National Scrapbooking Day Paper Bag Album

We're so excited to celebrate National Scrapbooking Day at Mountain Plains Crafters. All the action is happening on our Community Facebook page: HERE

We have a wonderful prize sponsored by Lawn Fawn, a stamp set of your choosing! How awesome is that? You get to pick the prize! So what do you have to do to qualify? First, be sure you "like" us on our Facebook page, then head over to Lawn Fawn on FB and tell them MPC sent you (not required but they'd love to hear from you!)

Be sure and comment on one or all of our trivia questions throughout the weekend. Please only comment once per question, however each question you answer, earns you an entry! Our design team has chosen the theme, "Creating with Paper Bags". Yes, we're doing a little upcycling and making fun things with paper bags. Be sure and visit their blogs and show a little love.
Check in throughout the day Saturday and Sunday, answer the questions and we'll announce a winner on Monday. The contest ends Sunday, May 3rd at midnight ET. OPEN TO INTERNATIONAL! YES!

When we decided to use paper bags to craft with, I thought... I'll make a paper bag album. I wasn't expecting to put as much time into this project that I did, but I love the end result and I hope you will too.  I have a lot of photos to show you, and I hope you enjoy looking at them all. After putting over 20 hours into this project I wanted to share what I did. 

This is the outside of my album. The cover of my album was two pieces of a cereal box that I covered with dp. I added lace to cover over where the seam was. I made texture paste with glue, white paint, water and baby powder. I used a stencil to add the texture paste to the cover. I also added little dots of acrylic paint. The album is held together with twine.

 The pages of my album each have a little page on the flap of the paper bag. I called them "wings" in my mind as I was creating. 

 I covered each paper bag with black cardstock and I alternated bags with mostly pink and mostly browns and blues. I added ribbon embellishments to a couple of the pages. I used a circle punch to give access to the pockets made by the paper bags.

 This photo shows the paper  bag pocket.

As I was making this album I was thinking in my mind about how I would use it. I have been wanting to get more involved with the scripture art challenge. I am a little behind but there really is no time limit to creating the projects. The first theme was Trust. This next photo shows how I will use the pockets to hold my cards that go along with the theme. There are 6 bags in my album. I think I can get two months in one bag and thus cover the whole year.

When I went to make this first card. I took a page from an old hymnal.  Isn't this the perfect hymn for this theme?  I stamped the word TRUST going down the side. I stamped the little bird because I was think of the words to another old song "His Eye is on the Sparrow and I know He watches me." If He is watching me, I can trust him. 

On the inside of my card are my thoughts and verses about trust. I could have printed them on the computer, but I wanted to meditate on them as I wrote them out. I think it makes it more personal to me. Wow you made it all the way to the end of my super long post. Thanks for reading it. It means a lot to me that you took that time out of your day. May God fill your day with blessings.