Valentine's Day Paper Bag Album Layouts

Lisa and I had a blast getting together last week and making about a dozen of these love and Valentine's Day themed mini albums for our MadAboutScraps shop.  I am personally going to use one for preschool Valentines Day Party photos.  Kamille might also give one to her preschool teacher as a Valentine's Day Gift. 

 I made a pocket by cutting the mats in half on a diagonal.  I used gems to make it look like it is attached with brads.

 I layered up some prima flowers for dimension and used a large brad for the center.

 I love to embellish my tags with some simple stickers. 

Instead of using ribbons for the pull-out pocket pages, I used stickers to create a tab.

My Newest Paper Bag Album + Layouts

By now, everyone knows that I am crazy about sewing, but what you may not know is that I have an equally sick obsession with scrapbooking.  I especially love mini albums.  My favorite by far are paper bag albums.  I have about 200 of these things made up and sitting in tupperware at my house.  Lisa & I just love getting together and making them.  I was try to stockpile them for some Christmas craft shows, but we really haven't even booked any shows for this fall.  I put a few in our Etsy Shop but for the most part they are just sitting around here.  Sometime I like to make one that it over the top fabulous.  I'll probably start giving a new mini album layout every Sunday on our blog, just because I love them so much.  These are really awesome and affordable Christmas gifts, especially for people you work with.  I even put one in the mailbox every Christmas for Gretchen - our mail carrier. 

I came up with this Sweet 16 Album because I wanted to get out my Cricut and actually get some use out of it and because I had this wonderful stack of paper I have been dying to use. 

The basics of making a paper bag album are pretty simple, you sew a couple of bag together.  I like to make 8 page albums (sewing 2 bags together), but some people make the albums huge. I've seen them with 30+ pages.  You can only sew 3-4 bags together without breaking your sewing machine needle.  IF you want to go bigger than that, you should use rings or just tie it together with ribbon.  I've said it before, you need to buy a 2 hole punch.  It will punch through anything. 

Then, you can stitch down the papers or stick them down with tape.  I've done it both ways.  Tape is easier.  For the cover I used my Cricut to cut out the title with a shadow and the mats.  It's the cartridge that comes with the machine.  Under the mat, cover paper, I put a huge piece and tulle and then tied it in a bow with a charm.        

For the next layout, I added more mats from the cricut and some of the scrollwork from the Home Decor cartridge.  I also taped down a little remnant of beaded trim I had in the stash.

For decoration I've got some primas with buttons in the center.  For the tag, I folded a foil flower in half, stapled it down, and then added a sticky gem.  I inked the tag with pink. 

This album is 6x6.  These are the huge bags you get at CVS or Meijer.  The dollar store only has the smaller bags that make a 4.5x5 album (which I normally make).  For this layout, I cut a circle page in 4 pieces and used 2 to make pockets.  I used some felt sticker details, metal words, and more primas.  Inside I have pull out pages for more photos.  I stapled folded primas onto them as tabs and then I used some glitter decals.  Lisa made some donations for Colorblok for a charity event and they gave us a ton of freebies.  They are right down the street from us and I love to buy from them. 

On this page I did a triple mat for each of the photo layouts.  The tags are embellished with more primas and scrollwork from the Home Dec cartridge.  I tied a big bow to hold the tags in. 

On the back, I have a bunch of layered flowers.  I jazzed them up by adding some flower shapes I made out of tulle.  These flowers are really expensive, so I try to add tulle when layering to make them go further. 

Here, you can see my pull out pages that were tucked into the pockets on the bags. 

Happy Crafting!

Craft Show Booth Design

I thought that it might be fun to post some photos from our last craft booth setup.  We had not done a show in a few years, so we needed to come up with a dare I say, cheap, set-up. 

I think that this turned out pretty well and I plan on using the idea again with a few changes.  The basic booth set up is that I used 2 sheets of heavy pegboard (because I have it in the garage) cut to 2 foot x 4 foot panels.  Then, I zip tied them together onsite to make the zigzag walls.  On top we put a 10' long shelf on each side.  When I use this next time, I am going to have laminated poster board where you see the fabric with samples of my items stuck down with velcro and a place to write in the prices with dry erase marker.  We had both scrapbooking and baby/kids crafts showed into the booth.  I actually like to get 2 spots, but this was last minute.  The 1st day everything was mixed together.  The second day we got there early and divided the booth in half.  The 1st day we had the monster hanging on the back of the tent.  We barely sold any.  No one wants to look through things with you sitting there.  On day 2 we put the monsters on the front on the booth.  They sold like hotcakes. 

We also put the radio flyer filled with monsters at the front of the booth so people could really look through.  The front also has the flip flops and bows.  These really brought people into the booth.  I just wish I had made adult sized flip flops, not just kid's.  Behind that I have all of the baby stuff and then doll clothes.   

On the shelf we displayed our felt play houses. 

This is the front of the booth on the scrapbook side.  I actually brought shelves to put art, jewelry boxes and paper bag albums on.  It worked out better than I had hoped.  This side really drew in the tweens and teens. 

The suit case was filled with paperbag albums with themed dividers.  It sounded great, but didn't work well in reality.  Next time I am putting shelves with samples from each theme on an easle with similar albums hanging from bags underneath. 

This was part of the baby stuff I was trying to get rid of.  I used my daughter's old moses basket and people did look through it. 

This is the display for our custom t-shirts for dolls.  I had each design labeled with shirts packaged under the table. 

 On the last day, we used our table to display the felt food, so we did sell more felt food that day. 

All in all it was a decent design for being cheap down and dirty.  I think that we worked out some kinks and got a really good idea for the next show of what worked and did't work.

It actually was more colorful the 1st day as I had giant butterflies hanging up, but they got ruined by the rain.  It was sopping wet the entire time, which made it a little difficult, but that is what you get with outdoor shows.