Pocket Scrapbooking

    I've been scrapbooking for about ten years now, but I've really been a memory keeper for as long as I can remember.  I've always enjoyed collecting things;  from a cigar box with a few treasures in it during my childhood, to cards, letters, and memorabilia from my teen years on.  It was also while I was a teenager that I became interested in photography, and I've been taking photos ever since.  It only seemed natural then, that I would gravitate towards scrapbooking.  

I enjoy making traditional layouts, which for me, has been the 12x12 inch size, but in my search for a way to more fully document our family's day to day lives and still have a creative way to express those lives, I've started to utilize the 6x8 inch pocket albums.  The beauty of this format, besides its ease and how quickly pages come together, is its versatility.  I can work on any pages I want, in any order I want, and because it's a ringed binder, I can add things, move pages around, move individual photos or cards around - and it all remains a seamless story.

Here are three page spreads from my current album.  I've recently joined Studio Calico's Project Life monthly kit club.  It comes with a selection of both 4x6 and 3x4 cards, and several embellishments such as labels and alphabet stickers.  The garden layout above was made using my first kit, which is called Sandlot. 

I love to showcase my garden, and you may recognize the enlarged photo on the right from last weeks post about my lilies.  I knew that lily would be one I would also like to emphasize in my album, and chose it for this spread.  Once I had my photos chosen and printed, it was as easy as slipping the 4x6 photo into that bottom left pocket, and mounting the enlargement onto card stock.  Then, I chose those two 3x4 cards for the top left pockets, did a bit of embellishing, and I was done. 

This second spread is my way of thanking my kids for indulging me in a photo shoot on Mother's Day and was also made using the Sandlot kit.  This is a similar layout to the first one above, but this time I've used three 4x6 photos.  Another couple of 3x4 cards embellished with letter stickers, wood veneer and some ink stamping slipped into the top left pockets finished off this page.  

This layout of my step-daughter Kaede's wedding is actually in three parts, of which I've finished only this introductory page. For this spread, I utilized some leftover papers I had from having made a 12x12 layout for my family album.  The floral paper on the left was cut from a 12x12 sheet of patterned paper, then mounted onto white cardstock.  The 4x6 photo was also mounted onto white cardstock.  On the right side I mounted a 3x4 card (not from the Studio Calico kit) on top of paper I cut to 4x6, then fussy cut a couple of flowers from more leftovers.  A few brads are securing those sequin flowers on the left.  Since Kaede's wedding was such a big event, I found that the 2x2 Instagram photos worked very well to fill in all the details of this beautiful story.

I hope you've enjoyed viewing these pages; I've enjoyed sharing them!