Counterfeit Kit: first page!

Well, here's my first page using my Counterfeit Kit.  I've more or less made a decision that the Counterfeit Kit Challenge will be my number one priority this month, but I came up with a problem straight away, that of the one portrait and one landscape photo, and how to place them together on a page.  So I went through my bloglist and came up with this sketch from Pagemaps . . .

. . . stretching it the way I often seem to at the moment, by replacing smaller photos with the 4x6 variety.

About half-way through the construction on this page, I realised how much I had been influenced by the latest Glitter Girl video, on creating depth through embellishment.  Check out the video, if you haven't already, then come back and see my clusters of embellishment here:

If you're following along with the Counterfeit Kit Challenge, then you'll want to know that what I used in addition to the kit is the following:

• off-cut of blue cardstock, used to cut the butterflies on my Silhouette 
• off-cut of green patterned paper.  (I used it exactly "as is", but decided it wasn't wide enough, so added the border strip next to it).
• green flower brads, used to attach flowers
• letter stamps used to spell out "Swansea"
• embroidery floss used to attach buttons.

Sound like a lot, when you say it like that, but it's just details, really!  Thanks for stopping by.

Stamp Camp memories

Not much craftiness going on here at the moment; I'm still working plus struggling with a cold, plus seemingly perpetual wet weather to add the challenge of getting the washing dry . . . you get the idea.
So today, I thought I'd finally publish a post on a page that I made back in April as an "assignment" for the "Hitchhiker's Guide to Scrapbooking class".  Chapter 3 is on using sketches.  Now I am no stranger to using sketches, so I could have skipped this assignment quite easily, but there was one sketch I really wanted to use.  The perfect sketch for someone with a Silhouette SD and knows they won't be getting a Cameo anytime soon . . .

See what I mean?  I can't fit a 12" sheet into my silhouette, but by hanging the shape off the edge of the page, it kind of looks like I can!

This story comes from way back in 2003 when I was heavily pregnant with Maddy.  My friend, Jade and I went up to our favourite Stamping shop's "stamp camp" for the day.
Can you see the name-tags that Jade and I are wearing in the photo?  Part of the preparation for the weekend was to decorate your own  name-tag, and both of us, without consultation, had added springy things to ours.
I used the same stamp as I did on my name-tag for my custom-stamped background.
If you've never done anything like my stamped background, it's actually pretty easy.  Start with your focal point (in this case my heading, stamp camp, in black) then randomly stamp your largest stamps (stamp in lilac and camp in blue) progressing down in sizes to fill in the blanks.  See, told you it was easy! 

This page could definitely be filed under "old photos go well with older products"; I used 3 sheets of paper out of the (thankfully shrinking) folder of "really quite old" papers, not to mention the fibres on the LHS border.

It's amazing that you haven't heard more from me about Jade, she is a dear friend and an avid stamper and scrapbooker.  The "House of Jade" is a  great source of inspiration to me, but it's her turn to have very young children, and my turn to re-train (last year) and attempt to re-enter the workforce (this year) making co-ordination time a bit of a challenge!
Jade credits me with introducing her to stamping, when she came to a Crafty Kids party at my house back in the early years.  I credit Jade as being the only crafty friend I have with a bigger stash than mine!

Thanks for stopping by, hopefully I'll be back in the craft room with something new to share with you soon!

Scrapbook Stamping

I first started out in card-making before I took the plunge into scrapbooking. And back then, card-making was pretty much synonymous with stamping.  I think one of the main reasons I started to scrapbook was the idea that I would have double the opportunity to use my tools and supplies - that was the stated reason of course, but there was also double the opportunity to buy more stuff!
And while I certainly have used my stamps in my albums over the years, there's always the sneaking feeling that many of my stamps have really not been used enough to justify their existence in my collection. 
That's why I was so excited to win a spot in Jen Gallagher's workshop, "Scrapbook Stamping" At 2Peas in a Bucket.
While I haven't finished the "assignments" for all the chapters yet, I've jumped ahead to the "bonus chapter" she added for "National Scrapbook Day", and here is my page which combines a range of stamping types:

The hoodie Angus is wearing in the photo immediately made me think of my Echo Park "This and That" 6" pad, so I chose all my papers out of that.  (Mind you, I think he'll be wearing it in every photo this winter, he only takes it off to have a bath and go to school - yes I have sometimes caught him sleeping in it!)

