Houn Dawgs Mini Album

Each of the past three years I have attended Aurora's Project Graduation. If you aren't familiar with Project Grad, it's a drug-free, alcohol-free celebration held only for graduates on the night of their high school graduation. Seniors and their parents hold fundraisers throughout the year to pay for the evening's activities, and provide some pretty generous gifts to those who choose to attend. It's held out of town, with the kids boarding a school bus around 8 or 9 p.m. and returning on the bus around 6 a.m. 

You may be asking, "Why? Why on earth would you stay up all night with 100 giddy eighteen year olds?" Because some of them want to make mini albums! Each year I've had around twenty sign up. Project Grad covers my expenses and I supply the girls (there was a boy once, but I think his girlfriend forced him!) everything they need to put together a nice little 6" mini. I make the books myself with my handy-dandy Cinch and I have papers cut to size and an assortment of embellishments. 

We are the Houn Dawgs. No, not the Hound Dogs--the Houn Dawgs. (There's a cool story there, but that's for another day.) Not a lot of scrapping paraphernalia floating around out there for Houn Dawgs. And I'm too cheap...er...frugal...to order anything custom made, so I make it myself! 

Here are some of the pages from Michael's book that I put together for him.

The Sr 2011 was cut with my Silhouette. The 11 "charms" are glitter craft foam cut  with Sizzlits. I found a really good deal on the tassels last spring. Usually I make them with a few inches of fringe trim.

I doodled on a piece of notebook paper then scanned it into my computer and printed copies of it to get the page on the left. You see a lot of doodle papers, but this is personalized for this specific group. (Michael is the only drummer playing in the photo.)

This was a 12x12 sheet for marching band. I cut out the words and repositioned them on the background after I cut it down to size. (Michael is #10 in the pic of the football captains)

This SR 11 is cut with the same Sizzlits. For the right side, I made the Houn Dawgs paper on the computer and everything that isn't Houn Dawgs paper is a Coolibah page I printed on 4x6 paper.

The left side is another Coolibah page printed on 4x6.

Prom and the flourish were cut with my Silhouette. I don't know how they squezzed so much personality into that limo! Yes, Michael went platinum for a while.

Guys and Dolls is just good old glitter glue on black cardstock. (I didn't do that for 20 books. Michael had to get something special!)

I do work in a few simple pages. I probably wouldn't have included this one on the blog, but it might be the only photographic evidence I have that Michael actually hugged me. In front of hundreds of people! (I'm on the school board and he had to hug me to get his diploma! teehee!)

Another very simple page. Yes, the picture on the right is blurry, but how could I not use it?! That's my brother on the left and our older son, Cole, on the right.

The pic on the left is from the hypnotist show at Project Grad. Guess Who is wearing the yellow and green thing on his head! The page on the right has the name of each of the graduates. Can't get much more custom than that, right?!

And here is our beloved Houn Dawg on the back cover.  I make these with the Silhouette, also.

I really enjoy spending a couple of hours with the girls as they assemble their pages. I get the feeling they like the custom pages because most of them don't cover those with pictures. It's a great time for them to reminisce, since it is the last time the majority of the class will be together, and putting this mini album together gets them talking about all kinds of  "Do you remember when..." times. Kind of like the rest of us do at crops!

Thanks for stopping by! I promise I WILL be back on Friday this week! See you then :)