The first thing I do is upload my photos to my computer. For this trip I took a total of 200 photos over the course of a week. Not bad but before I start my album I need to whittle this down to a more manageable set of my best photos. So the second thing I do is start deleting all of the fuzzy, out of focus, too dark, or poorly composed pictures. Next I get the rest of the pictures printed as standard 4x6 photos. Not all of those photos will go into my scrapbook album, probably less than half. The rest of the photos will go in a family photo album. In addition, I will also take some of the better photos and enlarge them or add text to them for my album. But once I have all of my photos printed, I organize them and plan my album. It's weird, but its hard for me to really organize my photos on the computer. I organize the photos in whatever way feels natural. In this case I organized them by vacation events. See my piles and labels below.
Next, I decide how I will organize my album. When it comes to a vacation album the most obvious way to organize it is chronologically. And that is basically what I decided to do, but I also plan to include some relationship and fun activity layouts
Next, I gather all of the memorabilia from my trip and put it in a large ziploc bag. Some of the items I have from my trip are maps, newspaper and newsletters, postcards, sea shells my son collected, and information from the resort company we used about our beach house. Some of this will make it into my album, and some will go in the trash. But for now everything's in the bag.
Finally, I pick out an album and a basic color scheme. In this case I picked a nice cream-colored linen 11x8.5 inch landscape album from Martha Stewart Crafts that I picked up on sale around the holidays. I rarely do theme albums in 12x12 sized albums. I think the basic 7-day vacation just lends itself to a smaller size. But I don't go too small either, otherwise I can't fit that memorabilia I mentioned.
For the color scheme I picked yellow, blue, green, brown, and orange. A lot of colors but basically earth tones. Once I've decided on a color scheme I don't get too rigid with the products I use. I tend to pick embellishments and pattern paper based on the layout I'm working on. I also don't just stick to paper. For this album I'm doing a combination of digital and paper layouts. I find digital layouts help me get more photos on my page in an artful way and more done quickly. Paper layouts allow me to add texture and include the memorabilia in a natural way. I'm using Bazzill's 8.5 x 11 inch Earth Tone Basics cardstock and Michelle Underwood's More Than Words digital kit. Finally I choose fonts. Now this is not necessary if you plan to hand write your album. I don't plan to hand write mine, so I picked a couple of fonts that I will use for every layout. This creates continuity and helps keep it simple. I'm using the Joyful Juliana font and Art House Vibe Alpha brushes for my titles, and American Typewriter for all of my journaling.
Ok, now with all of that done I start writing. Why, because I can't scrapbook until I know what I'm scrapbooking about. So after photo selection (and sometimes before), I begin my albums and many of my layouts with journaling. I write my title page. I write a basic table of contents/ themes I want to cover. Then I write about my vacation. I write about the road trip, I write about my impressions of our beach house, I write about meeting my husband's extended family, etc. I don't finish all of my journaling at one time and not everything will make it into the album, but by writing about my trip first, I have a great outline and idea guide for my album.
Now the fun part. Putting it all together. I will talk more about planning pages and adding memorabilia in my next Memories Monday.
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