McGiver and a tip about a giveaway!

Have I ever mentioned that I hate crops? Well I don't hate crops, I just hate packing for them. I don't really pre-plan pages very well so I always forget half of what I want to use and bring the other half that I won't use. I also use my Cricut alot and my laptop and I don't want to lug them around. But I had no choice when it came to my MIL gift. I knew I wanted to use the Basic Grey Valentines line and pearls but beyond that....no clue. I knew what I wanted this to be a hybrid project because I didn't want it to get to bulky. Oh, and did I mention we already had tons of stuff to pack for the trip so I was limited to one small bag for scrapping supplies . So I packed my paper, my tin, my pearls, my whatever that felt thing is that I used, my ATG gun (which by the way was almost empty...I forgot to check before packing it), some liquid adhesive, ruler and pen. I was doing to do the inner pages while in Canada and print them at Walmart. Well my ATG gun ran out and I had to buy some a red stamp but I was able to do the outside in traditional scrapbooking and the accordion portion of the inside. I then created digital layouts that were sized 3" by 4" and had them printed. I added bling to the girls pages.

So what is it? It is a tin that is meant to be kept open and stretched out. All of her children and grandchildren are displayed in the order of where their birthday falls in a calendar year. Inside the circles on each page is the actual birthday. I got the idea when my dad made a comment to me last year that it is my job to call him a couple of weeks before my daughter's birthday so that he can buy her card. He also said the same thing about my brother's birthday and my sisters. So I am going to make one for him. But since my MIL birthday came first, I did hers first. I used great digital paper from PCLAYERS. It is called Sushi from Tinkering Ink. I used a Rhonna Farrer Circles from Twopeasinabucket.

TIP: Nancy from LovestoCreate is giving away some fancy schmancy mirrors. Check them out and check out her blog. Her craft room is really coming together. I may have to recruit her to do mine.