Hey everyone!
Wow, I don,t know if it's because of the move, the beginning of school, learning a new language and getting settled in a new life, or all of these put together, but I can barely keep up with all my scrappy assignments even if I feel like I have so few of them! Phew!!
So apparently I had a layout published on the Get It Scrapped website yesterday and if you want to go read the article, it's called
3 Options for Scrapbooking On the Go!. So apparently keeping up and documenting at the same time is not only one of MY issues but some other people might find it difficult at times?! So if you need some ideas and if you need to not feel so alone in that situation, you should definitely check it out. :)
My approach was to scrapbook in a Traveler's notebook.
When the movers came to pack up my house, and I knew I would be without a scrap room for several months (it ended up being 2,5 months) I kind of panicked and packed a mini kit to bring with me, just in case I would feel the need to create at some point, you know. :)
Here are some pictures.
Stickers, labels, paperclips, adhesive, tabs and even ink, date stamp and a travel themed stamp set from Citrus Twist Kits.
I bought my traveler's notebook when Trina (Citrus Twist Kits owner) told me: Hey, that could be fun for you while moving this summer. I didn't have to think twice. I bought the leather book + 4 inserts, just in case I would need more pages than the ones that were included in the original Traveler's notebook.
Here you can see some of the paper pieces I collected while on my trip to Prague, when I went house hunting.
I saw the idea of a prologue at the very beginning when I started scrapbooking. It was in one of Moon Ko's baby ally album and since then, I always write a prologue when I make a mini album. It's the best thing to put the following story into a context.
I then divided my story in 3 parts: the day we left (my daughter hit her head on the corner of a piece of furniture 30 min before we were leaving to the airport so this was kind of a big deal and had to be documented as part of the trip), the flight + first impressions when we landed and when I went for my first min tour of the city and finally the 10 days I spent in Prague.
I wanted to keep my album VERY simple!!! Because of the supplies I had available, but also because I really had no time to sit for a long period of time and also because I had my head somewhere else (the move!), I wasn't feeling very creative. I didn,t want to complicate things, I wanted to DOCUMENT. That's all.
Journaling was a HUGE part of the book. I brought a brush marker with which I wrote some kind of subtitles. I divided my notebook in smaller stories, in a way.
I really enjoyed stamping!! I have a lot of stamps in my supplies collection but I rarely think of using them on a layout. I was really surprise to see that for my Traveler's notebook, maybe because the kit I had was so small, I naturally looked and reach for my stamps.
Sometimes I was thinking just a little to far.... adding too many things. I don't really like the look of the label for the title. Maybe I should have stuck to really simple all the way through the book, but as I said, my head was full, I couldn't think clearly. Today, looking back, I'm glad I have something. I'll take anything really.
I can see now that I was really stressed out. A lot of my journaling is me talking to myself and encouraging me. Let's do this! lol It's ok. It talks for itself. It's a phase I was in, and now I have it black on white, right there. :)
The journaling is mainly french at the beginning. But (if I remember correctly) it switches to English at some point. That too is not controlled. It just happened.
I documented day by day. (You have to know here that I didn't do this album while I was in Prague. I did it when I came back) The day by day approach made it easier for me to remember the whole trip. I had some small notes in my agenda, but not many, so I had to jog my memory. I also had my memorabilia to help with that.
I like the empty spaces throughout my book. On some pages I have left less white space and it looks very full.
I printed all the small pictures in the same format one day before the movers came to our house to pack. I still had my printer and I made this in a rush. I had to work with with I had once I wanted to document. I didn't use all the pictures, it was just too much, but I'm glad I didn,t feel like pictures were missing.
And this would be the end of day 1. As you can see, I filled lots of pages with only the trip to there and one day in Prague! The other days are not as full. I kind of felt like it was too much. Too many details maybe, too many photos?! I don't know but I had that feeling of overwhelm. I knew I still had 9 days of documenting to do! I'll call it done for the blog for today and I'll show you the rest soon, ok? :)
Hoping that this could inspire you a little. :) Scrapbooking on the go is fun, but there's no magic. It has to be done somehow and it takes time and effort no matter how we do it. In the end it's up to you to make it as complicated or as simple as you want! :) And there's no scrapbooking police either, don't forget that. Oh and, I've heard people say they felt a pressure because they were putting their work online, you know, a pressure to make things pretty, maybe I had it here, but I kind of let go of that pressure and self expectation because the documenting is more important than the following after all. Scrapbooking is a thing we should do for yourself first. Right? :)
Ok, gotta go get the girls at school. Have a great day, friends!!
Marie