My title is a mix of letter and word stamps, and I added the pointer finger stamp to draw attention to the lizard he is holding.  Other stamping includes a clear-embossed background stamp, a thin border stamp and a journalling spot.  Our lizard does not yet have a name, and it is too young to tell whether it is a boy or a girl, so I included some question marks as embellishments.
 

I have used the Scrapbook Supplies Online sketch for this month.

Patterned paper only

There's just three of us left at home this Easter weekend; I wish I could say that the one who's gone with his dad to visit the grandparents was going for a bit of quality father-son bonding time, but no-one is pretending it is anything other than the lure of Belco skate park! (Coincidentally, the photos I'm going to show you in a minute were taken on the same day as his late trip to Belco). 

After Good Friday church this morning, I sat down to this week's video from Glitter Girl.  Another topic dear to my heart this week - using patterned paper only and no purchased embellishments.  I took myself straight up to the craft room after lunch for a bit of a first-day-of-school holidays treat.  The photos I decided to use have been sitting with that piece of background paper in my "in progress" folder for ages.  I actually had 3 photos printed out, but I decided to only scrap two of them, Shimelle-style.

Actually, I stuck pretty closely to one of the pages that Shimelle did in the video, only leaving out the strips to the RHS of the photos.  Not that I didn't like the concept- I like it a lot - but my background paper was busy enough, so I turned that space into a title/journalling block. 
It's surprising, given my budget and my mission to banish scraps from my life,  that I don't make embellishments like these windmills more often.  I'll have to remember them again, especially for pages like these which are so boy-heavy.
In the end, I'm not sure that I'm ecstatic with my choice of paper for my windmills, but for now,  a finished page is a finished page!

A bit of a Shimelle-a-thon

It seems that last week, I found time for everything new that Shimelle was throwing at us.  First there was the "starting point" that I shared with you in my last post. 

Then came Glitter Girl, her video this week was on "three scrap strategies".  If you want some new ideas on how to use your never-ending pile stash of scraps, I definitely recommend you watch this video.  I could happily do all three strategies, but this is the page I made, based on her idea of using strips of paper:

This was a great opportunity to dive into my collection of strips of paper, many of those used being branding strips (I think I could 11 different Basic Grey papers from different collections).  I finished it off with some older stickers and letter tiles (In fact those letter stickers might be the oldest ones in my collection!) and a stamped image tucked behind the photo.

This was the perfect story for this kind of treatment.  It is the only photo I have from the brief period in time about ten years ago when we had a pair of ducks (and no, don't worry, that is not two ducks in the photo, but one duck and a chicken).  It's a story I really wanted to tell in my album, but not one I wanted to spend lots of time and money on.

Finally, at the end of last week, came Shimelle's sketch of the week.  The sketch really appealed to me, in part because it is, once again, so 6" friendly.  I chose some photos and pulled out my 6" pads.  Even though they are very recent photos, I ended up teaming them up with some older paper.  Why?  Because I had a 12" sheet from the same collection also sitting in the stash - look at the words in the strip at the bottom and you will see the answer . . .

best friends . . . someone special . . . I miss you . . . This paper could have been made just for this page, showing photos of Maddy and Lillian (and their respective brothers) when our friends came up to visit from Tasmania.  This page mixes "old" with "retro" tags from (I think) Cosmo Cricket.  That one 12" sheet has been great value, appearing on 3 other pages and 2 cards!  I would have used more on this page, but the others had a bluish green that did not go with this page at all.

Thanks for stopping by!

6" pads: a love story

Some love stories are the love-at-first-sight kind.  Some grow out of friendship.  But the ones that we love the most (at least when we're reading them or watching them on TV at least) are those that have some tension, some misunderstanding, some highs and lows, some will they or won't they make it . . . and that has been what my relationship with 6" pads has been like.
The first ones I bought (quite a few years ago now) thinking, what a great size for card making!  But they weren't the most successful purchase - aside from anything else, I probably already had quite a few scraps by then, and didn't really need to buy anything just for the size!  But looking back, I now understand that the biggest problem of all was that I had bought many of them on the internet, so hadn't actually seen all the papers I was buying.  And let me tell you, none of the papers that I didn't absolutely love 5 or more years ago have improved with age!  So last year, the 6" pads in my stash were somewhat of a thorn in my side.  But once I realised it was the individual patterns that were the problem rather than the size, things started to improve.
More and more, I'm discovering ways of using 6" sheets on my scrapbook pages.  Many of the older sheets have gone to paper purgatory, and I have purchased new pads without fear of them suffering the same fate.  of course, double-sided papers really help - even if I don't love the more themed "A" side, I tend to find the "B" side quite usable.
And now for 3 ways I've used 6" papers recently:

