Graphic 45 By the Sea Projects 2014

Last October, our family headed to Mystic Seaport for the long Columbus Day weekend. It was such a great trip and when I saw Graphic 45's beautiful By the Sea collection, I knew exactly what to do with it.

I created three coordinating projects: a mini album, a box to store our memorabilia, and a sextant for the top of the box because I just had to be different! Below are the photos.

 I love the colors for this collection! Perfect for summer

and patriotic holidays! 

For those who don't know,

a sextant is a navigational device used by seaman

It looks something like this:

It took me  a while to figure out how to make one

out of chipboard but I think I got the gist of it. :-)

 The sextant sits on top of the box. I didn't glue it down 

so I could remove it whenever we wanted to look

through our souvenirs in the box. 

 I kept the inside of the box pretty plain partly because

I was exhausted from constructing the sextant and

the mini (haha)!. It's actually an old cigar box

I found at Goodwill for .99 cents.

I made a pocket from some fishing net and attached a 

photo of one of the many ships we saw that 

weekend. 

I owe a great deal of thanks to Gloria Stengel. I absolutely 

love her mini flip book design and have made

several of them using different collections. The one below

is the most complex version I've made yet.

Her original design is approximately 6" x 6". I adjusted

the size and made some modifications to the design, but 

the basic structure is still there. It's a great design 

and easy to put together. And Gloria's tutorial

is excellent!

The whole project took about two months to complete but it was worth. Love how it all came together.

Blessings,

Melissa