"Make A Wish!"

I couldn't believe it when I saw the papers Leah chose this month. My daughter celebrated her 11th birthday in November with a cupcake themed party and I had not gotten around to scrapping it yet. The cupcake themed papers from Doodlebug gave me the perfect opportunity!

Like Erin, I also decided to include an accordian album on my page this month. I absolutely love the Jenni Bowlin birthday mini-bingo card (mine said "Wish") so I ended up incorporating it into the title of the layout (loved the girly design of the pink canvas thickers!) and used it as the front of the accordian album.

You can see here that Erin and I were on the same wavelength again, because I also used velcro to attach it - That will make it easier for my daughter to take it out in the future and be able to access journaling on the back.

Here's a look at the book when it is open...

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the sheer dot ribbon is used to hold it closed and is sandwiched between the back cover and the last panel of the inner accordian fold. I used red-line tape to attach the front and back covers - I have found that anything that is going to be manipulated needs to have very strong adhesive.

Some other details...I started out intending to machine stitch on this layout, but I think my machine needs a trip to the doctor, because it kept skipping stitches! No worries though as I decided I liked the look - so I pulled out the thread and just ran the entire edge of the brown paper through the machine.

Another fun detail is the journaling, which I created with my Dymo labelmaker. It came with pink and blue tape, and my new favorite - CLEAR tape - which I was able to put on a piece of coordinating green cardstock and trim out.

I also cut out some of the cute presents from the KI paper to use as an embellishment on the lower right corner of the picture. One of them was already glittered. I fancied up the other two by adding some Glossy Accents to give them dimensional polka dots. I think they may be a little too subtle so the next time I will make the polka dots with markers and then add the Glossy Accents.

Finally, never underestimate the value of a simple swirl!

The page just didn't seem balanced - color or weight - so I used a bit of the BoBunny coordinating Double Dot paper in blue and a quick trip to the Accu-Cut machine in the crop room and voila - when placed in the bottom left - perfect!