Vacation Mini-Book or My Pictures Were Scrapped Before There Even Was a Swine Flu

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I have taken a few really great vacations. You know the type: sun, clear water, beaches, beverages with tiny umbrellas. I also have boxes of vacation photos. Piles of vacation photos. In fact, except for the giant manila folder of childhood photos that my mother sent me, they are the one pile of photos I never seem to get to.


Front Cover

The hundreds of photos that are normal for a vacation are very overwhelming. Scrapping them would dominate my usual family event scrapbooks. Since most of my books are chronological, putting in 8-10 layouts of vacation pictures seems to slow down my frenzied pace. Of course, this leads me down the path of vacation albums.


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I took my first leap when I did an online digital album for last year's family summer vacation. Since I had 217 pictures (after editing) it seemed like a reasonable option. It worked out well. It was quick and was delivered to my door by FedEx a complete package. While it was done, I missed the part that makes scrapbooking fun for me - cutting and gluing small pieces of paper.

This year when I saw the spring break photos, I knew I had to do something different. While hanging out at my local scrapbook store, I saw a couple of mini-albums that really inspired me. They were small in scale and simple in design. I saw tons of potential for scraplifting great ideas. Since I was spending the day in the workroom at the store, I decided to put a plan together. I picked up the chipboard cover, background paper and metal rings at the store and spent the rest of the afternoon planning each page of the album. Once I got home it was pretty quick to put together. I didn't buy any other paper or embellishments. Instead I was pleasantly surprised at how I seemed to have everything I needed right in my own stash. (Granted, I have enough patterned paper to file an insurance claim in case it starts on fire...). The smaller 8x11 pages forced me to limit the pictures and the design to some basics. I was even able to scrounge enough varieties of ribbon to cover the metal rings.

I did have a grand idea of cutting out custom-made letters to create the titles on each page, then I realized with the space constraints, I needed a lot of really small letters. Instead I just mixed and matched from the multitude of tiny black letters I keep in a pile.


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Best of all, the album was done two weeks after the vacation. It was awesome. Now all I have to do is repeat this same fantastic feat of scrapbook magic with the other piles of vacation photos.


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Isn't It Supposed To Be Christmas In July? or I Am SO Far Ahead This Year

[Let's Take a Sleigh Ride, 2009]

It used to be that when the July scrapping weekend would roll around, I would be prepped and ready to go with my Halloween and Christmas pictures. Powering through the weekend, cranking out layout after layout of fall leaves and pumpkins followed by green and red overload, I felt so accomplished when I was done and finally looking at January pictures.


[Winter Slide 2008, sketch from PageMaps]

As a pathologically chronological scrapbooker, I measure my level of accomplishment by how far behind I am from the pictures I took TODAY. My standard is six months. It's normal for me to be working on my Fourth of July pictures in January. There are some hiccups that throw me off my game like the year I took so many Christmas pictures I had to make a separate album. That's right - 27 12x12 pages chronicling the endless holiday season of 2005. But check out my sweetie girl in "All Tangled Up in Christmas" and tell me you wouldn't feel compelled to snap a couple of extra photos.


[All Tangled Up in Christmas 2005]

There was also the year I rebelled and did all of my fall and Halloween layouts out of order because I read a magazine article that gave me permission to "scrap what I liked." It was a little disconcerting to scrap out of sequence so I avoid it whenever possible. Yeah, I have issues.

This year was shaping up to fall right along the six month timeline when I was revisiting my summer pictures this winter. Then yesterday as I was finishing up the last of my pre-prepped pages (photos and papers matched up and stored together in a plastic page protector-I know, I already admitted I have issues), that the next stack of pictures I needed to work on sorting were for Easter.

I checked again. That couldn't be true.


[Christmas Morning 2008]


[Ice, Ice, Baby 2009, sketch from Sketches R Us]

I tried to figure out what could have happened. How could I have missed months of photos? Careful review of my pictures (digital and printed), my calendar, and my memory made it clear that I had completely covered fall and winter. First was the realization that I only had four layouts for Christmas. I really cut back on the picture-taking (could be that my camera was being troublesome).


[Hey, Santa 2008, sketch from Cherie's Sketches]

After I got a new camera from Santa, I picked up the pace a little, but the wicked-cold days of Minnesota winter offered fewer photo-ops, and I ended up with just these highlights from January and February.

March was easy, since it was only my vacation pictures (OK, there were 187 of them, but I put them in a mini-album rather than my big album.) I will save that scrapping adventure for next time.

That brings me to where I am now - it's only June and I am starting on my April stash. That's closing the gap to only two months. Hey, it's not really bragging if it's true.


[Cake, Candles & Party Hats 2008]
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