Page Kit--Stage Three: It's All About Embellishing

This week is stage three of my page kit process--embellishing the layout. The first step of stage there is to place the pictures on paper in the spot where I plan to adhere them down, sometimes I crop the photos and other times I just place them down and wait until I'm putting the page together to do any cropping.

After I have a few pages laid out on my table, I take out my embellishments and start matching them to the pages. This was easy to do as I have one theme I'm working on so I don't have to peruse all the stickers, ribbons, and Washi tape I own. I also write down any titles and die cuts (aka cuts) I'd like to make on my cutting machine. If there are any cuts I'd like to make, I check to see if I have any SVG files that will work for the page and if not check on the Cricut and Silhouette store for possible designs.

Sometimes it can take me a few tries before I find embellishments (and the placement) that I like. I'd like a little more on the beach page with the ribbons, and I'm even questioning that decision, but I decided to leave it for now (Have to pack for the crop retreat. I'm leaving tomorrow morning!). I'm sure I'll get inspired this weekend and if not, I have enough kits prepared I can skip that layout and move onto the next. The top layout I plan on using the orangeish pattern paper to create a border that will complement the design on the other side. If I really like I have created the layout, and I don't have the time to glue everything down, I take a picture of the page so I can recreate it at the crop.

 Next week, I hope to have these layouts completed to share the finished projects.

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

Where's the Tape Runner?

Usually getting ready for a weekend crop retreat brings me such joy. I'm always so excited to start packing because that means crop weekend is almost here (I "leave" on Friday, I have leave in quotations because this retreat is in my town and only about ten minutes away). Today I am filled with dread and finding all sorts of chores that need doing to avoid packing. The issue is I don't know where anything I need is currently being stored. I feel like I'm in a never ending game of hide and seek with the inanimate objects winning. We're in the process of rearranging rooms and I have scrapbooking items in the soon-to-become my craft area and office, in my current office, and also in what was once my scrapbooking room.

Figuring out where to start first is overwhelming. I know the easiest thing to do would be to bring everything into one area to sort through but then I'll be cluttering up one space. It would make the most sense to bring everything upstairs to my new office/craft space, but as we still have items in there from when we redid our bedroom, the room is already crowded and chaotic adding more items into it will not make the task any easier. (Putting items back into our bedroom is taking longer than we planned, I'm about ready to give us a deadline and whatever isn't back in the bedroom will be donated.)

I had planned on starting a new album at the crop but I might just finish up the last few pages of the Disney album I've been working on and then work on die cuts for our anniversary cruise album. It would be easier to do prep work for the November retreats coming up then trying to dig everything out. I know by November, we'll have the rooms in some semblance of order.