Page Kit--Stage One: Photo Sorting

I found my 2-gallon Ziploc bags so I was able to start putting together page kits on Monday. The first part of my process is to sort out the photographs. Since the project I'm working on is a cruise we took for our anniversary, I made piles for the days of the cruise (10) and then divided into morning, afternoon, and night. If we bought from that evening, I placed it at the top.

In the day's section, I included any memorabilia that I had for the activities of that day. The third pile in the first photograph has the hat I wore at the Sushi class I attended and my class certificate (which for some reason they had put my husband's name on). After sorting through the 100+ pics I had printed, I realized there were some excursions missing: rain forest, trip to Christmas and Honeymoon Coves, and in reading through my travel journey, I hadn't printed out any photographs from the towel folding or Thomas Kinkade seminar.

The next part of the process is jotting down any activities that are missing pictures or don't have enough pictures for a layout, like for the wine tasting. When I first printed out pictures, I eliminated any choices that were blurry or were "boring". Since I didn't have many pics for a layout, I was willing to not be so picky in the pictures I selected. I'd rather have okay pictures than none. We didn't take any pictures during the Thomas Kinkade, so I'll just note it on our title page and in the journaling for that day.

The final step of stage one is to place all the photos in a Ziploc bag in preparation for stage two of kit making. The next task will be dividing the days photographs into layouts and picking out cardstock and pattern paper.


Next week's blog post: Page Kit--Stage Two: It's All About the Paper

Organizing a Scrapbook Album

Layouts. Layouts. And more layouts. I started wondering if the layouts I made for our 2015 vacation to Disney World was going to fit in the album I bought and had embossed. I was nearing the completion of the album, but there was still about twelve more layouts to complete. Some of the pages were in the three-ring binder album, and the other layouts were in a 12x12 Iris project case. It was time to start putting the album together and see if the vacation was a one or two album project.

The first step was sorting the pages into days. Fortunately, the title page was a list of the highlights of our trip listing. It made it easy to sort the pages as I could refer back to it if I wasn't certain which day we visited a park or ate at a character meal. It was such a helpful page, I'm planning on starting each vacation album with a title page that lists the dates and activities of the day.

 After putting in the completed layouts, and adding in empty page protectors for the pages I still needed to add, I realized one album wasn't going to work. The pages were hard to turn, snagging on the ridge of the clip. I had about twelve more double-page spreads to make, and I like adding three-dimensional embellishments to the pages. The album was thick so I knew the trip would turn into a two album project.

(Which I shouldn't have been surprised about as our week long Disney Cruise album is actually three albums.) In my stash of scrapbook supplies, I found a postbound 12x12 Disney album. I'm going to place our character pictures into that album and leave the rest of the layouts in the three-ring binder.

The Disney Project Box

In my quest to organize my scrapbook supplies better for crops, I purchased an IRIS Portable Scrapbook File box. I took it for its first crop outing a few weeks ago, and I loved it. It made packing for the crop easier as all of Disney embellishments and paper were in one place. The only issue I've run into is having to open up the three file boxes I purchased to see which one contained the project I was working on. (other boxes are cardstock and a cruise album project.) I got tired of opening them up to check, so I decided to be brave and vinyl. I've wanted to use vinyl for the longest time (purchased some over a year ago) but always talked myself out of it. I was so afraid I'd mess up and waste the vinyl. It occurred to me I was wasting money if I purchased a craft supply and never used it. So, I did it! I labeled my Disney box and now I want to vinyl more things.

The top of the box holds a small container to place embellishments. I love being able to keep the paper, stickers, and 3D embellishments for the album project together. There are also three hanging folders inside where I put completed layouts (when I'm at a crop), folder for paper scraps I might be able to use later, and then pattern paper that I purchased by the sheet rather than in a pack.

Next on my crafting list is to vinyl my other boxes. I know I can find a cute cruise ship file.

Three Albums for Under $15

Remember my Writers Retreat Weekend?

Well, Judy and Donna liked the scrapbook page I made, but I could tell they were both disappointed that they didn't also have a way to preserve our memories. Unfortunately, I just don't have time to create a page for both of them, and one page wouldn't do all our photos justice. So I had to think about the situation... And I came up with an idea.

Ordering the Photos

First I loaded all my photos from that weekend onto my computer. Then I went through and sent the ones I really liked to SnapFish. By asking SnapFish to mail me the pictures, I spent a total of $8.99 for 3 sets of 14 photos. I ordered the photos in 4 x 6 inch sizes, but I also ordered a small white border that I will trim from each picture, so the final shots will be probably more like 3 3/4" by 5 3/4". Just right for fitting inside a 6" x 6" paper--and allowing for both landscape and portrait images.

Planning the Project

Next, I went to the store and bought two large pieces of Canson paper--$2.49 each--a paper that's been used by artists for years and which is relatively color-fast and stable. It's a nice weight. I drew a small schematic using graph paper. I marked the large paper and cut (which I'm never very good at--but I simply don't have a paper cutter that can handle a piece of paper 20" x 30"). After I did my cutting, I stacked my strips--6" wide and 24" long--one on top of each other and scored the paper at 6" intervals.

Assembling the Books

I sandwiched together my two sheets and sewed them down the center of squares 2 and 3. I folded the outside squares in to make a small book.

Creating the Cover

My new challenge was decorating the cover. It's pretty easy to do ONE cover, but I wanted all three to look alike. Here's the design I came up with:

I now have my three identical albums. The photos will arrive on Tuesday. I'll trim the narrow white edge away and adhere them to the pages. Since there are 14 photos and 16 pages, I'm fine with my decorated cover and a plain back cover.

The total cost for three small albums, including the photos, will be $14. That's less than $5 an album. Of course that doesn't cover the cost of thread, brads, ink or the decorative papers on the cover (which were scraps), but still, I think that's really reasonable.

What about you? Do you look for ways to economize when doing your hobbies? Have you avoided scrapbooking because you've heard it's too expensive? Well...if so, give this little project a try.