First up, just the starting point (really just a simplified version of one of Shimelle's)  I've done 2 pages like this using a pad from Basic Grey called Granola.  I'd classify this pad as old, but not ancient, and one that I've used, but not as quickly as I'd like!  So it's awesome to use 8 sheets as background, then a couple more for layering and titles through the Silhouette.  These pages will be more from the October long weekend camping trip last year.

Now, for a 2-pager I did based on last week's Lets Scrap sketch:

This page tells what I consider to be THE story of our lives right now.  The file tabs are not just decorative, but open up to be a "report card" on why each child is currently at the right school for them.  The file on the right is about me, and how the move affects me and my plans for the next 2 years.  The border strips and title are cut from left over Basic Grey "basics" papers and all the rest is from my latest 6" pad, Echo Park "this and that".  (BTW, my children are not wearing some strange, shapeless fluorescent clothes, I have erased their school uniforms rather than publish them in uniform on the internet)

Lastly,  after getting over my "starting point" block, I made this page based on Shimelle's latest starting point, here.

The creamy coloured 6" sheet is from one of my old pads, but the photos are even older, so that's OK!  That's Rohan, the skater boy up on the horse there!

Notice a bit of stamping on these pages?  More on why in another post soon, but in the meantime, I'll leave you with a couple of close-ups:

Ten things about "Using what you have"

Based on Shimelle's "10 things on the 10th" today I thought I'd share with you ten things about what this year's motto means to me:

"Use what you have in a way that makes you happy"

1. Challenging myself to look for fun ways to use what I have.  When I do on-line challenges I tend to be drawn to sketches and colour challenges, which allow me to use the products I already own, rather than product-based challenges which require anything that I don't already own!
I had a bit of a light-bulb moment with Chapter 2 of Shimelle's hitchhiker class, which is about "Starting Points".  I have to confess that prior to this I hadn't really "got" starting points and had only attempted one.  But Shimelle points out that they are just like sketches, but more versatile, because you can add the photos, journalling etc where-ever you want.  Lightbulb time!  I can decide where I want my photos to go before constructing my "starting point"!  Hey presto! Just like a sketch!  Here's the page that I did for the class:

If you know me at all, it will be no surprise that my first thought for this starting point was: offcuts!  which brings me to my next point:

2.  I tend to look through my off-cuts first, for smaller pieces.

However, this was a little bit at odds with another thought that my new 6" pads might work really well for this page, and guess what  . . .

3.  Use what's new while it's still new could almost be another motto for the year for me.  After all, I don't want to go to all the hard work of finding creative ways to use my old supplies, only to discover in another 5 years a bunch of vintage pages circa 2012 that feel old and dated!

I'm proud to say that this page ended up being a happy combination of both - the first 3 stripes are offcuts but from new papers - the third time they've been used each in the month or so I've had them!  All the other papers are from a 6" pad.(I love how the Echo Park ones are a little bit taller, so you can use them to mat a photo!)

4. Make it don't buy it.  I don't tend to buy a lot of embellishments, preferring to make my own when I can.  The hand-cut clouds on this page are a simple example.

5.  I find that  Sneaking older-products doesn't always date a page.  The scrabble letters I used in my title are amongst the oldest items left in my stash, but I think they go just great with the kraft background.  Likewise, the ribbons I used would hardly qualify as new.

6.  Having said that, I think a perfect time to use older products is on older pages, like the flowers on this page, about an event back in 2004.

7.  Getting value out of your supplies doesn't always mean using every last particle.   After making this flower girl page, I decided I am getting quite tired of  these Kaisercraft flowers, of which I still have many colours and sizes.  My $1 per use guideline I set for myself means that a pack of flowers that cost, say, $3 or $4 needs to be used 3 or 4 times for me to feel I have "value" out of it.  That means I do not need to use every flower in the pack!  I've decided to keep a certain number of each, and plan to offer the others up to crafty friends!

