'Done is beautiful'

At the end of a recent post, I included pictures of a couple of scrapbook pages I'd done during one of my Vacation Recovery Days.

Surprisingly (to me), a couple of people commented and e-mailed me about them, saying that if I ever wanted to show you some more of them, they'd love to see them. And since I am a people-pleaser, I thought I'd do that today.

This one will be of more interest to people who already scrapbook, but I'm working on one for another day that will be for those of you who don't scrapbook -- so hopefully there will be something for everyone.

Although I'd love to have a room dedicated to scrapbooking (like Amanda's) ...

I don't. But I DO have a large section of the playroom (formerly our dining room) that serves the same (albeit less pretty) purpose. It works for me, and it's certainly better than working at the kitchen table occasionally and having to put everything up after I've finished working on a few pages. I'd never pull it out to work on it if that were the case!

I use almost exclusively Creative Memories scrapbooking materials, mainly because I used to be a consultant for them and they put the fear of God in me about using other companies' stuff. I DO use some stickers that CM lacks (HELLO, CM, you are severely lacking in the Fun at the Lake sticker category), but I'm particular about not letting the stickers touch my pictures so that they won't leach harmful chemicals into them.

ANYHOO, Creative Memories has a philosophy that "Done is Beautiful." You don't have to do really elaborate things, as long as you get it in the book and therefore have a record of it.

I never did anything all that elaborate to begin with, but when I ran across some plastic blocking templates about five years ago, it literally REVOLUTIONIZED my scrapbooking.

The beauty of the templates (the ones I own aren't available anymore, but I've seen similar ones at Hobby Lobby and Michael's) is that they allow you to get so many pictures on a page with just a little cropping. I got so used to using them that I don't even use the templates themselves anymore ... I just have my favorite two or three stored in my head, and I use them over and over again.

Here are some of the basic ones I use a lot (although I mocked them up in PowerPoint, so they're not to-scale 12x12 pages):







Important Note: Any template design can be used in at least four different ways, by flipping it 90 degrees in each direction. By doing that, you can turn a template with mostly horizontal spaces into one with mostly vertical spaces, or vice versa.

The two pages below began in my head as the same template ... seven horizontal spaces on each page (most like the first sample template above). But then I had nine horizontal pictures and one vertical, so I set about trying to figure out how to fit the vertical one in. You can see how the two pages are almost mirror images of each other, except that I fit the vertical one in on the left by carving it out a little and then giving up half of one of the horizontal spaces for the top of the vertical photo.

It ended up working out just fine, and because I didn't have too many pictures to try to fit on the pages, I had plenty of space to embellish with stickers and to title and journal.



I like to use coordinating papers (that work with the photos) in the little blank spots. You can journal there, or as I mentioned, you can use little embellishments in those spaces ... or, just leave them blank as pops of color.




Once I have it all laid out like I want it, I adhere it and then start deciding where to do a title and journaling.



On this layout I chose to do a journaling box, but I have a separate post to do about journaling later in the month, and I'll talk about other options then.



In the end, I think it's a fresh-looking page layout without a lot of clutter, which I like.

I'm going to try to do a little series on scrapbooking, since there was some interest, and if you have any questions you want me to answer or a specific topic you want to know more about, please leave them in the Comments and I'll do my best!