Scrapbooking your hobbies: a Pokemon Go mini-album

Confessions: Last summer my family, like many others, started playing Pokemon Go. We played as a family for almost a year, and my husband and I still play. Every time we went to different places to walk around and catch 'em all, I'd take a picture, usually a family selfie. Even though my boys don't play anymore, I wanted to make a mini album to record this hobby from the past year. Here's what I did:

Since Pokeballs are a big part of the game, and they are round, I wanted a round album. I had no mini-albums that were plain circles, but I thought this scalloped mini-album from October Afternoon would suffice.

I knew circles and Pokeballs would be a part of my design, but I didn't want to be too literal, so I found some patterned paper and paint that could suggest Pokeballs and their colors and shapes. If you know the game, you can see the red that is the ball, plus the line and dot in the middle, plus the black, all of which suggests the ball.

To complete this project, I went through my buttons, die cuts, and stickers, pulling the red ones that I thought I could use. on this project. I then used circle punches on the patterned paper to make the inside pages. Here's the album:

This was sort of the cover page. Remember the red balls in front of Target? During the Pokemon craze, they painted the balls to look like Pokeballs. I took a picture of the boys last year and used it here.

This design would be the template for each page: a couple circles of patterned paper behind the photo, then some hand journaling. Here's the rest of the pages:

Each of these is a two-page spread. The title and journaling would be on one page and the photo on the other. After I adhered everything, I went back and embellished. I chose a small, simple lettering stamp set to stamp the title on each page, which I did right after I'd adhered everything.

NOTE: I messed up this first title. I knew it was Lake Harriet but for some reason I stamped Calhoun, which is the next photo. And this is why I added the blue strip and the tag.

When the title had the circles to the right like on this spread, I stamped from right to left to make sure there was enough space.

For longer titles, I had to be flexible and creative. Abbreviations and hyphenation ensued.

I only did two places twice, very practically to fill the whole album, so I used my two favorite Pokemon locations.

That embellishment cluster on the photo exists because I dropped ANOTHER photo backed with adhesive on it. I convered the adhesive with the cluster. Gah.

And to finish the album, I wrote about what we do with Pokemon today.

Thank you for letting me share this geeky passion and how I commemorated it! Tell me, do you scrapbook your hobbies? And do you play Pokemon?

5 Vacation Faves 2017: a mini-album

I mentioned before that my family had the vacation of a lifetime this summer: we traveled to Hawaii, Oahu specifically. As I do with every vacation, I made a mini album celebrate our family's favorites on vacation. This year was a little different, however.

First, I made a vacation travel kit to take with on vacation:

The case was my husband's and it came as packaging for an iPad case he's bought. It was magnetic and had been given to me by my husband, who thought I might want to use it for a project (he was right!). I dug through my travel stash for scraps that went together, trimmed them to fit each side, then glued them in with Mod Podge. (One note: the case was glossy, and the papers had some trouble sticking down, even when I smoothed them down. I think next time I would scuff the case surface before Mod Podging the paper on.)

After I adhered the paper and it dried, I added more Mod Podge to seal it. Here's what the case looks like:

Because the cover was a mix of scraps, I added some tags to make it look purposeful.

I gesso'd the corners and did some scruffing on the edges of the paper in anticipation of this kit getting banged up a bit on travels.

Here's what I packed in the kit:

I took this on the plane with me, though I put the adhesive and scissors in my checked bag. (I also packed a glue stick.) The baggy of products on the left came from the Making Memories Panorama collection, which was sort of tropical themed. I liked the small size of the chipboard tag album and planned on making my mini album in it. I made the album on our final morning in Hawaii, trimming pieces of maps from our tour guides to back the chipboard on every page except the cover. I left that blank and completed that and added photos when I returned.

And here's the album:

When I got home, I asked everyone what their five favorites were, and I journaled, then I printed photos for each page.

Since the cover had textures on it, I painted it before decorating it. I did this when I got home. I used two shades of clue and white, and I painted in circles to mimic the patterns. Here's the inside pages.

Next time I think I won't embellish the photo pages on vacation; too hard to prise the stickers up to place the photos!

Last year I think I forgot to get a solo picture of myself, so I had to cobble one from a group shot for my mini-album. This year I made sure to take selfies as well. I belong in the vacation album too.

More crinkly stickers from prising them up. Gah.

Since my mother was on the vacation with us, she got a page too! I love her very specific list.

Thank you for visiting! I am so glad that I made a travel kit and look forward to using it every year. I will swap out different products based on the location we're going to. I think I used everything on this mini but the stamps and ink, and that's because of what I backed the mini-album pages with.

This is one of my favorite projects every year, and it's my family's favorite too. I hope this gives you an idea for recording your family's best memories from vacations.

An album of me: Part 3

I'm here to share the final album I made to declutter my photos and memorabilia I had kicking around the house. I used Studio Calico's Handbooks for the first two, but whoops! I'd run out at this point. I did, however, have many inserts from a Fancy Pants Brag Book, so I decided to make an album from those. First, I cut some chipboard, covered it, and punched some holes for the covers:

Then I divided my knick-knacks and photos into sections and used the inserts--photo, journaling, and pockets--for the sections.

In general, I made these sections chronological. I started out with scrapbooking by going online, so that's my first section.

Next, I started developing connection IRL, so that;s my next section.

I love that photo of us in blue. It was at the Pine City Scrapbooking store, a retreat as well and one of my favorite spots.

Now, my style developed strongly by subscribing to kits and using their online resources. I saved a lot of cute cool stuff, so I just put it all in here. Why not?

A favorite memory: meeting some SC peeps to scrap IRL!

Somewhere in here I started submitting and getting published. I didn't have much here for memorabilia, but what I had I included. NOTE: for the title page, I just raided magazines I still had for their subscription cards.

Big Picture Classes was another major influence on me, so here's the page that included the memorabilia for that.

Design teams really pushed my style, so this section memorializes them. For the title page, I trimmed up products I had for the companies I designed for, even a bit.

Finally, CHA, which was a part of my story on design teams.

NOTE: In that lower left photo in the spread above, I totally look like a giant. Gah.

I look like a giant here too! Argh!

Thank you for visiting! Mind you, I have never created a whole album for my hobby before, and I probably never will again, but scrapbooking has left me with so many memories and so much memorabilia, I am glad I took the time to put it in one place.