Finishing projects part 3: Vacation album

I'm making progress on my summer to-do list, finishing off number 4. Here's the list:

1. Finish creating the boys' 5th and 6th grade school album pages
2. Edit and print photos from Custer S.P. (2011)
3. Create mini albums with thank you cards from school
4. Finish the Disney album (2010)
5. Update the Easter mini-album
6. Complete the iScrap class/album
7. Complete the Get Messy class/album
8. Ask Derick to finish journaling his London album
9. Complete 5 Vacation Faves (2015)
10. Create cards for my Dad
11. Rowan school album photos: 3rd, 5th, and 6th; class photo 4th and 6th
12. Dominic school album photos: 2nd, 4th, and 5th;class photo 3rd and 5th

Last month I scrapped a series at Write Click Scrapbook sharing how I go about scrapbooking vacations. My goal was to finish this vacation album this summer, and I'm done! Here it is:

Here's the cover of the album. It took me a couple tries to get it sized right. I always forget about the space that needs to be left that can't be seen. No designs can go there!

I've mentioned before that I do the same design every time I do a vacation album. This simplifies my process and still leaves me with a visually appealing album. For the title page, I pick a great family photo, give a big title and embellishment cluster, and a table of contents. Here's the content pages:

Most of these are a two-page spread. I do a photo and title block, then photos and journaling on the other half of the page. I alternate products between pages, and I alternate where I put the title/journaling (top or bottom).

Although I do two-page spreads mostly, I also do a four-page spread when I have a lot of photos I want to include.

 

 

 

For the last page I included photos that I had forgotten. Not much journaling here; I often give just a quotation that fits.

And the back cover! I super glue an envelope (actually using sticky strips) and include memorabilia I wish to keep.

As I mentioned on WCS, I decided long ago it's easier to use a single product line for an album (though I do dig into stash on a needs basis). For this album I used October Afternoon Boarding Pass. I liked the bright colors and thought they would work well with my Disney photos.

Thank you for letting me share my Disney album! I hope to still print my photos from Custer State Park is 2011 before the end of the summer (I've already scrapped our 2012 trip to Maine).  For that album I plan on using October Afternoon's Sasparilla.  I hope to scrapbook our 2011 trip by the end of the year, and then I can focus on 2013 through 2015 (Glacier, Itasca S.P., and our big road trip this year). I won't finish my to-do list by the end of the summer, but making progress on it makes me feel satisfied.

Entering the dark side; I'll be back in a week

My scrapbooking this week is focused on creating a digital photo book so I can use up my Groupon before it expires. So little by little, I am applying my puny digi skills to creating an 8x8 book about Disneyworld.

I'm following guidelines produced by Marnie Flores starting with this entry at writeclickscrapbook this past fall. I'm also using a kit from Songbird Avenue called Port Au Prince. I am also adding some random brushes and using a general design I tend to use on vacation albums.

I'm not an experienced digi scrapper; in fact, I've only made one page. Truthfully, I'm more of a hybrid scrapper.

There is a logic to putting together a design digitally, though; it's about layers, which I deal with in paper layouts too, so I think I can do this. I just have to make sure PSE doesn't randomly switch me to a new layer, which it did twice tonight, X%&#! So if you can hear mild swearing from a distance, it's because I made a mistake. Thank goodness for the undo button. Would that all of life were that way!

Last night I selected papers, resized and named them, one yellow, blue, green, and orange, plus two stripes and a white. Tonight I also figured out how to install fonts, plus shopped for photo corners, which in all my digi stuff I did not have.

Tonight I made my page production goal: I created page one. Here it is:


ETA: I just noticed my title overlapped the stripe--went back and fixed it, thank goodness!

Goal for tomorrow: Design the first page spread (which I've done on paper and just need to create the template for) and select photos from each park/event.

Wish me a swear-word free evening tomorrow!

Wall Art

I have a small house, so I don't make many crafts or altered items to go around--it's full already! But when I saw the 7gypises printer's drawer (the black one), I had to get it. When I got home from Disneyworld, I started planning how to fill it.

First I sketched out a grid and planned which photos I wanted in there and how big the photos needed to be. I knew I didn't want to fill the whole thing with photos (I got the ATC tray, so regular sized photos wouldn't fit), so I found 4 that I thought epitomized the visit. Two squares I needed for title, and one I wanted for journaling. I wasn't sure what would go in the others, but that was OK; I don't like to plan every detail.

Then I printed the photos: two 4x6 I wanted horizontal and that would survive the wood split in the middle, and two small vertical. I made a 4x6 document in PSE, layered two 2.75 x 3.75 vertical photos in it, and printed it out along with the other two photos.

