A finished Paris album and other thoughts

After a long absence from this blog, I'm back to say that, although I haven't blogged about my scrapping lately, I have been scrapping. In fact, I have finished the Paris book, and once I have the chance to run over to Scrapbook Your Story for some page protectors, I'll be able to fully assemble it.

Here are two of my Eiffel Tower layouts. For some reason, I'm having trouble uploading photos to the blog, so I don't think I'll be able to add any more to this post. :-( Maybe I'll try again later.

There were so many great things to photograph in Paris that it was hard to narrow down my pictures to a reasonable number for the scrapbook. Natalie gave me a great idea to use one of the pocket pages that came with my variety pack -- a 12x12 with nine 4x4 pockets -- at the end of the book to make a couple of collages of cropped photos. As I was working on the book, I set aside photos that wouldn't fit in the main part of the book for possible use in the collages. I was able to use almost all of them that way. I would include a photo of the collages if I could get the photo feature to work! (Enter my frustration with technology!)

Now that I've finished my first hybrid album, I have to say I've measured the pros and cons. I love the ease of the 3-ring binder, but the pocket pages were a little inconvenient in the sense that they restricted me in some of my layouts. I can see myself using hybird books for future projects, though -- especially small, simple projects such as one I'm planning for a Christmas gift.

With Paris 2010 finished, I'm in between projects, trying to decide what to start next. I have a weeklong staycation starting a week from today, and I'm hoping to get in plenty of scrapping time. One project I need to do soon is a framed photo page in memory of Typo, the feral stray that adopted the SJ-R as her home more than 10 years ago and had to be put to sleep last week because she had large mammary gland tumors. I've gathered several pictures coworkers took of her over the years, and we're hoping, once I finish it, that we'll be allowed to hang it up somewhere in the building. Some other books I'm eager to dig into: the cupcake crawl, my reunion weekend at U of I with Sara, Heather and Steph this past April; a book of childhood family vacations (part of my long-term "scrapping the old, yellowing pictures" project); and a number of single layouts for my "favorite things" scrapbook, including Krispy Kreme, Einstein Bros. Bagels and meeting Boyz II Men. 

I decided to do a "favorite things" book back in March, during my last staycation, when I realized my tendency to take pictures of the things I love most in life. By "things," I mean things that are tangible (I should probably tackle people and concepts in a different book). For example, so far in my "favorite things" book, I have a lot of foods and food places -- cupcakes, Mel-O-Cream doughnuts, my mom's banana bread. I also have the old Doc Marten sandals I got just after college and wore for several summers, to the point of needing a strap repaired (after which I wore them for at least one more summer). And then I have a layout for all the Dave Matthews Band concerts I've been to. (I wore the sandals to a few of those!) It's fun to have a book dedicated to the small things that bring me joy. I'm all about taking pleasure in the little things. There just aren't enough "big" moments in life. We need to find happiness and contentment in the ordinary.

I'm sure in the coming days I'll become inspired for my next project. I have a few things to focus on before I can relax, though. I have a retreat next weekend on which I'm giving a talk, and I need to get through three more days of work. I'm more than ready for a week of leisurely scrapping, though. I know I can accomplish a lot in several wide-open days. Only seven days till then!

Scrapping a T-shirt quilt

I have a thought, and it's out of left field. I have a big plastic container full of old T-shirts I had planned to have made into a quilt. I asked around and found a quilter willing to do it. The problem? The cost is prohibitive, to say the least. Let's put it this way: for the cost of having a large T-shirt quilt made, I could get a good start on a new car. So I've started trying to think of alternative ways to preserve my shirts.

Of course, what's the first thing I thought of? Scrapping! I'm brainstorming whether or not there's a way to put my shirts into an album in a way that will be as satisfying to me as having a quilt.

I'm a highly nostalgic person, so it's hard for me to let go of things that have a lot of sentimental value. My T-shirts fall into that category. They represent everything from college to my favorite sports teams to my career and memorable places I've traveled to.

My only concept so far is to take close-up photos of the images on each shirt and put as many of them on a page as possible. (I'm thinking a hybrid album would be ideal for this project becuase all I really need are pocket pages. Multiple photos of T-shirts don't require much creativity to display; I just need to be able to see what's printed on the shirts.)

If you're reading, do you have any ideas for me as far as how to approach this project? I welcome scrapping and non-scrapping ideas. If anybody knows of a way to preserve my T-shirts on the cheap, please let me know!

Eiffel pages under way!

I've reached the part of my Paris album that I've been looking forward to since I started -- the Eiffel Tower section.