8.  I am trying to banish "reasons" to hoard

I have loads of buttons (don't think those jars at the top of my blog are the only ones I own!), for example, but I sometimes come across mental barriers like, but what if I want those ones for a sewing project one day, or what if I run out of those nice red ones?  I'm trying to say to myself, so what!  I'm pretty sure they still sell buttons at the shops!

9. Inspiration is everywhere.  In just over a year I've gone from someone who hadn't read a blog or attempted an on-line challenge to someone who belongs to a number of challenge websites, follows more blogs than I can do justice to, and is an avid Pinner on Pintrest.  But like my motto of last year, I try and focus on what inspires me to create.  Another way of thinking of this is focusing on technique, rather than product.

10. Finally, I try to stay flexible.  I don't get too hung up on "rules" and worrying about breaking them.  As they say in the first Pirates of the Carribean movie "they're not actual rules, more like just guidelines.

If you stayed with me through this very long post, thank you!  I don't expect too many of you to choose to follow my example (and what is probably a tiny budget compared to many!) but if I've inspired you in any way, I'd love to hear about it!

Hitching a ride with Shimelle

If you've been reading for a while, then you'll know I'm a big fan of Shimelle Laine over at 2Peas. So you'll understand that I was absolutely ecstatic to discover That I had won a place in her new workshop, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Scrapbooking".

Chapter one is about "choosing pretty paper", with the occasional Douglas Adams reference thrown in for fun.  My fave so far: "white space is big.  You won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is"

Our first challenge was to take a photo of our supplies on our desk before starting our next page,  then come back later and post the finished product.  Here's my photo:

One thing I have learnt more so far, is that most of those who have posted before me had pulled out way more supplies than me, something that probably shouldn't surprise me, and might not surprise you either - what would the photo of the supplies for your next layout look like?

The sketch you can see in the photo is the March challenge from Scrapbook Supplies Online, which I am entering this page into.

For the first time, I decided to try planning out my layout using my Silhouette Studio software, as a way of making sure I cut all my bits out at the right size.  I started with a big 12" square, and a rectangle the size of my photo mat, and went from there.

As I only have an SD and not a cameo, my cutting mat is not 12", so I just had to kind of ignore the cutting mat on the screen for the time being.  Once I was happy, I just dragged everything out of the way and brought back what I needed to cut.  I ended up cutting the doily twice, once in the PP and once in the cardstock, figuring whichever one I didn't use would probably end up on a card or something.

The story behind the page: When my sister got married, she had the boys as pageboys (I did some pages for their albums which you can see here) but Maddy, at just 20 months old, was a bit too young to be a flower girl!  For some reason, she didn't want to put off her wedding for a couple of years so Maddy could be flower girl though!  LOL
My sister is an amazing seamstress, (come to think of it, she probably wouldn't mind me linking you to her here) and not only did she make her own wedding dress and the boys's outfits, but she made the adorable dress that Maddy wore that day.  I remember being overtired and bursting into tears when I first saw it! (In a good way!)

Thanks for reading, I'll probably see you around the galaxy somewhere . . .

A little something extra - at no extra cost!

Some people scrapbook very fancy, very embellished pages.  Others have a cleaner, more simple style.  My pages generally tend towards the simpler end of the spectrum.  And I'm OK with that.  I like the fact that I keep the photos and stories as the key focus of my pages.
But lately, I've been thinking (especially given the size of my stash) that it wouldn't hurt to add just a little something extra to some of my pages.
This week at Two Peas, Shimelle's alter-ego, Glitter Girl, tackled just this issue, of adding just that little bit extra, (see here)so I decided to take up the challenge!

Trying a "scrapbook starting point" has never been that appealing to me, but once as I just saw it as a variation on a sketch, I could move forward, using one of the new photos I've just had printed out.
I really wanted to add some ribbon or something to this page, but it just wasn't working for me.  I don't own any mists, but I used ink and watered-down paint to bring the colours on the page together.
I'm not the sort of person to use cutesy ice-cream embellishments on a page about a trip to an ice-cream shop.  Using my Silhouette, I cut out a few asterixes from a couple of different fonts from two of the same papers, and punched out some circles from a third.
A simple page, telling a lovely, simple story!

December stretch your sketch

Feeling like there's been an absence of new photos this year?  That's because of a sad little story.  I went to download some photos and discovered the connection on the cable that connects my camera and computer was damaged.  So I dug out my old cable, connected it up . . . and the whole computer shut down!  Yikes!
So I jumped on Ebay and waited (impatiently) for my new cable to arrive.

