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.

Vacation albums: Glacier N.P.

In addition to scrapbooking mini albums this summer, I've strived to catch up with my vacation albums. Including Hawaii, I have four to do, so I started with the oldest: 2013's trip to Glacier National Park.

Like all of my vacation albums, I use one product line and the same basic layout throughout. This makes it quick and easy to fit many photos in and have it look nice. For this album, I had put aside years ago the Fancy Pants Designs collection Happy-Go-Lucky. I thought the aqua would look good with the Glacier photos, and the collection was filled with campers, which fit with our camping trip! Here's the album:

I always start my albums with my favorite family photo next to the title, then a cluster of embellishments next to the contents. The nice thing about Fancy Pants collections are the embellishments. They are various dimensions and layer beautifully because of that contrast.

I used a lot of those chunky in this album, so I had trouble photographing it--it wouldn't lie flat, and photographed unevenly. I mention that because the following photographs include the background, which I don't usually do. Sigh. Oh well.

The basic layout in the body is similar to the title page: strips of patterned paper dividing the title and journaling, plus some photos next to each. The following page is a PSE collage with several photos, pays some embellishments. I switch up the papers and embellishments on each spread.

A couple layouts had too many photos for two pages, so I made a four-page spread with three pages of photo collages.

When I make a title, I usually stamp or die cut it (not enough stickers otherwise). Here I used my Cameo to die cut using the font Grand Hotel. If it was long enough, I also used some small stickers from the Happy-Go-Lucky collection.

The final page is usually titled Looking Back, and I try to reflect on the whole journey, maybe with some photos of my family from behind. When something interesting happens on the way back, though, I record that, like when we got a flat tire the next year. Here we drove through a forest fire, which is sadly not too unusual in the West in the summer.

Thank you for letting me share my album! I hope this gives you ideas to speed up your scrapbooking process while also making the album attractive.
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Scrapbooking vacation stories: Five vacation faves

Last summer my family visited New York and Maine. For once, I didn't make the Five Vacation Favorites album right away. I'm sort of glad because now that it's REALLY cold out, I like revisiting the warmth of summer.

I had gotten this camper mini-albums years ago at an October Afternoon sale, so I decided to finally use it. I painted the outside covers, then used the already die cut inside pages for the album.

I keep an Iris container filled with camping supplies, so I dug into it to find some products that would go. I used mostly chipboard and stickers from October Afternoon's camping line.

Some of us in our family had such fun, they couldn't restrict themselves to just five favorites.

I didn't take a photo of just me this vacation, so I used a photo of my mom and me. I like that even more. We're in front  of the giant LLBean boot at Bean's in Freeport.

Another one who didn't restrict himself to five faves!

And that's our vacation album of our favorites. I'm so happy to make this album every year, and I look forward to collecting these mini stories after we go.

New scrapbooking pages at Write Click Scrapbook

Some more scrapbooking I did this past month included working some pages up for Write Click Scrapbook. We took a summer break and are back with weekly blogging. Stop by for some inspiration!

During the Olympics, we had some events ourselves. Here's a page I made as a part of a relay race:

I LOVED the bright green in the Rio Olympics (well, not in the pool). I used it as a pop of color on this otherwise mostly yellow-and-neutral page.

I am trying to use my Project Life cards more. These are from Pinkfresh Studio, as are the wood stickers. I like using them to frame the photo.

Next, my gallery page about my scrapbooking group and our mini-vacations to the Pine City Scrapbooking Company:

I used travel papers for this, which made it easy to design, digging into just one Iris container for my supplies.

This week I'm blogging at Write Click Scrapbook, sharing my vacation album and how I plan it. I've blogged about it before, but I am going into more detail this time.  Please stop by to check out what has been going on!

Vacation album: pocket pages

A few days ago I wrote about a vacation from 2011 that I FINALLY scrapbooked and put in an album. That was the typical way of doing it for me. The next album I had to make was a weeklong-trip to Itasca State Park in Minnesota, not as lengthy as our typical vacations. as a result, I decided to try something new and do a pocket album. This is REALLY new for me--I've never done a whole pocket album--and here is the result:

I started by selecting my products, mostly The Great Outdoors Project Life set of cards, plus digging into my Camping bucket of supplies. The I selected the album, a 6x8 Daily Flash Album by October Afternoon. I went through the different pocket protectors to see the options, then planned the pages according to how many photos I had of each event. If I took a lot of photos, I used a page protector with more space. Here's a sketch of my planning:

And here's the album:

Like most vacation albums I make, my first page is a title page and table of content. Unlike most albums I make, my title was a photo of the State Park sign, and I handwrote the journaling, including the contents.

This album I did a little different from my usual album: I didn't use the same products for the title each time. Since Project Life cards are rounded, I tended to round the corners of what backed them and some of the photos, but not always. If there were odd shaped pockets, I tended to fit them with patterned paper from the same line From Pebbles called Lakeside, my favorite camping line ever.

Hiking was the big story, so I did a 4-page layout.

One thing I learned about these small photos: you need to pick something with a noticeable subject for them. I think I did this for the most part, but the prints turned out a little dark, so some shots are a bit harder to see than I would prefer.

One thing I learned: Measure the pockets! Not all are the exact size they seem. For example, the big photo sleeves are a bit bigger than 6x8. I sized all photos  (excepting 4x6's) on standard-sized templates using Photoshop Elements. I just had to do bigger than 6x8 for the big ones. I put those on an 8x10 print.

I like using dimensional accents on my pages, but I couldn't do that too much in this album. My embellishments served purposes on some of the photos: this tree crest, for example, covers garbage cans, and the label cluster on the previous photo covers a lady's bottom. Here's the rest of the pages:

Some of the smaller pockets I filled with patterned paper. Others I trimmed up Project Life cards and rounded the corners.

Again, my typical final page on the back cover, using an envelope to store maps and other memorabilia. I added a sticker on dimensional just because.

Thank you for coming back to see my more recent vacation album! I still have two vacations left to scrap, but I feel much better about finishing what I have left. I hope I gave you ideas from this project!