(2-pg thu.) celebrating memories

I mentioned on Sunday that one of the joys from my week was spending Saturday scrapbooking with Faithful Blonde...and since I didn't get to do any scrapbooking tonight, I decided to share what I made last Saturday instead.

I always enjoy attending this event with her - hundreds of scrapbookers gathered together to spend the day documenting their memories in some way...be it traditional, digital, or some combination of the two. 

 

It's also great because I get a lot done! Well, in my perspective, I get a lot done. I finished nine pages Saturday, which I felt good about...until, at the end of the day, the emcee began polling the crowd and there were scrapbookers who had finished dozens of pages (I think the highest was near five dozen!). What's that philosophy about not comparing ourselves to others???

 

 This layout did two things - helped me use up some supplies in my stash, and gave me practice in using white space on photos for my journaling.

This spread was very easy to put together, because I was using the same layout that I used on the two previous pages in this album (which were part of the same Halloween weekend).

Speaking of using up supplies in my stash, I was pleased that the only layouts I needed to buy supplies for were the Halloween spread above, and this Election Day 2008 layout (for which I had to buy the blue background). Also pleasing? Doing some catch-up for an album that many years back.

Originally, I was planning to use my varsity-letter alphabet stencil to make a title on this spread, but as I began coloring in the letters, I realized I didn't like it.

So instead, I opted to make space in the journaling boxes to add some larger title (both of which I'll add after I print one last picture for that empty space on the right page). And for those who are wondering how Wildcat Guy feels about the University of Georgia stickers? He didn't have a choice, especially since the friends we were tailgating with were there to cheer for the Dawgs.

What do you do when you realize you only have one piece of the blue paper that coordinates so nicely with the striped paper you were planning to use as an accent (and none of the people you're scrapbooking with have anything that even closely matches)? You change course, cut both pieces in half, and tell yourself that it will be quite alright for the striped paper to be more of a primary paper than you'd planned. Then you enjoy the look on Faithful Blonde's face when you show her the spread from a weekend you spent with her family.

After that, you finish up the third page in the series, using another patterned paper from the same Basic Grey Mellow collection to tie it together a bit. You also create an awesome title using some lovely leftover brown fabric letters. (Sorry it's covered here, but it's the family's name.)

In the past few years, I've read a lot of "how-to's" for using leftover letter stickers to make other letters. But the most I've ever tried that is something simple, like turning a capital E into a capital F - where all that's required is cutting off a portion of the original letter. This was the first time I actually cut one letter to add to another letter.

I trimmed the straight part of the U (which I had to get just right, length-wise)...

...to insert into the open part of the C, to make an O. I was a little bit frustrated that the piece from the U was a tiny bit wider than the C was, but hopefully, nobody will notice.

After that, we still had about an hour left...at which point, I was thankful that I'd brought one other little project to work on! Knowing that, toward the end of the day, my attention and creativity would begin waning, my plan was to do some simple cutting and pasting for the save-the-date cards.

The formula was very simple - trimmed photos, plus trimmed and border-punched cardstock = the first step toward a completed save-the-date card. They're off to a good start, I'd say!

All in all, it was a fantastic day. I got some good scrapbooking done, I had some awesome conversations...I even got a few free things (in the goodie bag that was included in my registration). All of that is definitely worth celebrating!

Where I am: home
What I'm reading: (nothing at the moment)