But I'm pleased to now be able to show you this page which I actually did on New Years Day, based on the December stretch your sketch at Two Peas.  I adore these photos of Maddy we took at her first Christmas.  I covered a box with wrapping paper and attached a bow to her head to make the sweetest present under the tree ever!  For years after the boys would refer to "those things you stick on babies heads"!

Those purple flowers have been sitting in my stash for forever, so it's nice to give them a proper home!

11 photos on a double-page-and-a-bit

Today I want to show you a page I made based on Shimelle's latest 4x6 photo love for November.  The concept is to use a photo protector between the two pages of your layout in order to add an additional 4 photos and 2 4x6 journalling blocks.
I don't own the actual 6x12 divided photo protectors that Shimelle demonstrates, which hold 3 landscape photos on each side.  On the other hand, I do own a truck-load of the 12" ones, and I was quite happy to cut one down.
(A couple of years ago, I bought a whole lot so that all the un-scrapbooked photos could be held chronologically in the same album as my completed pages.  That's what I do with my kid's albums, but I very quickly realised that the cost to do that with the family photos would be astronomical, hence all the spare photo protectors)

I felt a bit like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat as I was choosing papers for this layout, I kept on finding more and more Basic Grey "Marjolaine" offcuts in my stash.  I ended up using 3 of these papers and some of the matching stickers.  I only ended up adding my own Mini alpha stickers for the sub-heading, and some tiny flowers and brads.

Stashometer goes through the roof!

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's only my paper stash I'm trying to work through, and it's true, that is often what I focus on, and what I tend to use the most of.  Here are three pages I've made recently and why they would send the stashometer crazy . . .

Page one: Slip'n'Slide

 Firstly,  a page I made based on the October  "stretch your sketch" from Two Peas.  It was another set of pretty photos that sat around for a long time because I don't really "do" pretty photos without a story attached.  But finally, when this sketch came along, I decided to let the photos speak for themselves, hence the lack of any journalling.  Stashometer-wise:

• The background paper is from an old DCWV stack I bought at Big W several years ago.  Truth is, I've used those papers heaps, but 48 is a lot of sheets of paper!
• The rest of the PP is offcuts from the same stack  (except the die-cut border, which I cut for my "inspire" layout but decided it was too large to use)
• Letter and word tiles are REALLY OLD, and the none of the word tiles had been used before!
• Tags had been bought in a set of 100 at the local newsagent, also several years ago

Page two: twice the fun

This page began when I read the newsletter from my local scrapbook shop, Shop and Crop,  announcing a monthly sketch!  Not a challenge coming from across the globe, but from the very next suburb!  How could I not take part!
I never used to be one of those scrappers who say things like "I always use a minimum of three patterned papers on a page"  In fact, for the longest time, it wouldn't occur to me to use more than one, mainly due to keeping the cost down.  On this page, though:

• I used three untouched PP (all quite old) as well as a sheet of cardstock.  The pinks came back from my sister's honeymoon to the US in 2004!
• The sparkle comes from that old favourite, Kindyglitz.

Page 3 is my entry into the Colorful Creations Round Robin.It features:

• 3 patterned papers (all also unused) of similar vintage to those used above.  The butterfly paper comes from the honeymoon also, and the purple actually had a date of 2002 on the back!
• I remember buying the PP with the words on it after reading an article in a magazine, where the author suggested using the words on such papers as a fun addition to journalling and titles.  Great idea, but I just never used them . . . until now!
• more of the pastel letter tiles
• lace from the endless collection I've acquired from my Mum's even more endless collection

13 photos on a one page layout!

How awesome is this idea from Shimelle at Two Peas?  Her September 4x6 photo love class incorporates 9 photos by putting 2 photos on both sides of those inserts you can see . . .  but I had 13 photos so added a third insert. What a fun, interactive idea!
Shimelle uses transparency for her pocket.  I, on the other hand, don't own any transparency, but am always looking for ways to use vellum, so, voilla!  I thought about stamping over it to give it a bit of pattern, but ended up deciding there was enough going on, what with the patterned papers and all those photos and all.

