title for your post - I'm bad at it - and once you have been blogging for awhile you can't really do another "Vintage Tag" post - well you can but you probably should come up with a different title, which right now I can't think of. Anyways, I've been spending a lot of time recently in thrift/antique stores looking for unique things to make stuff with. For this tag I used a little notebook from 1897 that I found.