Falling Back in Love with Scrapbooking

When I first started the On Y Go! Stampng blog back in June, my sister asked me if I would share scrapbook ideas. Of course I said "Yes!" And yet, three months later, today is my first scrapbook-centered post. 

Scrapbooking was my first papercrafting adventure. I love to create beautiful things, and scrapbooking gave me a reason to create and keep what I'd made. Scrapbooking serves a long-term purpose of allowing me to preserve my memories and have an inviting way to share them with my kids, relatives, and friends. When I started stamping, I eventually moved more heavily into cards, but scrapbooking still holds a special place in my heart.

However, except for the school albums I finished for each of my kids when they graduated high school, I haven't done much scrapbooking in recent years. I've been overwhelmed by the idea of organizing all my old boxes of photos and figuring out where I left off. And, since getting a smartphone with a decent camera, I haven't been doing a very good job of saving and organizing my digital photos either. It's a little overwhelming!

So, I decided I just needed to jump into chronicling some recent events. I pulled my vacation photos from this summer and my photos from last Christmas, and I ordered prints from Shutterfly. Then I realized, it's fall and I really wanted to do a fall page. Not wanting to place another Shutterfly order for a handful of prints, I printed these myself on copy paper and will replace them after I make my next print order. 
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These images from a trip to the Apple Orchard with my daughter in 2017 were perfect for a fall spread. And all photo credit goes to her as she snapped all of these images. I chose to use the Harvest Hellos stamp set from the 2019 Holiday Catalog by Stampin' Up! and the See a Silhouette Designer Series Paper for my two-page spread. I thought the watercolor look of the paper in reds, yellows, and oranges created the perfect ambiance of fall leaves, even if there weren't any fall leaves on the page.
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Complete Supply List

This summer, my sister passed down her Cricut which she had gotten as a handy-me-down from my Mom. I finally pulled it out and used it for the first time to create the title with the Printing 101 cartridge. I cut the letters from the See a Silhouette background paper and I cut the shadow from Mossy Meadow cardstock. I trimmed pieces of the honeycomb background paper in the See a Silhouette Designer Series Paper pack and added it as texture on the corners and center of the pages. 

I stamped the pumpkins using Memento ink on the same paper that I used for the title. I love the orange watercolor look for these pumpkins. The leaves were cut from a similar blue and green sheet of paper from the same Designer Series Paper pack. It seems a little odd to have so much blue in the leaves, but this paper worked really well as a frame for the focal image of my daughter and I, and I really wanted to carry this color throughout the rest of the page. While it seems  a little odd when you think about it, I think it works visually on the page and you don't really notice that the pumpkin leaves are blue instead of green. While I had to cut the pumpkin leaves by hand, I punched the pumpkins using the Build an Apple punch that matches the Harvest Hellos stamp set.

For the subtitle, I grouped two pumpkins and a circle with the "You Make Me Smile!" sentiment from the Harvest Hellos stamp set. I added the date under the saying with a Pumpkin Pie Blends alcohol marker. I twisted some linen thread under the circle with the saying using dimensionals under the circle so there was room for the thread. I attached a pumpkin leaf to each end of the thread.

I had a lot of fun making this two page spread and remembering this fun trip to the orchard with my grown-up kiddo. Now on to getting those vacation and Christmas photos onto pages!