As a non-designer ...

... I need all the design help I can get! As you'll know from my previous posts, I use magazines, posters and web pages as useful sources for a quick scraplift. Recently, I've been pondering how to scrap simply and more effectively the many holidays photos we have. Individually designed layouts for each page can take me ages to do, and by the time each goes into a page protector, I end up with a bulky (and usually half-finished) album that lacks coherence and with which I am feeling disenchanted. I want my scrapbooking to be more pleasurable than that! And take up less room. No offence to our American cousins, whose wonderful 12x12 and 8.5x11 creations have inspired us all, but how about using the good old European A4 size? And spiral-binding? (before my neglected Bind-It-All puts in for a transfer to a more appreciative Scrapper). Idly flicking through this hotel brochure in a tourist office, I felt a quiver of interest - not at the content (apologies!) - but with the layouts ...

It's a simple format, I mused, and the right-hand pages could be divided up a number of ways. Take a spread for each day, with the title top left, along with a clutch of the very best photos, and chose one of the spaces for journalling ... Over a cup of tea in the nearby cafe, a stubby pencil and a paper napkin allowed me to sketch a few ideas. Here's a rather neater version below!

The second spread above has the 'title' section dropped on top of a large full-page photo. Spreads 3 and 4 might look like this ...

And spreads 5 and 6 could even end up like this:

I am sure there will be other variations too, depending on what needs to fit on each page. Some may end up as pockets with extra journalling or a momento in. I might even add an embellishment or two (let's not get over-excited here!). The aim is to end up with a simple, clean design with plenty of room for photos and stories: a book you can read...

This is going to be a March project (and probably next month's as well). I am still pondering how and on what it will be printed, as well as protection for the pages. But if you'd like to see how it's going, and what I've come up with, then you'll be most welcome to pop back on the 18th. If you have put together an album like this, I'd be delighted to hear your experiences, the pitfalls and the triumphs, so do let us know here at It's a Creative World. And if you want to use the design above, you are most welcome! :)

Thank-you for reading along today ...

Comments

[Debbie Roberts]

Lovely ideas, I have loads of photos from a holiday so this will be an ideal way to put a lot on one page.

Debbie x