Tuesday, August 3, 2010

for grandma

My grandma is turning 90 on Saturday, and my family is throwing her a big birthday party at the church. Sadly, I won't be able to go, but I wanted to let her know that I'm there in spirit.

I read lots and lots of blogs. Many of them are written by scrapbookers who used to work for Simple Scrapbooks Magazine. (Still sad it's gone.) Back in March of 2009, Angie Lucas posted a project she put together for her grandmother who was turning 80. I've kept that in the back of my mind since then knowing that my grandma's 90th was just around the corner. Her project was a little more involved in that she mailed her journaling cards to her family members. They then wrote a message and brought it to the party with a picture of themselves/family with their grandmother. I chose not to do that. Partly because I'm a procrastinator and I waited til the last minute to put this together, and partly because I'm too cheap.

So my idea was to start with a slide-in album that holds 400 4X6 photos. I found it at Ross, and if you shop at Ross, then you know I got a great deal on it. I really like that it's horizontal.


For the little cutout on the cover, I debated on using my old standby of spiral paper roses, but they were too tall and I was afraid that every time someone opened the album they'd get squished. So I opted to go with her initials in a monogram instead. I did use pop-up dots under the oval just to give it some dimension and since it was flat I could use the little protective cover.


I did the opening page like I would a scrapbook page and when I was done, cut it into fourths. Yes, it made me nervous. Yes, I made sure to measure twice. I wanted to use a picture of my grandma and happened to have an extra copy of my all-time favorite picture of her from last summer - picking berries.


Then I began to create the journaling cards. That's what's kept me up until the wee hours of the morn. My goal was to get 100 done, don't think it's going to happen, but I've made 75 so far and they're all different. My hope is that at the party they'll be placed in a basket, then the guests will pick one and write down a memory they have with my grandma. Here's a small sampling. I won't make you look at all 75.


I used my punches and the cricut. Chose some cute ribbon, flowers, & brads and went to town. Everything got inked with my favorite Cat's Eye chalk ink in creamy brown. Most of the papers were from the same collection, but a few weren't, so the ink really ties everything together.

I'm going to send some extra blank white cards along in case they run out of the decorated ones, and my mom will send them to me to jazz up after the party. I figure everybody is going to be taking pictures, so I'm asking all my family to please send copies of their photos to Grandma so she can put them in her album. I'll have them mix the pictures with about two journaling cards per page and when it's done, she'll have a wonderful recording of her 90th birthday celebration and lots of memories written down.
PS - I just have to tell you how much I'm in love with this project.

4 comments:

Dawn said...

AWESOME project! I am going to 'scraplift' that one. Beautiful job!

Kellie said...

That is wonderful and a gift beyond words!! You will still be there in a special way even though not in person. You did a great job on that!

Angie Lucas said...

This is beautiful! I love how you adapted the idea. She's going to LOVE it. :)

Unknown said...

Hello Lurker Wendy!

I'm so glad you said hello today! I'm looking forward to taking a peek at your blog and getting some scrapbook inspiration!

Happy Thursday!