I can show you now!

Our daughter is coming back from NYC tonight. She graduated from university in December and works from home so she's almost always here now. I can't do secret scrapbooking when she's always around.

I have been holding onto 2 of these for a the last few months. My daughter would ask what I was planning to do with them, and my answer would always be vague.

 I turned these cheese wedge boxes into these:

Trinket Boxes!

The one on the left is for my mother, and the one on the right is for my daughter.

Mother's trinket box side with trim

 I found out, after trimming all the paper away from the intersecting edges on my daughter's trinket box, that trimming wasn't necessary. The thin scrapbook paper folds sharply and when glued down, doesn't keep the lid from closing on the bottom of the box. Next time, I won't trim away the excess. I would advise though to let it cure overnight by keeping the lid on the box. That way it dries to the ideal shape to fit onto of the bottom.

Daughter's trinket box side with trim

 Each box has a surprise in the bottom.

Interior: Mother's trinket box

Interior: Daughter's trinket box

Each box also has a set of diskpics of my daughter's graduation.

I punched a hole in each disk and mounted a small photo on the front. I got the mini-photos by cutting them out of 4x6 collage prints. On the back of the disks, I wrote a caption. The disks are strung together with elastic gold cord for hanging, freeing up the trinket box for other treasures. I just wanted something different than a scrapbook to commemorate the event.

Disney World Travel Journal

Earlier this year, my family took a trip to Disney World. I'm a planner. I had a big, zippered 3-ring binder with page protected printouts of every detail of our travel plans. It contained all the confirmation pages, menus, coupons, etc that I printed out on 8.5x11 paper. I had empty page protectors for all the brochures, and things that would go into scrapbooks back home.

I also designed a travel journal. Something smaller than a bread box and more intimate than the binder. The first time we went to Disney, I had printed out journal pages that went in the binder. Each night, I filled out the questions of the day, and made little notes. I was glad to have it when I wrote up my trip report and scrapbooked but to me those journal pages were too structured and boring.

It was probably a month before our trip this year and I was wandering the aisles of Marshalls.  I found this blank journal:

I paid $3.99-$5.99 for this. Can't remember. But I know it was cheap. It's 5.25"x7.5" with 104 pages. We were staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge, going to take the Sunrise Safari, and I thought this Safari cover was perfect.

I wasn't looking to make this one of those swanky, professional looking, serious heirloom-type journals.  I just wanted something that was more fly-by-the-seat, not based on appointments or schedules. There for, the pages are not in any order of occurrence.

 With my Cricut Expression cartridges and Cricut pens, I created pages of things we hoped to see and do. We never made it to Mickey's Philharmagic this time, but I really liked the page I made.

 I made pockets at home with tags for some of the pages. For the countries, I used the Destinations cartridge.

Free, daily activity at Animal Kingdom Lodge

Left side: All the tabs I made for pages I didn't make of things we didn't do since we decided not to go to Hollywood Studios

I left spaces for journaling, and adding bits of paper along the way. I brought 2 travel guides and cut out the pics and printed info to glue into my journal. Luckily, I remembered to bring along a glue stick. However, the little scissors on my mini-swiss army knife were a chore to use.

 For every day we were on vacation, I pasted a cricut cut-out to a page.

Left side: Empty tea bag packets and coaster from the Concierge Lounge.

I left space for journaling each day but some days, glued in emphemera took the place of so many written words. 

Every scrap of paper was admissible into my journal, even things we didn't use or end up needing.

After the trip, I had what I wanted. A more intimate, thorough, and picturesque travel journal.

Now all I have to do is decide of if I want to cut out the blank pages so the book lies flatter.

Do you have Disney Travel Journal? I'd love to see it. Post a link in the comments section.

Scrapbook Blinged Out Sheet Music

My son is teaching himself to play the guitar. For his birthday, he asked for a binder of printed sheet music of one of his favorite guitar artists. He wanted me to use my scrapbooking to finesse the pages.  I was really happy to do this for him, and had really too much fun putting it together.

 If it was a song title, I generally put the graphics near the title. If it was the start of a new album, I put the album title on the bottom of the first page. As you can see in this last shot, the binder is a big one. I believe it's 4.5 inches thick.

I printed out something like 275 pages and each page is in a page protector.

 Silly, I know, but I was awfully proud of this one. ^ Just by printing out the 3 word instruction, I was able to save page protecting a page that had this line, and mostly blank underneath.

Some of the graphics fit the titles and some were just what I could come up with to symbolize something about the title.

These designs I'm most proud of. My daughter said I did a good job at layering. I found that because it was such a small area I was designing, it was really easy to get into it, and be creative.