You know how sometimes you’re swamped with deadlines and all you want to do is play? That was me last week. Instead of ignoring it like I usually do, I went with it and I’m so glad I did because a few hours later, I had a completed mini album.

A few things made this project a super quick one. First is, of course, feeling that creative pull. Mojo is magic. Second, having a bunch of photos that I couldn’t wait to print out. Third, setting a few goals and/or parameters. For this mini album, I wanted to:

1. Use supplies already in my stash. I have piles of project life journal cards and embellishments that rarely get used because my project life albums are 99% photos. For this reason, I decided to go with a 4×6 size album.

2. Play with color + embellishments. I’ve been uncharacteristically drawn to color lately. I wanted to break out of my usual MO (which is bare bones, pairing photos with small type and lots of white space) and see if I could figure out a way to incorporate more color and actually use embellishments.

Playing with color paint strokes using photo templates (modern art 4×6 templates).

Heart card from Moments Like These.

The girls are huge fans of The Beatles! We took them to see The Beatles Love show for Madeline’s 6th birthday and they loved it. It’s a family friendly show, there were a lot more kids than I expected. We went to the 7pm show, which is a little later than I would have liked but it worked out. We grabbed a late dinner after the show and the girls were excited to be up way later than their usual bed time.

Finally got to use these amazing patterned papers (get happy and the lines/dots) designed by Allison Pennington.

One is one of my favorite go to combinations: pairing a black + white pattern (Summer Manifesto 4×6 Journal Card) with a full photo page.

This is about as crazy as I got, in terms of using color. Normally, I would have changed the summer manifesto color to one that meshes better with the photo (maybe a black, royal blue or even the light blue) but this one was already printed so into the album it went.

I have a whole series of photos like these (above) that can easily become an album of its own.

Above full photo spread is probably my favorite. Originally I had intended to hand write journaling across the top left corner. But then I found the “today is awesome” 3×4 transparency (from the paislee press for Gossamer Blue On My Desk collection) – quick and simple…and done. Also, I finally used the tiny attacher stapler I’ve had for years.

More Happy Card + hot pink artist tape.

And this is the front cover, using a 4×6 journal card and go see do cut file from Summer Manifesto.

It’s the last week of summer vacation for us here, the girls go back to school next week! I plan on adding a few more photos to make it a complete “what happened this summer” album.