All About Us Scrapbook: Part 1

In my last post I mentioned that I've recently gotten into scrapbooking. I've always been a hoarder of photos but I never really did anything with them. My digital photos were in folders on my computer (if they were lucky... The unlucky ones are on some sd card) and the printed ones were in boxes.  Back when we were wedding planning, I got a '101 free prints' offer for signing up on shutterfly and so I went and printed out photos that we had taken throughout our relationship. It was a lot of fun going through all the old photos and reminiscing.  When the prints came, I put them all in a photo album and that was that.

Fast forward a year.  I somehow stumbled upon the planner community on YouTube which led me to @theresetgirl and her Listers Gotta List monthly challenges (see May -here- & June -here-).  I loved the decorating that I was doing and it was nice to reconnect with my love of papers and stickers and cutting and pasting ^.^ As I created the different daily designs, I would show them to my friends. One particular friend is a scrapbooker and she kept telling me that somewhere hidden beneath all my crochet hooks and yarn is a scrapbooker waiting to emerge! I would just shrug. To give me the shove I needed to start, she gave me my first album.

This is the 12x12 album Tiffany gave me.  It is perfect for the All About Us theme I decided to do!

The day I did a YouTube search for 'scrapbooking for beginners,' I knew that I was going to make the plunge.  I started watching lots of videos about regular scrapbooks and project life ones and I couldn't decide what style I wanted to do.  Eventually I decided to do half and half.  I think that decision made my first foray into scrapbooking much easier.  So without much more ado, here are the first pages and layouts I've completed in my All About Us album.  I'm super proud of them and I can't wait to finish this book so I can start another!

I love that Lamar and I favor the color green.  It makes color choice verrry easy ^.^  When I was arranging this title page, I went back and forth about leaving that empty space in the upper right corner.  I'm glad I did because the negative space turned out quite balancing.

This page was a little frustrating but also a lot of fun.  The frustration came from the pawprint paper.  I started laying out my photos on the page and realized that the pawprint paper was not 12x12... understandable because I got it from an estate sale.  So I ended up having to look for another paper to go behind to fill the dimensions.  When that was done, I went to add in the title and all the words on the photos.

This page was to highlight some of our favorite things.  The top left is on a train to the airport in DC, top right is our family, middle left us at Monte Sano in Huntsville, middle right us after photographing our first wedding, bottom left our brothers, and bottom right us at Donut King.

This was the first project life style layout I completed.  I wanted to use all the cuddly photos.  The bottom left photo is my favorite, I have it framed also :)  It's from when we first started dating.  It was a really nice fall night and we were walking around Big Spring Park in Huntsville.  Good times ^.^

This was the first traditional scrapbook page I made.  I love the paper colors.  The photos were taken at Lamar's apartment in Huntsville.  His beard and mustache are always quite prickly, but it makes me laugh :)

This page is just a mishmash of photos from a bunch of different things we've done together.  I love the weird faces we're making in the top left photo, but neither of us can remember what or where we were!  So it went on the page with a "no idea" caption ^.^

This page gives me a little homesick for Huntsville feeling.  The bottom photos are of Big Spring Park at nighttime.  Lamar and I loved walking around there.  We'd take the dogs out there and feed the ducks and fish.  I really want to find a place down here that's sorta like Big Spring Park.  The photos at the top are from our engagement photo shoot.  We had a lot of fun :)

I hope you enjoyed part 1 of my journey into the land of scrapbooks!  I'm still working on finishing the album.  I can say, though, that I am totally hooked!  I'm already thinking about what my next album can be.  Maybe our wedding... but I have a shutterfly photo book... Do I need both? What do you think?