….Or, how not to make a mini album! This is my completed “Scrapbook On The Road” mini album from Ali Edwards that I put together last March. It’s been sitting on my shelf all this time waiting for this very vacation. I have taken a week off to enjoy some good weather, rest, and Hubby’s and my wedding anniversary. We went to the coast last weekend after not being there for several years, and it was wonderful! The stats: I took 479 photos. Yes, you read that correctly. 4-7-9. I used 163 of them in this album. I also took 16 photos on my iPhone, and used 5 of those as well for a total of 168 photos crammed into this not-so-little book. Imagine if I still used film? I found some on Amazon; a 4-pack of 24 exposure Fuji film is around $9-10. I’d still be broke. I am a sentimental fool, and I cannot not photograph! The beauty of digital these days is being able to do what I did without regret, remorse, or having to go into debt. The interesting thing to me is, I deleted photos as I went along on this trip, so 99% of the photos are good and usable. I just cannot put that many into one book! So, I have plenty of good material for use in other projects later on.

Here is the book:

I debated on adding more to the cover, but I'm leaving it alone for now.

I like the look of white on white, but I needed to trace around the letter stickers with a gray pen so they would show up just a little more.

I love these transparencies (left).

This is a real map on the left that I cut and stitched a heart onto. That idea came from Martha Stewart Living.

The tags in the pocket have photos of where we stayed on the back that have been cut into the shape of the tag.

The tag on the right is from My Mind's Eye, and is perfect for things like this.

The photos on the right are from my phone. Left the camera at the cabin!

I tried to add little borders to the white spaces above and below the photo on the left, but it didn't look right. I covered them with this 7Gypsies tape which is only a little better.

The little stickers I used throughout are 'Word Fetti' travel stickers from Making Memories.

To put several photos onto one page, I used my Moirai Compositor in Photoshop CS4 to create a collage.

The Maya Road envelope contains a silly photo my husband took on a tag that I somehow wanted to include, but not on a page. I love using real postcards in my books (right).

The backs of postcards make perfect journal spots!

Pages that look like the one on the right are made from plain transparencies covered with a piece of sewing pattern on both sides and adhered with either Mod Podge, or Gel Medium.

This envelope (right) has business cards from most of the places we visited.

The page on the right is chipboard covered in white acrylic paint. Very difficult to journal on; I went through at least 4 pens.

Lists are fun! This one was a random, spur-of-the-moment decision because the side of the page has those numbers.

Ali Edwards came up with ingenious idea of putting two tags together side-by-side and covering the back with paper to make a unique little page!

That envelope on the right contains the necklace my husband made for me out of a thin piece of seaweed and two little shells shown in the photo directly underneath.

Oy vey! More acrylic paint that was just so difficult to work with! I do love the effect, though.

I loved using Basic Grey's Micro Mini Monogram letters. Perfect size!

This envelope on the right has more ephemera in it like menus, receipts, etc.

I made a pocket out of the bag I got at one of the souvenir shops when I purchased my postcards. I cut it down a little and used a circle punch at the top to put more things into.

The End.

Lessons learned from this:

1. If you take 479 photos during a vacation, try to weed out the best so that you have maybe 50 or less to put into your mini-album (unless you’re going to make a regular size one, and good luck with that…it may get finished next year.). Put the rest onto your Flickr site, or add a couple of two-page spreads to your usual album.
2. If you know you’re going to have a lot of stuff to put into a mini-album, don’t use chipboard pages. They add thickness and bulk.
3. Don’t try to journal on painted pages!! At least cover the page with a coat of gel medium on top, and/or get some super writing pens (lots of them). If I ever discover a pen that will write on anything, I’ll be the first to let everyone know. Not even my trusty Sharpies would write on the paint!
4. Make sure your holes will be big enough for your binder rings. The Crop-o-dile is a wonderful tool, but the largest hole is only 3/16″ which is not really big enough. I had to re-punch most of the holes, and I did a poor job of it. I don’t know how to get bigger holes in the chipboard pages (except for a Binderie Punch, but it’s awkward). I’m going to campaign for We R Memory Keepers to make a bigger Crop-o-dile hole punch (at least 1/4″).
5. Plan better. Being spontaneous can be good, but for an endeavor like this, I wish I had slowed down a bit and put more thought into where/how I will put my photos in.
6. Don’t use glue sticks (at least not cheap Costco ones). I did, and by the time I was ready to put my photos into the book, it was falling apart. I had to use my Scotch ATG gun to reattach things.
7. AAA maps are a wonderful way to add embellishments: they’re free, and you can cut and punch them to your heart’s desire to add some pretty classy art to your pages.
8. If you don’t have a Moirai Compositor to create collages on your page, consider adding divided page protectors. There are some which can hold 18 small photos (both sides) and I personally have had success in cutting them down to a size that fits my book. Plus, the page protectors can hold small treasures like business cards, some sand, a shell, etc. (sew across the top to seal).
9. Taking photos of little treasures I found on the beach was a real boon; some didn’t make it home in one piece, so I at least have a photo of them (you can always print these out small and put some in an envelope if you want to save room).
10. I probably didn’t need to include all of the meals I had in my book. I did want to remember these meals (especially when we go back again next time), but maybe a scrapbook layout of fabulous meals would have been just as good a way to document that.

All in all, putting this album together was a labor of love (like every scrapbook page!) that I will leave just as it is. Last night I was disappointed with the way it turned out (too thick, messy handwriting, poorly punched holes, etc.), but it’s my documentation of fabulous memories that I put together myself. I won’t change a thing, I’ll just learn from it and do better next time. Happy travels!