I have so many pictures that it's hard to decide which ones to use and which ones to weed out so the ones that make it in the book will have the most effect. I'm notorious for stretching what should be one or two tight, double-page layouts into four or five bloated ones -- I have a tendency to be repetitive. So I need to go through my tower photos and make some painful decisions about what stays and what goes in the interest of making the book as a whole the best it can be. Possible options for those leftover photos: framing, using on greeting cards or cropping for use on a collage page at the end of the book (this is an idea I got from my friend and fellow scrapper, Natalie). Or a trick I learned from my college best friend, Sara -- reducing photos to a smaller size, by way of Walgreen's collage prints (wwww.walgreens.com) so you can squeeze them in -- creatively and artistically, of course. ;-)

I'm close to finishing this album -- after the Eiffel Tower, I have one more small section and one single-photo page. Then I can start thinking about which project I want to tackle next. I want to do the Ivory Coast before we get too far removed from the trip, but I'm also feeling pulled toward the cupcake crawl and one of my projects with old pictures. I'm thinking the Ivory Coast would be a great project for winter, when it's cold and gray outside and I'll be in the mood to work on pages with colorful, tropical photos.

I'm feeling just inspired and motivated enough to tackle them one at a time -- and I really believe, at this point, anyway, that I can get it all done. By the time I'm 80, anyway ...

Taking the hybrid album for a test drive

In my last post, I wrote about my vast goal to get all my old pictures into sparkling, new scrapbooks. I'm excited to get started, but I'm juggling them with current books I'm equally excited about completing.

My latest project is a book about our three-day stop in Paris last year on our way to visit my husband's family in Ivory Coast, West Africa. It's my first project using a "hybrid" album -- the 12x12 3-ring binders with a variety of pocket pages you can simply slide your photos into. With these books, you have the option of a page as simple as a group of photos or as elaborate as a picture here, an embellished block of cardstock there. It's a good concept, in my opinion, and no doubt the perfect solution for some scrappers. For me, it's turned out to be a mixed bag. I like the option of the pocket pages, and I LOVE the ease of popping open the binding without the hassle of taking the entire book apart, like with postbound albums, which I normally use.

What I don't like is how the pocket pages force you into layouts. I've labored to find just the right combination of horizontal and vertical photos to fill a page, only to turn the page and realize I have to do it all over again because I have to fill the back side. I've actually taped pocket pages together just to escape that frustration,which is a total waste of resources. My other pet peeve is the fact that the pages don't meet in the middle in hybrid albums. The 3-ring binding, much as I love it for its convenience in moving pages around, keeps me from being able to design a cohesive double-page spread with a photo or headline across the break in pages. That's a technique I've become rather fond of in the past couple of years, and I would hate to give it up.

I'm still open to using hybrid albums for some projects -- especially those with a lot of photos of the same thing, or for layouts for which I can't find just the right paper. And I just can't quite let go of that 3-ring binding's ease of use.

But, for the most part, I think I'll be sticking with my postbound books ... and, oh yeah, grumbling whenever it's time to add pages!

This is your life -- in scrapbooks

Hi there. My name's Mandy, and I'm a scrapaholic. I think I always had the seed inside of me -- even back in grade school, when my idea of a photo album was a flip book where I put my pictures and maybe a ticket stub or receipt. By college, I was using the sticky, peel-back albums, and I was saving all types of memorabilia to include with whatever pictures I had taken. I thought I was so clever because I angled the photos on the pages. Can we say "thinking out of the box"?! Ha!

My first "real" scrapbook was a spiral notebook I bought at a shop in New York City when I was there on vacation with a couple of my coworkers in 2001. I thought it was the coolest thing when I found it -- divided into sections, it had lined pages, blank pages, pocket pages and graph paper pages. It even had pages that looked like they were specially designed for writing music. If I knew anything about writing music, I SO would have filled those pages with my own ode to the Big Apple.

As it turned out, I used the book to keep a daily journal of the trip, and when I got home and developed my pictures (I was still film in '01 and didn't go digital until midway through 2004), I taped them onto the blank pages, behind the journaling. The pictures were mostly dark and grainy, and I didn't have a single embellishment, but the mere combination of photos and journaling were the foundation of what my scrapbooking would eventually turn into.

Now I'm thinking about all those old albums -- especially the peel-back ones, which are starting to yellow -- and I'm seriously contemplating how to approach a massive scrapbooking project that would entail getting all of those photos into brand-new, acid-free scrapbooks. It will take years, if I even make a dent before life brings some kind of challenge or surprise that tears me away. I've started going through photo boxes full of extra copies from the days of free doubles at Walgreens, and I'm formulating ideas for how to break them up into chunks that I could scrap one at a time without feeling completely overwhelmed. Nothing appeals to me more than having shelves full of colorful albums neatly labled with their subject matter, telling the story of my life up to this point, and even a sampling of my parents' story based on old pictures my mom has given me over the years. I'd love to create a collection that my husband Camille's and my eventual children could look at one day -- not to mention being able to enjoy them over and over again myself.

So I've started the sorting, the brainstorming and the list-making. Next up is picking a subject and finding the time to start the first book. I have a weeklong staycation coming up in September, and my plan is to really dig into the sorting then, and try to get as many pictures out of the old albums as possible. I just need to make sure I file them chronologically and write names and dates on as many as I can so that once I get around to doing the books, I'll have all the information I need right at hand. Why, oh why didn't I write on the backs of ALL my pictures when I developed them? Oh well. What's done is done.

If anyone reading this has undertaken a similar massive project, I'd love any tips you might be able to offer. Thanks in advance, and happy scrapping!