Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day and a special thanks to the brave men & women who serve this country!

As you could probably tell from my past few posts, Elle's Studio has been keeping me very busy. I'm not complaining because I absolutely love being part of that team. I'm sad that my last month as a designer is approaching. It sure was a short, but sweet term. If you ever have the opportunity to work with Elle - take it!

Today I'll share a mini album I made for the designer gallery for May. This is a combination effort of the Take 12 Challenge from Ella Publishing and use of the Elle's Studio kits for May. Way back in January I had committed myself to the Ella Take 12 Challenge and also a specific album format. I'm one of those people that thinks consistency in albums is the rule but realized around March that I was getting a little bored and losing interest in putting the pages together. I realized that it might be just as cool to have an album loaded with a varitey of takes on the monthly challenge - the only rule being that they fit into the album's page protector and not exceed the 8 x 8 space. That's how this album came to be:

The Elle's Studio Here & Now kit came with this little striped paper bag. I used it to hold my 'album' - I knew I wanted the album to stick out of the top of the bag, with either tabs or a group of patterned papers. I decided to use a plain manila file folder as the base, covered with patterned papers from the kit. Here's a close up of the bag decoration. I used the stamp to make my own washi-style tape:

 Here's the album out of the bag. 

The twelve photos are fit into Polaroid shapes cut from a sheet of patterned paper. There are 6 on each side. (Yes, the photos are pretty boring, since March 12 was a Monday - not the most exciting day in my world!)

In the center, attached with my home-made washi on top of a Hambly transparency, is an Elle's tag to record the day's (not very exciting) activities, 

Here's a close up of this tag - ideal for the Take 12 project!

On the reverse, a brief bit of journaling and another Elle's Studio stamp (one of my faves!)

Here's a close up of my tape. Made this by painting some plain old masking tape with white gesso, then stamping on it. (Learned this very cool technique from Julie Balzer.)

Here are the last 6 photos. Each has a small caption so I remember the significance:

Looking forward not to coming up with some other creative way to document the next 12 photos for this challenge. I realized in the process, many of the products made for project life are idea for use in the Take 12 project - and Elle's Studio has lots of them!

Hope you are all having a great weekend. It's very hot here today and the hubby and I managed to open the pool ourselves this year - not without a small disaster, but happy to report all is well now :) I'm amazed every year how we go from Spring to hot Summer almost overnight. Lots of fun stuff ahead this summer including a class in NY with Kelly Purkey (where I'll get to meet some other scrapbooking Jersey girls) and CHA in July - filled in between with a big yard sale (where I hope to purge a ton of scrapbooking supplies!) and lots of family gatherings. Don't you just love the beginning of the summer?