8.5×11 Two-page Layout. Embellished area at the right side inspired by 2 Peas’ Garden Girl, Lisa McGarvey.

Paperclipping has been focused on scrapbooks for a big vacation, such as my family’s recent Disneyland trip. I’m working on my own album, as you work on yours.

Because many scrapbookers feel this project is overwhelming, I’ve broken up the process into a series of steps. But these steps won’t just make it easier on you. They’ll help you identify the rich stories you want to tell about your trip. If you missed the previous steps, here they are:

Step 1
Steps 2&3
Step 4

Step 5: Assess Your Needs

I know the temptation. The temptation is to find that super cute album you saw last week and to buy it for your vacation, without any idea how much space you actually need. That is a symptom of the number of products and projects in the magazines and online. But what do you really need to tell your story? If we are going to center our scrapbooking around the stories we have to tell, we need to start with the story and let that dictate the products.

How Many Pages Do You Need?

You’ve separated your pictures into individual stories. While you may end up changing this around a little (I have already), you should be able to count the piles for an approximation of how many pages you’ll need. Each story will normally equal one page, or one two-page spread.

What Size Of Pages Do You Need?

Approximately how many photos do you have for each story? The answer will be a major indicator for whether you need a 12×12 album, an 8.5×11 or something smaller, or if you can even use a more traditional photo album.

It will help to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Can you reprint some photos into smaller or larger sizes to better tell your stories?
2. Can you crop your photos manually in order to fit more into a smaller space?
3. How much journaling do you have for each story? Will you want to type and print it or do it by hand?

How did I decide on the size of my album? I had a varied number of photos for each of my stories. This meant I’d need some flexibility, making a traditional photo album more difficult (although, I was tempted to do this). I also wanted to type my journaling (for simplicity), and if I were to use 8.5×11 paper, I’d be able to type if right on my background pages.

I have a lot of experience re-sizing my original photos, so I decided 8.5×11 would be my best solution.

What Colors Will Highlight Your Pictures & Reproduce the Emotions Of Your Event?

If you were on top of Steps 1-3, then you should have a good idea in your mind of what the tone of the overall story is, and what colors will help you express that tone.

Originally, I skipped through this step and decided to go with white, just to make the project easier. But as I began working on my first page, I realized white wasn’t connecting with me, nor my story. I decided to find a collection of muted hues with subtle patterns that would give me the choice of warmth (browns and cream tones) or fun (light blue or red).

What Embellishments Can You Add To Support The Story?

Again, with so many wonderful products available to us, it’s easy let some popular or cute embellishments dictate our design, rather than the actual story we want to tell. I’m not saying we shouldn’t use all those embellishments. Just make sure you know what your stories are, and ask whether the embellishments support them or not.

Reuniting with some of my siblings and our parents to relive a regular childhood memory together and with our children was greater for me than the actual Disney park, itself. I decided to use minimal embellishments and instead, make the bounty of photos the real highlight of the pages.

I also wanted a very classic representative of Disney–one that I relate to all the way back to my childhood, since the story of this album is bringing together the past and the present at Disneyland. I decided to make a Mickey Mouse silhouette the main embellishment (and usually the only one) for each page.

Your Assignment

Are you still on track with me on this? If so, your assignment is to…

1. Count your stories (each pile of pictures and their story topics on notecards) to determine the approximate number of pages you need.

4. Choose embellishments that will help to tell your story.

You are now ready to play!

By the way, although I am now working on the third page for my scrapbook, I have yet to choose an album cover. It’s the least of my concerns because I know the cover will come eventually. It’s the story I’m most interested in.

It’s a bit awkward answering so many questions about myself, but we had a good time, and we filled up the entire night with these questions! Feel free to watch the recording.

So many of you have been asking for tutorials on Photoshop, especially for digital techniques for photos, so today’s episode is one version of a technique I use all the time.

This one is for Premium Subscribers. You can learn more about the Premium Subscription by visiting the Membership Information Page.

Amy requested that we have a Q&A session during Paperclipping Live. I can go with that idea! I’ll also have a layout ready to prepare because there is likely to be some extra time.

So, if you have a question you’ve been curious to ask (or perhaps you did ask and I accidentally skipped over it) this is your chance. I would love it if you leave your questions in a comment on this post, but I’ll take questions during the show, too.

Thanks!

This Week’s Video Tutorial

The Premium Subscribers will have their tutorial later this evening. If you’ve been waiting for the next free one (I’m sorry, I know it’s been a while), we’ve already shot the video for it and it will be ready this coming weekend, hopefully Sunday evening.

