April TwentyTen Mini

Last week I was sitting at my desk staring at my calendar and thought "Wow. It's June."  How is it June already?!  There are so many things I still want to do this year... time is moving too fast!

Back in March I decided to put together an April mini album and saved every slip of paper from the month.  Everything went into a big plastic ziploc bag.  The interesing part was when I decided to do it, I had no idea what a HUGE moth April would be for me.  It brought me my highest highs and lowest lows... I never would have expected my life would go on such a rollercoaster ride in just one month.  Man, I picked crazy month to document.

My inspiration came from the awesome mini albums that my talented friends Amy and Elise put together.  I had a chance to look through some of Amy's when I was at her apt in May and it was even cooler in person.  I wanted to be cool like that ;)

I bought a small binder at Muji and covered the front with Studio Calico patterned paper, stickers, and a fabric rip.  The spin was covered with old Love Elsie fabric paper I've been hording.  And I added some of my beloved Hambly doily rub-ons.

I kept the inside of the album simple because the most important thing to focus on was the memorabilia.  The supplies I used were...

• Studio Calico Documentary paper
• Basic Grey Basics 6x6 paper + little stickers
• Washi tape (which Amy also introduced me to)
• American Crafts Precision Pen .03
• Fiskars hole punch
• A stapler
• Skyline stamp purchased at the Ink Pad

I wrote a little opener on a piece of Basic Grey 6x6 paper.  I won't bore you with the journaling ;)

I also included the 5x8 page from my desk calendar behind the opener.  This is what the stack of photos + papers look like behind the calendar.  I had a hard time deciding how to include journaling throughout the album and originally just stuck things in without worrying about it.  But then I realized that 10 years from now there's a pretty darn good chance I'm not going to remember what these random items are!  So I added some Washi tape here + there right on top of things and just wrote quick notes.

I love how things are all different sizes and I can see the layers peek out from below.  For years I've saved business cards and the ones from the month of April went into the album.  As did menus from restos, boarding passes, concert tickets, baseball tickets, hotel keys, and lots of my favorite photos.  I tried to punch the photos going different ways... for example a horizontal 4x6 could be punched to go in the binder vertically.

Oh April.  You almost did me in.
But with some paper and tape... I turned you into something real pretty.