Scrapbooking a vacation album

When I first started scrapbooking, I discovered that vacation photos were filling the family albums, so I started putting them in their own, separate album. For a couple years I struggled to complete them. I remember in particular the first Maine album, trying to come up with a colorful, innovative way to scrap the photos on each layout. Then epiphany: Why come up with a new design for each album, let alone each page? Thereafter, I started using the same design for each vacation album, only changing the products.

I am a bit behind in vacation albums. I haven't scrapped Disney (2010) or the Black Hills (2011), but excited by the Fancy Pants Designs collection Down by the Shore that came out in January, this summer I started scrapping our Maine vacation from 2012.

Here's what I did:

This is the title page. I use this page as a design template for the rest of the album: Big photo next to title, strips of patterned paper, then the contents and an embellishment cluster. Here's some details:

One of the great things about Fancy Pants designs are the B sides, many of which contain a distressed single color, perfect for cutting titles on the Cameo. I used Bebas Neue font. I like adding some smaller letters/numbers for visual interest.

Here's the embellishment cluster. The compass I punched out of a brag book card.

The layout of the filler pages follow the same design:

You'll notice I used the same design on the title page as I did on the first page of the filler pages. The opposing page I did a photo collage. In my first vacation album, I printed all the photos in 4x6, then trimmed them into a collage. Here's why I'm behind in vacation albums: I decided, since I'm adept at PSE, I should just make a collage in Photoshop Elements. And so I did. I used an 8.5x11 canvas with a 1/2 inch border on each side. I opened the photos I wanted to include, created a collage to fit all the photos in various sizes and orientation, and inserted the photos into the collage. Then I print the photos on Persnickety Prints. I still have about 8 two-page layouts to make, but as you can see, it won't take much time but will still look attractive.

Thank you for viewing my album! I hope it gives you ideas for how you might scrap big events like vacations and make it manageable.