This Week’s Topic

We’re finishing up the Vacation Stories series this week. Look for the next steps and layouts on Wednesday and Thursday.

Paperclipping Live

Well, I’m trying to finish up that Disney album. Somehow I thought I’d have about three hours to work on it today–so far it’s almost time to get the kids from school and I haven’t had a chance to touch my scrapbooking supplies.

Maybe I’ll take advantage of that little bit of time on Tuesday night. Or if you have any requests that don’t require much planning on my part (no time today or tomorrow), leave a comment and let me know what you want to see.

Either way, we’ll start at 6:30pm PST. If you want to join us tomorrow night but are unsure of the time zone difference, look for your city on this website and then compare it to my city, which is Phoenix.

Remember to register for Skype (it’s free) if you’d like to call in to the show.

Challenges

Thanks to Lesley (”Hungry Heffy”), we will start having monthly challenges based on the tutorials and blog articles. The first challenge will start at the beginning of September and will link back to Aug. topics.

Tracy Burtt, owner of The Treasure Box Club, sent me two of her recent kits and asked me to review them on Paperclipping.com. If you are a regular attendee of Paperclipping Live, then you’ve already seen me pull out and share all the items of the kits.

Here are the layouts I made with products from each of the kit. You can see them more detail by clicking here.

A Great Scrapbooking Kit Should Have Added Value Above Other Scrapbook Sources

What makes you decide to buy a kit when there are so many venues competing for your business? Added value.

Here are some examples of added value a kit could offer and how The Treasure Box Club Kit stacks up:

1. Unique items from outside of the scrapbooking industry. Gorgeous fabric. Vintage stuff. Foreign papers. Hand-made items.

The Treasure Box Club kits had some cool stuff, like game spinners from Tim Holtz and a great time-related transparency from Creative Imaginations. But there was nothing unusual in these kits. Everything was from within the scrapbooking industry, which may or may not be a big concern for many of us.

2. Financial savings. The items may be available in my local store, but if I can get it for less money by being in a club, then it might be worth it.

This is one of the biggest reasons to buy kits from The Treasure Box Club. The papers come in bulk from just one or two companies so you get a lot of stuff for a lower price than what most kits go for.

You’re also going to save money with this kit if you have Quickutz. The Treasure Box Club offers exclusive discounts on fonts and shapes each month that coordinate with the kits’ themes.

3. Unique combination of products. Sometimes a designer surprises me with their combination choices and I want to try that choice on myself. This is the highlight of many kit clubs.

I was really surprised to see that the patterned papers in the Treasure Box Club are all from just one or two companies–even from the same line. In the birthday-themed kit, there were five or so pieces of polka-dot papers. They were the exact same patterns, but in different colors. That part was disappointing for me. At least they were two-sided papers, though, so that helped with the variety.

I found out that it is because the kits use bulk packages from one or two lines that the kits are so much less expensive than others. It’s one of the rare kits that is priced at less than retail. So I guess there is some give-and-take. Which is more important to you? Variety of lines and patterns or the cost?

4. Scrapbooking support or inspiration. The support can be through challenges, an online community, or instruction.

The Treasure Club Kit offers samples and instructions for what you can do with your kit. In fact, with each kit, you will get 26 pages worth of directions on how to make either twenty 8×8 pages or three 2-page layouts. For this reason, and because the papers are from coordinated lines and are easy to match, I think this kit is perfect for scrapbookers who struggle to come up with their own designs.

If you don’t like to copy someone else’s designs, then it is really a matter of whether you like the types of products they carry–they pick good stuff, in my opinion–and whether you’re more interested in savings, unique items or combinations, and online community challenges, as opposed to instruction.

Flexibility

If you think this kit is what you’re looking for, there is one other benefit that I really like. It has a flexible system. If you don’t like one of the kits, you can opt out and skip that month. And, you don’t have to commit to buying a certain amount of kits to get the discounted price. You can cancel any time, rather than commit to a three-month or six-month deal.

While this probably isn’t the idea kit club for myself, I’ll say again that I think it is a no-brainer for people who like their patterns strongly coordinated and who like help with designs. If you’re interested in seeing more, you can click here to go to their website.

Let’s take a little break from our series on Vacation Scrapbooks so that I can review the kit club, The Treasure Box Club. They sent me two of their kits to try. Right now I am just posting the layouts but I will be back in a while to post my review of the kit club.

Dramatic Birthday Boy Wishes

The first section of journaling reads: You can’t even blow out your candles without infusing some hilarity into it. This is why I love you.