Here's where I selected product: I don't like using stuff that's too themey. I know CI has lots of Disney stuff, but that really goes with nothing in my house. Plus I have a TON of October Afternoon Fly a Kite and decided to use that product: paper and stickers. I also used some Basic Grey Chip alphas I had on hand (and had all the letters to!) and pulled out some Making memories travel stuff as well.

I thought a basic pattern would be easier for me, so I alternated photo and paper left to right from top to bottom. Once I laid down the basics, I knew I had to fill some space! I dug out my Disney memorabilia, found an unused Fast Pass, a map of our hotel, and a small icon to use. Once I found those, I finished assembling it. Here's what I did:





For adhesive, I mostly used Thermoweb's sticky strip; since this frame will be hanging on a wall, I wanted the products up there solid. I also placed one photo on the top of the squares, not inside. The wood split didn't work well there, and I liked the variety of layering.

Plus I added two "hidden" Mickeys. Can you see them?

M-I-C-K-E-Y...

We're back from spending a week at the happiest place on earth, all four of us plus Grandma D and Aunt Melinda. I'll post more on our vacation this week; right now, I can definitely say we had a lot of fun with only minimal Griswold family vacation stress.

Here's some images:

We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge Kidani Village. This was the view from our room. HArd to see, but in the shadows are animals! We never saw Giraffes from our window--those were the other side of the lodge--but we saw several varieties of African deer and exotic birds, including a vulture we named Edgar Sleepwalker.

Our first day. You can tell because we don't look sunburned and we're not yet dripping with sweat.


Also day one. I used the fireworks setting on my camera, which was pretty good. I learned you can't take a picture of the finale, though. No definition of images, just one big light. (BTW, we could see the fireworks waaaay off in the distance from our balcony.)

The boys did a pirate training thing one morning and had loads of fun. Here they are showing some pirattitude. They also did JEdi training. So they are Jedi pirates, which, if you watch Clone Wars on Cartoon Network, you know to be contradictory. Heroes and villains at the same time.

All I ever wanted...

Can anyone sing the tune to those words? If I said "All Girl group from the 80s," would that remind you of the song? Yep, I'm referring to the song "Vacation" by the Go-Gos.

On that note (pun intended), I am preparing for our annual family vacation, and this year is a little different. We are going, not to a National Park, but to Disneyworld. A different kind of National Park, if you will. This will be Derick's and my third time going together, but our boys' first time. And even more fun, we are going with my mother and my sister-in-law, Aunt Melinda.

Of course, being a true scrapper, I can't get ready for vacation without thinking about scrapbooking the vacation. Here's where I stand: I do some preparation for photos, and some thinking about the scrapbooking of the vacation, but I also want to leave my planning a little loose. I don't want to plan photos, in other words. This is also how we vacation, BTW: we plan what we'd like to do and make a general daily plan, but there's a lot of open space for spontaneity.I have some things in mind, though. Here's my plan:

1. I will not use themed products. Granted, I have used travel paper lines from Making Memories and Little Yellow Bicycle from the past few years, but most travel lines are tropical or National Park-y for Disney. Aside from travel and Christmas lines, I prefer to avoid themed products. Instead, I can picture and album on white or black paper using bright colors--maybe from my scrap pile!
2. I will take a variety of photos. This sounds like a no-brainer, but my first few vacations, I took too many landscape photos without photos of the people--and the people were always the same distance away. I think the album will better represent our memories (and be more interesting) if I take photos of people, landscapes, closeups, medium shots, and far away shots. In other words, I'll take photos that tell a story.
3. I'll take some photos of my boys from behind. This might sound dumb, but the last page of the albums for me have always included photos of my family from behind--the readers will sort of be looking back on the vacation when they see these photos. (If anyone takes a photo of me from behind, I will hunt them down and force feed them to drink pickle juice.)
4. I will once again try to take a nice family photo for our Christmas card. Once again I will likely fail and have to make a layout like this again:
5. I will bring a small notebook to journal memories in at the end of each day. This will become my journaling and will help me remember stories when I finally get around to scrapping the vacation album.
   
6. I will probably take thousands of photos. I will also try not to feel guilty about that.
7. At the end of vacation, I will ask everyone what their five favorite vacation memories are. This will be a mini-album I'll scrap as soon as I get back. I'll pair a nice picture of each person from vacation with their 5 favorites:
8. I will attempt to delete bad photos right away, and I will attempt to edit and print photos within a couple months of our return. That one's a goal. It makes me more excited to scrap when I have fresh pictures, and it feels like a burden for me when I delay photo-processing too long.

When I finally do the album, I plan on making it 8 1/2 x 11, post-bound, mainly because that's what I've always done. I like the limited space. I also use the same design every time. Here's a same from last year:

It's a nice design, I can fit lots of photos, and it will be quicker if I don't have to think about how to set up the pages.