I am so very excited to be with you today. I am thrilled that American Crafts has launched AC Digitals. They have had limited kits available for quite some time. In fact, my first digital layout used their product and was in the final issue of Simple Scrapbooks. Ah...
Who knew then that now I would have fallen so deeply in love with the cleanliness of digital scrapbooking? And who knew then that American Crafts would launch their own digital shop with full kit releases? And four years ago, who would have thought that I would be here with you today using one of their new digital kits? Mmm. Life is good.
Before I get to my mini, I need to set the scene. Last year we did fifty three years' worth of vacations. We drove more than 1200 miles to have our first two family beach vacation. Not only were we there with cousins, but we also went to a theme park, a water park, and spent two days at the beach. Then, a week later we left for the second trip of the summer which included more than 3900 miles, seeing both sides of our families, a sleepover football camp, a twenty year high school reunion, Fourth of July celebrations, a birthday party, and sixteen days of activities. Which all add up to endless folders of piles and piles of photos. And while I love them all, I didn't even know where to begin.
Until this week. When I saw the Storyteller Line. With its subtle travel theme and delightful color scheme, I knew it was just the thing to help me get started.
I have mentioned before that I keep my photos separated by date and then sub-divide the folders by theme. I took out a pen and paper and made a list of all the folders over the dates we were gone. Then I looked for themes that the photos could fit into. These themes will translate into intro pages afterwhich I can group the photos to accompany the theme pages. Finally! A way to analyze and sort all my photos!
Here is the title page.
And here are the theme pages.
Now, as I gather photos, I will do so by their broad topic. For instance, I have gathered all the food photos together and put them in a simple format on the same blue background paper as the themed divider. Here is how they look together.
I used the same background paper on all the pages, and the photo pages each have the same two fonts, and one journaling block. Each themed section follows the same format. Not only does this remove the pressure to pretty-fy all the pages, it also let's me put lots of photos in the book. And if I decide there is a longer story needing to be told, I can create a regular scrapbook page for our regular albums.
Speaking of journaling, the tourist attraction pages will have much more than the food pages. Formatting each section individually allows the design to be more flexible and enabling while still letting the album be coherent and connected.
Best of all? I am finally feeling capable of preserving the memories of our trips in a way that makes sense and is fun to read. I am so indebted to this collection of papers and elements that inspired the whole shebang!! Thank you, American Crafts!
