Trying Something New For Scrapbooking

Hello everyone! I'm back from visiting family in Phoenix and had an absolutely  wonderful time.

Today, and over the next few days, I will be focusing on scrapbooking. I created a couple of scrapbooks for my eldest son's family and for my youngest daughter. These are Christmas gifts that I brought with me and they opened on US Thanksgiving day. I wanted to see their reactions rather than have them wait for Christmas when I wouldn't be there.

I have been searching for the last year or so for a better way to scrapbook. The 12 x 12 format I am finding too large for my liking these days. Besides I was getting too elaborate with these pages and they were so thick that I couldn't get many pages into the 12 x 12 albums. The scrapbooks end up so heavy as well. I went to pocket scrapbooking (Project Life) and while I like that, it just wasn't me. So I looked into 8 x 8 scrapbooking.


When I first signed up with Stampin' Up! just over a year ago, I was able to purchase two retired 2013 Christmas albums. One I created using the pocket scrapbooking sleeves and of which was unable to get photos of before leaving. I had to combine the pocket pages from two into one, plus purchase additional sleeves elsewhere, which left one album without page sleeves.

I also Purchased two Stampin' Up! Project Life Kraft Albums (139655), which I love! I also love Mini-Albums, but the one disadvantage is the time it takes to create the album cover, and you can't add pages to it.

I finally came up with an idea that might work better for me. So over the next few days I will be showing you what I have done, and perhaps this is something you would like as well. 


Let's begin with the pages I created for the Stampin' Up! Project Life Kraft Albums (139655).

Each page consists of using an entire 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of cardstock trimmed down slightly.

1. Trim cardstock down to 8 1/4" x 11.
2.  I then punched two holes (at 2" & 6 1/4").
3. If you want the flap on the right (front), flip to the back side with holes on right, 11" across top, and score at 4 1/4". If you want the flap on the left (or back) place with holes on the left, 11" across top, and score at 6 3/4". 
4. Take your choice of 12 x 12 DSP (designer series paper) and cut off 6" keeping in mind your paper pattern.
5. Cut that same piece with 12'' across, at 8". This gives you two pieces. (one at 4 x 8, and one at 4 x 4)
6. With the remainder piece (8 x 12) cut with 12" across at 6". This gives you two pieces at 6" x 8".

This is what your pages will look like.

Now let me show you what I did with my youngest daughter's photos from her trip to Hawaii with her dad January 2015. As there are several pages, I will be showing them to you over the next few days. Let's begin with the first few.

For the title page I chose a beautiful photo my daughter took of one of the beaches. This one happens to have been used in the movie "100 First Dates". I like to have an 1/8" white border around my photos which adds a pop to them whether I mat them or not.

I used a "Window Sheet" cut down to 6 3/4" x 8 1/4" and the "Layered Letters Alphabet" (138692) and Project Life "Day to Day" (135785), for the year numbers, with White StazOn Ink (106960).

I decided to use my Stampin' Up! Stamping Sponges (101610) to add colour to each of the page edges. 

On the left I create a space where my daughter could write a basic itinerary of the day to day activities while there. That writing space is created with two Project Life "Grid Cards" (136528) and a few different Project life stamp sets.

As this is the first page, with the a flap, I didn't put photos on it but rather decorated it with a number of stamps on a "Note Tag Punch" and a narrow strip.

Let's open that flap, shall we...

It was great fun using all those stamp sets in the scrapbooking style! I highly recommend the use of your stamps! Here are some of the rest of the pages. (Remember, I will be showing you more another day.) You will have excuse some of the photos as some are not clear. I had to take the photos very quickly, just hours before leaving, and didn't realize that the settings had somehow changed on my camera. And since I'm uploading and posting after having given the albums away, I can't retake the photos.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the album so far and are looking forward to more pages to be shared with you.

Thank you for stopping by to have a look, and Happy Stamping! See you soon with More!

Here is what I used throughout the entire album (except for the colours of ink pads and coloured cardstock used. You will be choosing your own colours.

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Find out which 2015 Holiday Catalogue items will soon be gone! You have until January 4th to purchase RETIRING products while supplies last!

Here is the link to the Holiday Retiring List.