Scrapbooking thoughts [part two]

So here is my shelf-o-scrapbooks I've made, beginning with my freshman year of college through the present. My Mom gets the privilege of housing my high school scrapbooks [scary stuff, folks.]


One that I absolutely love is our Honeymoon album. I chose a Kolo album in aqua green fabric for this occasion:

When you have a trip or an event to cover, it's so much fun to include ticket stubs, itinerary, magazine clippings, etc. Hence the true "scrapbook" style:

Henry seems to like the smell of our honeymoon. Lots of blue backgrounds used for this.
One challenge I had with this album was the sheer number of photos to include. I think I had 200 or something ridiculous. In that instance, I could never ever have a one picture page or my book would be the size of the Bible [and I'd be burnt out in a day.] So it works to have a bunch of photos scrunched together when they have a similar theme. Then you don't even need a background paper or anything. Just pictures:

The last page of the book had our flight times and a little map of the island. I also included our room tab from the whole week....so that in 20 years, we'll look back on our "cheap" honeymoon and laugh at how much it cost.


Another personal fave: Henry's scrapbook. Yes, he has his own. Mostly just his puppy pictures since, as a new mom, I went a little overboard with the photos. It's super cute to see how much he's grown!

I wanted to show you guys this series. We tried to get the same photo of Henry on Nate's chest to show how BIG he became. The pictures are okay, but not perfect. I still love them, though.


I also made Nate a Spain album for his semester abroad. We had just begun dating at the time, so I tried really hard to impress him with my scrapping skills. It was my first attempt at making an album for someone other than myself. Back in 2002, I was big into ovals/circles for my photos. Now I'm all about squares.

So that brings us to today's album. Here is my chaotic dining room table. We all know how much Nate LOVES when I take the table hostage, right? It's pretty bad right now.

I've been using my pretty papers but not much else. I feel rushed with this album, knowing I have a butt load of pictures to include and I'd like to be done as soon as possible. It's not like that when I made the albums for our families. More on this in a bit.

I mentioned before that I love to handwrite and draw for my albums [I'd miss that with digital.] Here is a fun header for Hannah's shower and B.Party. The little metal tag at the bottom says "bride" and it's too cute.

Hannah's wedding: I had a ton of pictures for this one, and almost made it two pages. But then I kind of liked the collage look for her page. It keeps the eye moving on the page.

Nate's ski trip in two pages. I even found some cute skiing papers to use.

Love this paper so much, and I'm partial to the pictures, too:)

This page was fun. Yes, I showed up for part of my husband's b.party. Only for a few hours and only for one night. Totally G-rated while I was there but I can't verify anything after I left.

One of the first pages in this album: our Packers game. Nate loves this page, obviously. Since there are some good stories behind these pictures, the page includes a lot more journaling. Sometimes I don't journal at all, and sometimes I do a lot. Just depends.

Our rehearsal dinner and some wedding details. This will have to do until I get a REAL wedding album.

And the very first page in this album: Christmas 2005. Again, the ovals were my thing and now they aren't. I didn't even use a background paper for this page [the horror!]

So my thoughts? My best work is definitely the wedding albums I made for our families, pictures in this post. I didn't feel rushed, but I did pressure myself to make them absolutely beautiful and special. When I make my own albums I just want to finish and they don't turn out as well. Another reason I liked my wedding albums is because they were smaller and housed only one photo per page. That helped me focus on the picture and make each page special. But that simply does not work for all albums. Especially when you have a ton of pictures spread out over time [instead of one event only.]

If I go through with this mini-business for scrapbooking, I have a lot of decisions to make. Traditional versus digital. 12x12 size versus 8X8 size. How many pictures per page? How long will each book take me? How much should I charge so that I don't LOSE money, but knowing that I will not make a fortune on this either? And most importantly, would I live up to my own standards? I can be pretty hard on myself and I worry that I'll get frustrated with the results, always wanting it to be better.

Like I said, I have lots of ideas running around my brain right now. Once I sort through some of the ideas I will post on them, and ask for your help making decisions.

In the meantime, hope you liked the little snippet into my scrapbooking world!