Behind the Scenes - Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my peak behind the scenes of how I scrapbook.  If you missed the first part you can find it here: Behind the Scenes - Part 1 .   Now to be completely honest, I don't always scrapbook this way.  It's only when I am super organized, which is not always the case.  You will most likely find me doing this kind of scrapbooking for multi-page events like weddings, vacations, Christmas, etc where I have many layouts for the same event/theme.  Scrapbooking of what I call everyday life, you know all the stuff that happens in between these big events, tends not to be as well organized. But I digress.

So onto some fun stuff ... actual scrapbooking!  Now that I have the bones of  my layouts determined I get to assemble what I had planned.  So picking up where I left off in Part where I had already determined which photos I was using and croped the to the desired size for my sketch. So basically all I had to do was cut my patterned paper and glue it all together. It took all of the guess work out of the arranging!  So this point is this post is picks up. 

Sometimes, I follow my plan and other times I use it as a jumping off point.  Just to be clear, in this example I followed my plan fairly closely as this layout is for my cousins wedding album and I am trying to keep the album clean and sophisticated, not too fussy fussy!  I used all the papers, pictures and sketch I chose in my plan and quickly assembled the base and adhere everything down.  I know some scrapbookers layout everything out first to see how the layout looks but not me.  I stick it all down (and rip it up and stick it down again) as I go.  For me it works but only because I have a best friend called Undu, without it I would have to reconsider this method!

Now that the base is done, I get to embellish.  I have a love/hate relationship with embellishing.  I love to embellish but I hate to search for it!  I have tried many techniques to organize myself (and trust me I am a little OCD about my embellishments, ask any of my scrapbook buddies!).  But no matter how I organize things, I never seem to remember that perfect embellishment I bought 4 weeks ago that would look perfect on this layout!!!  I hate that!  I store stuff currently by theme which has been working for the most part. 

I have drawers of chipboard, stickers, and dies by themes like Christmas, Family, Travel, Seasons, Home, Holidays, etc. I store all my alpha stickers with my journalling spots in a box on my desk next to a two tier basket thingy in which I store tools and favorite go to and brand new items. If it's at my finger tips I will use it.  I also have this big fishbowl size glass that I store all my odds and ends in.  It's kind of like a junk drawer for my scrapbook room.  And if you visit you are welcome to whatever you can carry from it! 

I have so many other things, not pictured above, and trust me I am not bragging.  I have just been doing this for so long (almost 15 years now) that I have collected a lot.  I wish I could say I am not a hoarder but I know that everything I have bought over the years has cost money so I am trying to use it but it takes me almost twice as long to decide on my embellishments as it does to pick my pictures, paper and layout design!  So now back to what I was doing with the assortment of possible embellishments I have chosen for this layout.

First thing I normally do is decide on my title and then where to place it.  I tend to stick my alpha, if they are sticky otherwise I just lay them on the layout, to a plastic see through ruler and then I try them in different places on my layout.

Nope, I think I like it better down here.  And I stick it down.

Next comes all the little details.  I decided that I wanted to co-ordinate with the black letters I used for the word love and I had these perfect 97% Complete Stickers from 7 Gypsies that work perfectly.

There were too long for where I wanted to use them so I cut it into two pieces and staggered them a bit above my title.

I then added another saying to the far left in a similar fashion and then added 3 black brads.

And there you have it.  This layout is done!

Now I know that this is a simple layout, nothing too fancy and there's no journalling as this layout is as I said before a gift for my cousin, but it still turned out very nice.  See not everything has to take 16 hours to do.  I managed to finish this album in two weekends because it was pretty simple: one weekend for the planning and then one weekend for the assembling and embellishing.  Sometimes we need to be able to do layouts this way just to get caught up.  I am a firm believer that not everything has to be a masterpiece.  If it shows my pictures and preserves my memories that pretty awesome too!  Now I am planning a part 3 which will show the chaos of an unplanned layout which I am hoping to post up soon!  Stay tuned!