Tea Themed Pocket Letter

I mailed off my first pocket letter swap today so I thought I would post some pictures here. In case you are not familiar with Pocket Letters, they are typically made using trading card/baseball card page protectors which have 2.5" x 3.5" pockets and craft items, like extra scrapbooking products. Hmm, now, where would I get some of those? Janette Lane, inventor of the concept explains it here: http://janettelane.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-are-pocket-letters.htm

The swap I participated in is a tea themed swap where we had to include 9 teabags (typical pocket letters contain one) along with the other usual components of a pocket letter. Here's what I came up with.

Here's the reverse side showing all of the teas.

In between the two sides, I tried to include some goodies such as tags, die cuts, glitter, shaped paper clips, and I even had a teapot stencil that I was able to fit in.

This is how I packaged it before putting it in a 6" x 9" padded envelope. You can fit them in a regular business sized envelope if they are not too bulky but I was having fun adding layers and didn't want to worry about restricting myself for this first one!

Here are close ups of some of the pockets.

 This pocket contains an envelope which holds some paper butterflies.

Here's the front of the envelope.

And here's a view of the back.

 The tag in this pocket contains some samples of washi tape wrapped around it.

I made the pink "hello" shown on this pocket with the new CTMH Hello and Thanks thin cuts. I included a little envelope, which contains my letter to my swap partner, behind the vellum rectangle here. 

I made a couple of extra hello die cuts to include in another pocket but here's a look at it by itself. I love how these came out!

I used my CTMH Cricut Artbooking cartridge to make the envelope which holds my letter. Here's the front of it.

 Here's the back.

 Here's the back with the flap open. I included little velcro dots on the envelope flap so that it can stay shut.

I hope my swap pal likes it!

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Happy Times Happy Birthday

One of the things I'm most excited about in the new CTMH catalog are the half size page protectors (6 x 12 vs. 12 x 12). I like to scrapbook a lot of pictures of an event onto a two page layout. I either will add a whole other layout or I'll use Flip Flaps to add more photos. Being able to simply include a half page of extra photos gives even more versatility and I am over the moon to have this option. I'm calling them half page pocket protectors but officially they are Memory Protectors™ Pocket Plus™  and you can find them here. There are a variety so you can choose whether you want to include 4 x 6 photos in a portrait or landscape orientation OR if you want to include 3 x 4 photos in either orientation. Love them!

I used Memory Protectors™ Pocket Plus™ Design 1 and here's the product description from the website: 

Add extra photos or artwork to your layouts with these Memory Protectors™, which feature a full gutter so they lie flat in post-bound albums.

10 protectors – 6" × 12" with 3 horizontal 4" × 6" pockets.

You saw that about the full gutter, right? Wahoo! You can use the in post bound albums, no problem!

So of course the first thing I created when I got my order of new stuff was a double page scrapbook layout with a 6 x 12 page protector in the middle.

Here's the left side of my double layout. The balloons and "Happy Birthday," are cut with the CTMH Artiste Cricut cartridge and the tag is from Art Philosophy, both now retired. I used the Happy Times paper pack which was a special in May. Do you see the hinges on the side of the paper mat? Aren't you proud of me for using them? Those are really old!

I included some envelopes, cards, and stickers from the retired My Crush In the Pink Assortment on the right side of my double page layout. 

Here are both pages with the 6" x 12" page protector in the middle. 

Another view with both pages and the half sized page protector flipped over. I love being able to include more pictures in my layouts without crowding them in.

 So you can probably tell that I tried to really incorporate some of the NUMEROUS embellishments which I already own. I've been organizing this summer and even though I'm not finished with my scrapbook organization, it's so much easier to see what I have and can use. Does anyone remember brads? I have so many! And so many flowers! Here's a close-up of some of the details on the first page.

Even though I used a lot of older supplies which weren't all in one coordinated set, I think they meshed pretty well. Let me know what you think!

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The New Catalog is Live!

It's live! Have you seen the new CTMH catalog yet? Click here to go to the electronic version of the 2016-2017 Annual Inpirations! Just contact me if you would like to have a physical copy to page through.

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