I'm not the type to say I'm behind. Frankly, I'm only interested in scrapbooking a few things from my childhood & I haven't really experienced anything terribly momentous. I don't have kids, it's only me & Ryan + our 3 little kittehs ;) & sometimes my 2 cousins, who are as special to me as anybody can be to another person. So the stuff I've always been scrapbooking is our everyday life. I haven't ever put constraints on what I NEED to scrapbook. I usually just go with the flow, use photos that are inspiring me at the moment, or a story that I want to tell & I pair it with whatever photo fits. I have SOOO many photos that aren't scrapbooked, just like the majority of scrapbookers out there, but I don't let it get to me. If they make it onto a page, cool. If not, well that's okay too.
Well, something has changed. I'm still not considering myself behind in any sense of the word. But I am going back. I was looking through my box of photos... yes I only have 1 box of printed photos, most of which are before digital photos that I don't have another copy of... anyway, I was looking through the box & noticed that in one of the divided sections had over 3 inches photos in it. I flipped to the section & it was my Steph & Sue section. Needless to say I felt this overwhelming sense of guilt. I would consider myself their primary memory-keeper. I try to take note of the little things that go on in their lives, the things they say, how they are changing over time, etc. They haven't had the best childhood, but it's still had some great moments, & I want them to remember those special moments. So I challenged myself. [Sometimes I think back to that exact moment, & I think well... what was I thinking!!! haha] I made myself promise, to no one but myself, that I was going to scrapbook each & everyone of those pictures. Then I started looking through them, & a good majority of the photos had both of them in them. Well, I had this grand idea to make a scrapbook for each of them. So that entailed a new batch of prints... to make the set I had a double set. That in and of itself was a project, let me tell you. Luckily I had a code for 101 free prints from Shutterfly. After several days of choosing, uploading, & ordering the prints I was starting to make a dint into the photos that need to printed a second time. Well, once I got the prints in the mail, I divided them up... there were so many photos it was overwhelming. I put them in their own 4x6 boxes, I think they are Iris brand & I could barely close the boxes... & that's not all of the prints, I'm still holding out for another 101 free prints to come into my email!!
It was at that moment that I decided I had to make a plan for this whole project to get it under control & create some stress relief. I decided on a few things. First, I'm doing the whole project in 8.5x11, there so much less room to worry about, I can fit about 2 4x6 photos on a page with ease & still have a little bit of room to embellish, plus if I only have 1 photo it's not going to require alot of embellishing & title work. I want this as simple as I can make it. Second, I coordinated this with a huge purge. So as I went through ALL of my supplies, which isn't much honestly, I made a giveaway pile, a keep pile, & a S&S project pile. I kept the supplies that I thought matched their personalities & preferences. This made everything so easy. It felt kind of like I made page kits & I've been able to get so many pages done since then. Third, I made the ultimate decision that I would make almost identical pages for each of them for the photos they are both in & different pages for the photos of each of them alone.
Today I'm going to share one of my most recent pages for this project. I plan on making a video sharing some of the others soon. I just want to have a nice stack under my belt before I share ;)
Anyway... here's the page I'm sharing today:
There will be at least 1 companion page that goes along with this one, so I didn't do the journaling yet, I want to see which page will have the optimal room for it.
Here's my process of making this page. It's very similar to how I've made the others in the projects.
Thanks for reading & watching :)
