Story Camp - Part 3

Hi, 
Its the 30th September here in Melbourne and I am almost done.  Over the past few weeks I have been working on journalling and finishing things off.  Last weekend I was really motivated to get a lot done.  But that was only after all the housework and laundry was done of course!
At the end of last weekend, I basically had one more full day to complete, a couple of full pages to do, and one page that I wasn't happy with at all that needed some more thought.
Here's what some of the pages looked like at the end of the photos/journalling/embellishment process:

and

Yesterday I pulled out the travel phrase stamp, the "Go" story stamp and another random travel type stamp, and made all the Avery index taps for the pages smaller than 9x12. 

I stuck to black stazon ink for these to simplify the process.

While most of my albums are the same page size throughout, I really enjoyed the freedom to use lots of different size pages in this album - it made it so much easier to the tell the story as it needed.

So here's some snaps of that process, also showcasing how I used different size photos.

and

Today I am finishing the album off.  I have the following things to do:

- make a 9x12 page of the trees at Muir Woods (I don't really have a good photo, but have to put something in the back of the pocket)

- create my title page

I know......my title page is the last thing to do.  I have seen so many great opening pages but I just cannot work out what I want this page to look like.  Story Camp was the whole reason I took this trip, but it was only 2 1/2 days of the 14 days I was away.  And the start of the Story Camp section in the album is really obvious, so I don't want to repeat that.

I love the pages that have your travel shown - so a map of Australia, and a map of the USA with the flight path between the two is calling to me......but I am rubbish at digital so not sure how I would achieve that.

Anyway.....that's my plan.

The album is FULL!  So full that all the ephemera I collected doesn't fit.  Nor will the travellers notebook with all the signatures in it, that I will be adding more photos of people to.

I've never recorded a video of my albums before, but I am so pleased with this album that I will attempt to record it during the week.

Thanks for reading,

Amanda

Story Camp - Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my Story Camp album.  Six weeks have gone past and I have almost finished printing photos.  There are a few more I need to print in larger sizes, and a few more to fill pockets, but for the main part they are done.
But gee......I  am not good at choosing photos - I want to use them all.

Where I could I tried to fit an event or section of the trip to one page.  A good example is this page of my visit to the Chinese Gardens in Portland.  That was Day 3 of my trip, but the first full day in the US.  And I did a LOT that day.  So I broke the day up into different locations.
I had lots of photos (could easily have done a double page) but thought this was the best combination.  The middle 4x6 pocket will hold the story.

After I had booked all my flights, I looked at what was around Portland to do.  And realised Seattle was just a few hours by train.  And Seattle has the Chihuly Glass Museum and Garden.  I LOVE Chihuly glass (I am a big fan of glass art full stop), so I worked out a way to fit this into the trip.  And I took photos.........a LOT of photos.  This day takes up 7 sides (plus another side for tickets etc). So I used a variety of pocket pages to hold as many photos as I could.  A page with 12 3x3 pockets was perfect for many of these, as below:

Choosing and printing photos was a big, time consuming job.  And I needed to break things up a bit.  So I took a few items and created some full page layouts as I had ideas.
One of the best ideas was asking Katie if I could have the Welcome sign that was on the door to the room we used.  This was added to create a simple page:

Using Challenges
During August, Traci Brookes ran a challenge on the Ali Edwards Craft The Story FB page - 2 layouts a week for 4 weeks.  I managed to finish all 8 challenges, and many of them I used as guides for my album.  These are shown below:

So, I have a combination of most of the photos in the album, quite a few large layouts done (these are only some of them), and ephemera still in pockets waiting to be used or discarded.
Adding Chipboard
With the photos almost complete, I spent time this morning going through my chipboard - the travel release, travel words, Go kit, some from a recent SBTM kit, and some odds and ends from other companies.
I popped out the chipboard and added them into appropriate pockets.  Some will go directly onto the photos, some will go onto plain journal cards, and some will go onto filler cards.
This makes the album over-full.  So I am going to do what I do in my PL and in other projects as needed - remove 1/2 or more of the backing of the chipboard.  This keeps the design, and adds dimension, but removes lots of the bulk.

Other embellishments
I have also looked through the other embellishments I have that are travel related, and added some to pockets to use.  Still a bit of work to do there.

Journalling Cards
Next up I am putting journalling cards into pockets.  What I know is that I don't have enough travel themed journalling cards.  I always have this problem!  So how will I solve it?  The same way I have solved it for other albums.....
Use plain white cards as a base.  Add chipboards I placed in the pockets onto the cards.  Stamp images onto the cards in co-ordinating colours.  Add some washi to some.  Use die-cuts to create new cards.
Its a bit more creativity before I get started on journalling my story.

The reality is I will probably jump between putting the cards in, creating new cards and filling them in.

My aim is to complete this album before DD comes along.  That sounds like a way off, but its early September, so its only 11 weeks ago.  

Will be back here for Part 3.

Thanks for reading,
Amanda