Catching Up on Scrapbooking: Seattle Album Done!

 WOO HOO! I'm very excited to report that the 2005 vacation album is DONE! My scrapbooking friends know that it's a great feeling to have a big project finished!

In case you missed it, I started working on this project at the end of February, which isn't all that long ago now that I think about it! I expected it to be an easy album to complete and that was basically true. The hardest part was getting it organized!

 When yesterday started, I had all the photos in the album but only one page of journaling done. Spouse was gone for the day so I didn't have any guilt about hunkering down on this project! I put a pot of coffee on (first things first!) then started with page 1. As soon as I opened the album, I noticed that it wasn't even done...oops!

 I usually like to reserve my favorite trip photos for the first page, but for this trip, it was hard to choose. I settled on three and wrote a small paragraph as an introduction.

As I worked on this album, I discovered  details which I had completely forgotten. In the mountain photo below, for example, Bailey is actually standing in front of the "Bailey Range" with her arms extended. That's always been one of my favorite pictures but I had forgotten the rest! :)

 

I went through the album, adding journaling, captions, or quotes as needed. I printed them as I went along, refilled my coffee cup, and continued on. I love this photo of Bailey, who did not want to wake up early to go hiking on Mount Rainier. Of course, I had to include the Dr. Seuss quote we've all heard: "Your mountain is waiting so get on your way!"

Someway around mid-morning, I remembered a paper collection I had in my stash which came in a grab bag from one of my favorite now-defunct companies, October Afternoon. It's a pirate collection which I've saved to use for my cruise pictures (I know...LOL) but some small pieces were perfect for the car ferry pages. Scrapbookers will also understand how good it is to use stuff from your stash!

 

As I was working through this project, I found an additional photo for this Starbucks page. I definitely wanted to include it but since this is a smaller page, space was tight.

So I removed the bottom photo and cut a new folding mat for it which flips up to show that third picture. Since I had some extra space inside, I found some awesome Seattle clip art and printed it on photo paper to fill the space. There's almost always a way to include an extra photo or two!

After finishing this page, I took a break and went on a Starbucks run, of course! :)

With so many photos in pocket pages, I tried to consolidate my journaling to save time rather than make tons of little captions. For example, this little journaling block covers all the photos on this page and the facing page. I found the British Columbia paper at Memory Bound which has some awesome Butchart Gardens artwork! It matched my photos perfectly.

I used smaller sleeves for pull-out memorabilia such as this flower guide...

 ...and this map.

In cases where I had a space to fill but didn't have a specific caption, I printed quotes.

On this page, the travel itinerary that Bailey wrote can be pulled out to read. As I've said previously, that little list was the key to putting this album together! 

In a couple of cases, I printed journaling directly on a photo when space was tight. This was a single photo with no great place to put it, so I reduced the size and adhered it to the front of a pocket with the information from this museum.

On a couple of occasions, I had extra space on the back of a pocket page which was a nice place to add postcards I'd saved. Here I also printed a small collage of favorite Seattle photos for the space at the right.

Memory Bound also had Washington paper which included this little Space Needle piece! I made sure to use all of those elements which matched my photos.

 I had some really colorful pictures from Pike Place Market, but I still found myself needing something additional to fill spaces. I did a quick search for Pike Place clip art and was surprised at how many great options I found. For this section, I re-sized and printed out two pieces on photo paper -- the flying fish piece at the left and the "Public Market Center" at the right. On that same page, I had a small gap at the bottom of my journaling block, so I found an additional market photo, re-sized it, and added it to that piece to fill the space.

My cat-loving friends will appreciate the photo at the upper right. This guy was outside the market with his two cats (wearing sweaters!) who were trained to offer advice for a small fee. Maybe "Try the fish!" :)

 

 I typically save a few favorite photos for the final album page, but in this case I just used the photos we took before we left Seattle to go home along with a few final thoughts about this trip.

I'm so glad to have this album done! None of these pages are very exciting, but the important thing is that the photos and stories from this trip are safely in an album for us to enjoy. As vacations go, this one was one of my favorites and I'm glad to have it documented for posterity!

Now that I've finished it, I need to get back to my chronological scrapbooking (can't even remember where I left off!) and my heritage albums. And there very well may be another vacation or two lurking in those photo boxes. We shall soon see!

If you've read this far, thank you for stopping by today! If you're a scrapbooker, I hope you'll be encouraged by these posts. It IS possible to go back and catch up on your scrapbooking projects. 

So let's git-r-done! No time to waste!

jp