Bear Valley 2019

We spent a fantastic weekend in Bear Valley with Trevor's godparents back in July. I was really excited to scrap the trip because Paper House Productions had sent me the PERFECT paper to use with my photos. Check it out:

Bear Valley 2019 (affiliate link here and below)

I don't normally use papers like this "Call of the Wild" paper; it bugs me to cover up so much of the design with photos and I don't like the paper competing with the photos. But in this case, they complement each other beautifully. The title on the patterned paper didn't work for me, so I covered it up with the strip of brown and used it to house my journaling. The rice paper border helped ground the journaling. I put my own title in the upper right, then added a visual triangle of stickers as the final touch. 

Bear Valley 2018

Usually when I get together with my friends to scrapbook, I will bring a huge stack of photos and spend the day cropping them down, deciding on their physical layout on the page, and selecting patterned papers for each page. I can do all of these easily while chatting. I bring home the big stack of incomplete layouts to do the title work, embellishing, and journaling later. In the case of the title and embellishing, this is because I don't want to schlep every letter sticker and embellishment I own to a crop. With journaling, I have to concentrate in a way I can't when I'm chatting.

Or so I thought.

During our most recent scrapping get-together, I challenged myself to completely finish at least one layout, including journaling. I brought along a few sticker sets and some all-purpose die cuts and forced myself to use them instead of waiting to see if there was a better option at home. I did my journaling on strips, which I glued to the page, instead of writing directly on the layout. That way I could correct a mistake if I needed to, since I wasn't giving 100% of my focus to the journaling.

I am really happy with how my layout turned out.

Bear Valley 2018 (affiliate link)

I was so proud of myself for successfully finishing a page away from home that I kept going and ended up with two other pages 100% done. I'll share those soon. Yea, me!

Embrace Imperfection

I wrote this blog post as a member of the Design Team at Flamingo Scraps and wanted to share it here.

Here's a layout I made on National Scrapbook Day:

I made it during a 2 hour Scrapbook.com challenge. In order to allow enough time to scan, stitch, upload, and link, I really only had about 90 minutes. I've mentioned before that my scrapping process often involves letting a layout sit half-done for weeks. It is unheard of for me to start completely from scratch and have a finished layout in under two hours.

Part of the reason is that I like my layouts to be as perfect as possible. For example, see the word 'valley' in the title? It drives me crazy that it is crooked, but I didn't have enough time to fix it.  Notice the little heart sticker in the top left? It isn't quite the right shape. If this weren't for a challenge, I would have pushed the layout aside and come back to it later when I felt like designing and cutting out a better accent. The spacing between the pictures isn't totally even, and I don't like the columns of verticals in the center next to the column of horizontals on the right. The layout is a little plain, the design a touch boring.

Despite all that, I do like the layout. Yes, there are some things that could be better, but it's just fine. The most important thing is that I've found a home for the pictures and recorded the story of our first winter visit to Bear Valley. If I didn't embrace imperfection, I would hardly ever get anything done!