So, part of my goal to catch up on my stuff-to-scrapbook list means finishing (or starting in some other cases) pages with vacation photos. One of the reasons I’ve avoided vacation photos for a while is that there are just so many. It’s really hard to pare them down to a manageable number. And it seems like most of the really cute sketches are for one-page layouts. Recently, though, I’ve been taking those 1-page sketches and extending them into two-page sketches. You’ve seen me do it before, and another opportunity came when I saw the sketch for the January edition of the free “Stretch Your Sketch” class over at Two Peas. Basically, I partly mirrored the layout for the right-hand page, and moved the journaling strip to that side. I had a lot to say, even though the photos are from the summer of 2007, since I kept a typed journal during our trip. After reading over my journal entry, I decided to use the whole thing, with a few minor edits.
I kept the layout pretty simple and mimicked a lot of the things I really liked about the example in the video. I didn’t have beach-appropriate embellishments, so I only used crochet thread to dress up the layout.
I made my own tan patterned paper by stamping a swirl stamp with taupe ink on the cardstock I had on hand– sort of tone-on-tone. Finally, to make the title stand out just a little more without it being overwhelming, I used foam adhesive to pop the “cannon” part.
This layout is really plain, which is a good thing because it focuses on the photos, but I kinda wish it had a bit more oomph, you know? But the memories are captured in the album, and that’s the most important part.
Supplies:
cardstock: Paper Reflections
patterned paper: American Crafts The Goods (Nursery Rhymes)
die cut: stash (unfortunately I have no idea who made it)
Silhouette SD with fonts Bernard (cannon) and 2Peas Squish (beach)
swirl stamp: My Mind’s Eye Fine and Dandy (True Blue Stamps)
taupe pigment ink: Portafolia
crochet thread
foam adhesive
love this page. the pictures are beautiful and the colors work so well.
I love the simplicity of it! Are all of your photos purely digital? Do you select pictures for the page before printing them or do you have a box of photos? My vacation photos are going to be all digital and I’m playing with ideas of printing the photos in varying sizes to make some interesting looks and to get more on a page.
Thanks, ana and Nat 🙂
Nat: yes, my photos are almost exclusively digital. Depending on how old they are and when I printed them, I have both plain-old 4×6 prints and also other (usually smaller, though sometimes larger) sizes. Most of the time, I just wait for the big print deals (30, 50, or 100 free prints, or free shipping at the big online photo-finishing companies like Shutterfly or Snapfish)… When they come around, I pull out my stuff-to-scrapbook list and look through it to see if there is anything that I think might be fun to scrapbook sometime in the future (which really is everything, I’m just not always inspired by it at a given time). So I have stacks of photos waiting to be scrapped whenever the right paper or mood comes to me.
For a long time, I didn’t have a good photo-editing software program, so I just relied on the sizes that the print companies used (4×6, 2.5″ square at Shutterfly, 4:3 ratio at Snapfish). Now that I have Photoshop Elements (and have a rudimentary grasp on how to use it), I will put together multiple photos on 4×6 canvases to print. With the smaller sizes, I can get more photos on a page (or spread) without it getting too cluttered. (I like whitespace whenever I can get it). There are some free programs for photo editing (I’ve heard Gimp is good, and theres the online program called Picnik) and although I don’t know much about either of them, I’m pretty sure you can put together 4×6 collages.
For Christmas, Husband and I just got a new printer, and it prints surprisingly nice-quality photos… so I might get even more adventurous with my photo sizes now that I can print them at home.
Hmmm this was a really long answer…. maybe I should have just done another post, haha!
No worries! I was just curious. I’ve JUST finished scrapbooking the last of my 35mm pictures and sometimes I felt like I was constrained by the size. On the other hand, with the limitless options that digital allows, I’m sure I’ll get bogged down somewhere.
I actually have a photo printer and I print several pictures on 8.5×11 sheets and then cut them out. It gives me lots of options in sizing. Now I’m thinking I need to work on a post about this.