Tim Holtz to the Rescue

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! The other night as I was wrapping Christmas presents to take to my brother's for Thanksgiving, I realized I didn't have any gift tags. What's a girl to do? I scanned the shelves of my craft room and remember I had some Tim Holtz Idea-ology - Adage Tickets. They made the perfect tags for my gifts and saved the day.  

I love little albums made from paper bags.  They're fun, cute, and a great way to express creativity while preserving memories. These are the things I love most about them:

• They're small, so they don't take up a lot of room on my shelves.  I live in a small  house.  Storage space is always a problem. 
• Their size also makes them more portable.  They're just the right size to tuck into a purse or a carryall bag. 
• They're lightweight.
• They're much easier and quicker to assemble.
• They are extremely easy to personalize.
• Even though they're small, the various pages and pocket can hold a surprising amount of "stuff".

I recently made one of these albums for myself.  At the end of October, I was in the local theater's production of The Fantasticks.  We had a wonderful cast, crew, and band, so naturally, I wanted to preserve as much of this experience as possible.  As El Gallo (one of the characters in the show) would say, "Observe".

The right page in the picture above is constructed with three pockets.  I filled the pockets with ticket stubs, the flier for the cast party, a copy of the program, and a copy of a fax we received from the New York company of The Fantasticks.

These tags contain pictures that I didn't want to put on the pages themselves.  Someday, I hope to have the cast sign the tags or the backs of the picture tags.  The autographs and/or messages are another way to keep the show alive.  The tags easily fit into the pockets of the album.

Above are pictures of other items that fit into the pockets.  The top picture is the program and the fax that I mentioned earlier.  The bottom picture shows cards from a cast member and the director and a bag of "leaves", "rain", and "snow" that we used as props in the show.  I collected them from the stage floor.  I know - I'm kind of sentimental that way!

I'm currently working on some Christmas albums.  I'm hoping to create about five of them and post them to our Etsy shop soon. 

Thanks for visiting our blog and our shop.  We would love to hear from you!

Free Online Class with Jessica Spraque

Our friend Leah sent this link to us. She loves all things Jessica Spraque, so I thought why not take her advice and register for the class. It's free - great for those of us on budget. The class is 10 day and will cover five different paths to inspiration; words, music, art, tools and play. I signed up for an account, entered the code and now I'm good to go.
While there I also took a look at her digital products and found my paper for Ali Edwards December Daily. I love, love, love this project and decided to do an all digital album this year. Ali provided the templates at Designer Digitals and I fell in love with Jolly by Golly paper and elements from Jessica Spraque's site. I am downloading the papers as I write and will start to lay out my album over the next few weeks.

Happy scrapping everyone!

 

Fall Mini Tag Book

Inspiration this time of year, is no further than a walk outside. We live in the NW corner of PA and are ablaze in the oranges, yellows, greens, golds and reds of fall. I love everything about fall, except the daily reminder that summer is over and winter will soon be here. I love the colors, the blue of the sky, the crisp feel to the air and the sound of leaves crunching under my feet. And the foods; apple crisp, pumpkin bread and gingerbread...it is all good by me!

I also love making things using tags. I was fortunate to get a huge stock of them when a friend closed her scrapbooking shop a few years ago. I've used them to make ornaments, add to scrapbook pages and most recently to make a fall mini book.

The process was easy. I traced each tag on to paper, which I then cut out and attached with double sided tape. I then added embellishments and bits of paper here and there to create this one of a kind fall tag book. i was inspired by the papers from the Amber Autumn Stack Collection by DCWV; especially the glitterly leaf paper! Now off to make some apple crisp...yum! The complete album is on our Flickr page.

Welcome to the Ivory Tower

Welcome to our blog; our Ivory Tower on the web. My friend Kathy and I have been creative all our lives. She is a singer, actress, painter, writer, mother, wife and friend. I am a crafter who only sings in the shower! We are both idealistic and if left to our own devices would happily stay holed up in our Ivory Tower, crafting, singing and being with friends and family.

We opened an Etsy shoppe a few weeks ago. It is something we both have wanted to do for a long time and finally found ourselves in a position where we could. Back in January 2010, Kathy suddenly found herself without a job. We talked about doing Etsy for several months and in October she got the shop up and running and went back to work as a teacher. I suddenly found myself unemployed a few weeks later and here we are. Our lives seem to parrellel each others, which is one of the many things we enjoy about our friendships.

I'll be posting regularly, with fun give-aways sprinkled here and there. So check back often and enjoy the view from our Ivory Tower.