The larger journaling block reads: You made it clear forever ago that you wanted no birthday parties and you like to keep your social circles separate. **Then your 35th birthday crept up.** One night at dinner you announced to the kids and I that you wanted us to throw you a “surprise” party. HUH? I questioned you over and over again. I thought you were joking. But we scheduled your party for after the day to give you a real surprise. Of course, Trinity revealed the surprise and then Blake told you your gift. So there were no surprises. Just lots of fun with family and friends and your humor.

Pencil Lines Sketch

I based the above layout on a sketch challenge from Pencil Lines, which is a really great place to see how people can use a sketch as a jumping off point, rather than as a crutch. If you’ve never been to that site, I recommend you check it out.

The Best Decision

Journaling reads: I couldn’t possibly have known you well enough in just two weeks to decide to marry you. In so many ways that decision was naive and immature. And yet, all the things I believed about you were right. You were exactly what I summed you up to be during those 2 weeks. You have goals. You make things happen. You’re real and you allow me to be real. You’re fun and funny–oh my gosh, so totally funny! You’re smart. You are peaceful and supportive. You pull out the very best in me. Marrying you was the best decision of my life.

I’m so glad I did it. I’m glad we rushed it. I love you so much, babe.

As we continue with the series, Stories From Our Vacation, I began a two-page spread for our Disney trip scrapbook. You’ll see me struggle with a desire to make the process simple, tell my story, while also capturing a feel and design that satisfies me.

I also share some of my homemade embellishments for the album and how I made them.

This week and next we are turning photos and memories of one of our trips into a visual memoir using my step-by-step process to keep it meaningful and prevent overwhelm. If you missed the first three steps, you’ll want to start there first:

Step 1
Steps 2 & 3

Step 4: Eliminate

This is where we get to the bare bones of the story. We are going to eliminate unnecessary photos.

*Which photos do you really need to tell each story?
*Which photos can tell a totally different story that is unrelated to the trip and can better express itself in a different album?

Moving A Story To A Different Location

I have a few piles of stories and photos from Disneyland that will make more sense as part of a different story, or album. For example, Israel took this series of photos of Blake and Trinity while waiting in line:

After Trinity’s had her hundredth picture taken, Blake can’t stand it anymore–he’s got to get in on it…If nothing else, he should give her some rabbit ears.

I love watching them play like this.

This story is more about Blake and Trinity and how they play and less about our time at Disneyland. I decided to pull this group of photos out of our Disney stack and make it a page for our This Is Us album–an album with stories about who we are–and how we are–as a family.

Eliminating Pictures Altogether

It’s easy to eliminate the blurry or bad shots. It’s harder when there are so many good ones. It’s a lot like the state of our children’s bedrooms and the amount of stuff they have. When there is too much stuff, they can’t keep it under control, and they can’t enjoy their things as much as they could if they weren’t surrounded by so much chaos.

One great photo can often have more impact than three similar ones unless the others contribute to the story in a meaningful way. Think of this as getting rid of the clutter so you can enjoy the best of it.

And remember, you’re not actually eliminating those extra photos from your life. You’re just eliminating them from this album. You can still view them on your computer or somewhere else.

Your Assignment

If you’ve kept up with us so far, you should have stacks of photos and note cards with a brief description of each story. Your assignment today is to go through each stack and decide which photos you can eliminate by asking yourself the two bolded questions above.

This will make you better able to begin assembling the album, which we will start doing very soon!

The How To Make A Vacation Scrapbook series continues this week.

This isn’t just about making the scrapbook. It’s about capturing the tone of your trip and telling a good story.

So, how are you doing with the first three steps? Is anyone ready for Step 4? I hope so because I should be posting it later today.

If you need to catch up, here are the links to the series so far:

Step 1
Step 2 & 3

Video Tutorial

We’re sorry to announce that there will be no video tutorial this week. If you have the Premium Subscription and you haven’t been through all of the archives yet, this might be a good time to catch up on an older episode. We’ll be back with the next episode this coming weekend.

Paperclipping Live

Tuesday night at 6:30pm PST, you will get a sneak peak into the Disney album I’ve got in progress, as well as a sneak peek into some of the last steps. I’ll design a two-page spread from our Disney vacation, sharing how the first few steps contributed to better story-telling on my page.

If you want to join us tomorrow night but are unsure of the time zone difference, look for your city on this website and then compare it to my city, which is Phoenix.

Remember to register for Skype (it’s free) if you’d like to call in to the show.

Scrapbooking Kit Club Review: The Treasure Box Club

Tracy, the owner of The Treasure Box Club, sent me two kits and asked me to review them. I shared the contents of the kits a few weeks ago during Paperclipping Live. Later this week we’ll take a break from our vacation focus so I can share what I made with the kit contents and give my review.