Scrapbooking 101

January has become the month when I go through all of my pictures in Picasa from the past year and choose the highlights. Then I order all the photos at once, kind of thinking them through as to how they will fit on a page . . . so that I can fill a page or double page on a given subject.

I'm not serious about embellishments. It's basically about the photos and getting an overview of the year. I choose a photo album and get an assortment of coordinating paper that flows easily for the whole album.
This year I found a nice K&Company pad with 36 double sided, mostly black and cream patterned sheets. The pages in the album are black and I mixed them up with the pages from the pad.

My favorite tool is the cutter. Very important.

The black and cream patterned paper pad also had a splach of colored pages and I added some to match those.


It's always kind of hard to know how to begin .  . . this time I chose three photos that depict three highlights of the year. . .  Lacey's birth, a family trip to Disneyland and Koen's birth.



Then I lay out the next two pages and work on two at a time, so that it basically looks like one page.

You get the idea.

Some pages get very full!

I allow for little spots where I can add some details when I'm done with the whole album.

Sometimes I'll add a bit of embellishment . . .

Here I used part of a card that was given to me by a friend.

If I use a colored page for background on one side, I'll use that color for framing the photos beside it.
That's all.  The simpler I keep it the quicker it will be done . . .  and even so . . . it's not happening fast enough . . . I've only done up the the summer. But it should be done soon now.
And maybe. . . just maybe . . . next year will be the year I try the online book.