paraphernalia: noun

equipment, apparatus, or furnishing used in or necessary for a particular activity

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One of my favorite things to create are mini albums, I really love making them as gifts too! My friend ( who doesn't visit my blog, I'm not sure she even knew what a blog was until she met me, doesn't stop by too often, so I am probably safe in sharing this! ) ....anyway, we are going to the beach together next month, and since she rarely even has her pictures downloaded, edited nor printed, not even to mention she doesn't put them in an album, ( I mean how can you, when they are most likely sitting in some abandoned file somewhere on her computer )...::sigh::..how do I get these kind of friends? lol

Oh well, that being said, I thought it would make a cute gift to collect her pictures for her and put her favorites from our vacation into a small album. I figure I'll make up the entire book before we go to the beach, designate each page for a 4x6 picture and a small saying, quote, etc. for the picture and take it with me to create while I am there. We'll see how this works out, best made plans and all that! lol

So 2 sites are having challenges that I can enter this into:

Pan Pastel UK Challenge Blog: Sun, Sea and Sand

and

Cricut Circle Blog, to use the Out Of Character cartridge

Big sigh, I am spoiled!
  With the Out Of Character cartridge, I wish they had made it so you could break up more of the letters using Cricut Craft Room so you could personalize them more easily! I had to resort to my pre-CCR days of cutting the whole word several times on different paper and cutting them apart by hand to get the desired look I wanted to achieve. I actually printed it several times on white card stock so that I could do some fun things, adding sand embossing powder to the letter R, wrapping twine around it with beads, dripping alcohol inks and spraying mists on the letter V,

 sewing mesh onto the letter E, and adhering ribbon to the letter L and adding a fussy cut starfish embellished with stickles and glossy accents.

I also had fun adding twine, beading, shells, and glittered fish. I don't know about you, but for me the most fun of a mini album is decorating the cover! lol  One of the fish got cut off in the letter A, so I painted him back in using Smooch and paint and finished him off with a pearl eye!

And as usual with mini albums comes the usual beach paraphernalia for the closure. I have used 2 rings, a string of beads and shells and a tag that says fun in the sun!

And what does it all look like when you have all the letters, sand, shells and beads put together? It spells a TRAVEL album!

Really Reasonable Ribbon, twine, ribbon
Out of Character cartridge

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Hope you are stopping by Project Pinterest, there are some real cute crafts and yummy recipes being made from the pins these ladies are using from Pinterest! We would love to have you join us too!