 I didn't mention it, but last weekend I spent the most I have in one shop all year, at a touch over $50.  It was pretty basic supplies - 3 packs of page protectors (most of which I loaded pages into as soon as I got home), some sheets of cardstock (first time all year - shows how much cardstock I have, but there are starting to be a few holes) and 10 sheets of patterned paper.  And that's what I'm feeling a bit bad about, that maybe 10 sheets at once was a few too many . . . I'd hate to think I might still be looking at them a year from now, wondering if it's time to cull them. 

I have used one already, on this page inspired by  the August stretch your sketch from Two Peas in a Bucket.  We recently remembered a phrase that Angus coined when Hamish was just a puppy: "Some people think puppies are old fashioned, but WE don't".  Just a little bit of nonsense that expressed his love, one of those little things we might forget if we didn't record them.
In the sketch, the idea is to use a grid of round embellishments in that space to the left of the photo, and I had probably 20 buttons ready to go.  But by the time I had shifted around my title, that idea didn't work anymore, so I just used 3, in a triangle around the page.

two pet pages

 On top of my list of things to try this week were a few sketches and ideas involving one 4x6 portrait photo on a page.  So it was back to the archives, and I found photos of Angus and Maddy with their guinea pigs when they first got them .  no problems there, except that both of these pets have now passed on.  A bit weird to be scrapbooking them now, but once they are chronologically in the album, they will have an appropriate place in my kid's memories of their childhood.
First up, I did this page with Angus and Kayla based on the January 4x6 photo love tutorial.  When I was choosing colours, I noticed that this week's awesome Colour Q challenge would work really well.  Love that!

In fact, there's lots I love about both these pages, the primary embellishments were scrap papers, buttons and machine stitching.  Great for the budget, and great for kids pages.

 The page with Maddy and Hannah is inspired by week 2 POTW from Scrapbook Challenges.  It was a weird moment when Maddy wandered in as I was finishing this page.  First because, as previously mentioned, Hannah is no longer with us, which makes her a bit sad, second because it's a very pink page, and she's not a pink girl anymore, and third, because she is wearing a shirt with cats on it, and she is very much a dog girl now.  but like I said, chronologically, it makes sense!

Does anyone remember these Making Memories dot letter stickers?  When I was first starting out in scrapbooking, they were on my "must have" list, I think because so many projects in magazines used them.  By the time I bought them though, I didn't actually use them that much.  Being me, I still haven't thrown them away, but I tend to cut off the lumpiest bits of the dots before I use them!

7 photos on one page with an accordian album.

Yesterday,  I put this page together using a technique I found at 2 peas in a bucket, in one of their free video tutorials,

July's 4x6 photo love by Shimelle
Now I know what you're thinking, if you've been reading my blog.  Didn't I bag these videos only a couple of weeks ago as being full of advertising?  Well yes I did.  It was kind of like going camping for a long time and not watching any TV, and then suddenly watching TV again and being overwhelmed by the ads.Then, in a surprisingly short amount of time, you hardly notice them anymore.  Now I tend to just ignore the fact that they are using beautiful new products and try to focus on the techniques they are demonstrating.  And sometimes I have a little giggle, like when they say things like, "I tend to use as many stickers as I want on the one page and then throw the rest away".  Easy to say when you are being paid to advertise products, but some of the rest of us have to keep more of an eye on the bottom dollar.

 Anyway, back to the page.  the 4x6 photo love series has a video each month, each one focusing on a different number of 4x6 photos on a page.  January had one photo, February two, and so on which brings us to seven photos in July.

When I saw this technique demonstrated, I thought it would be great for those kinds of photos you take, you know the ones, that aren't that great, but they still make up an important family memory.  these photos definitely fall into that category.  They come from a trip to Jenolan Caves two years ago, a spectacular series of limestone caves.  You know that your photos aren't going to look anywhere near as good as the real thing, but you can't hep but take lots of photos anyway!  And that's what I journalled l about, as emphasized in my subtitle, pictures can't do it justice..
In terms of product, the accordion album uses 2 sheets of 12" cardstock, as in 2 strips slightly bigger than a 6" photo, then a mat for the photo on the right.  To minimize waste, I used the same cardstock to make the two strips with my border punch. Other than that, the patterned paper is offcuts of two different double-sided papers that I bought at the end of last year.  Then the title is sizzixed with a scrap of shiny cardstock and a corner flourish stamp.  Plus the subtitle used my brand new tiny alpha stamps! How cool is that!