Revisiting Greece...scrapbook style

It's done! I finished the Greece scrapbook this week. Took me just about a month - give or take. My process served me well. It's efficient and it allows me to be creative and get shit done. 

I had to change things up a bit this year because my scrapbook computer is having issues and won't allow me to open a windows explorer window and then it stopped connecting to the internet when I updated my router. No biggy, I was able to work around it. 

My process always starts with organizing my photos. Over the years, and so many scrapbooks later, I know what I'll scrap and what I won't. I organize the photos by day then by event of that day. I always have a "Misc" folder because there's always random photos I take that don't really belong anywhere, but may have a story I might want to tell. For example this photo. 

I couldn't tell you what day it was, but it amused me and so I'll scrapbook it. 

Once I have the photos organized, I go through each folder and decide which photos I want to use. I create a "Do Not Use" folder and drop any photo that isn't something I want to scrap or a duplicate of a photo. I try to narrow it down to as few of photos as I can, but will still display our trip and tell my story. 

From there I go searching for a layout. 90% of my layouts are scraplifted (basically taking a page someone else did and trying to duplicate it). Most of the time they never come out looking the same. It's something a lot of scrapbookers do. The manufacturers post pages using their paper and what not hoping you will buy it. And we do. Here's an example:

This is the layout I was working with.

This was my layout. Close, but different.

Once I have the layout figured out, now it's time to scrap. This is when my scrapbook room becomes a complete disaster. I get all my travel collections out and put them on a table so they are within reach. This year I had organized them into these 12x12 plastic containers and it worked perfect. It made it easy to get the collection out and clean up after I was done. 

I'm really happy with how this scrapbook turned out. It's so much fun to look through the photos and relive the event. Sometimes when you're on a cruise/tour it has to go so fast that you don't really have time to reflect on what you're seeing or doing. Creating the scrapbook gives me a chance to do that. I look up things and document the photos as best I can. 

I have a few favorite pages this year. All were scraplifted, but with my own twist. 

This one required a lot of stamping. All those words are stamped. I saw this done and knew I had to give it a try. I love how it turned out. 

I always love a good grid. I had several layouts that are in the format of a grid. 

I used a kit from Paige Evans called "Adventurous". I'm not a huge Paige Evans fan in general, but this kit was just different enough of what I normally would use that I felt I had to challenge myself. 

This page required some painting. I don't have any paints, but I have stamping ink. I used a paint brush and the ink and I feel like it really turned out looking good. 

So now I'm done! It was fun to scrap in a 12x12 layout and be able to use all the embellishments. Scrapping in a smaller format often doesn't allow me to use all the embellishments as they are often too large. I felt my creating juices really flowing this year and am happy with each page. The full book is here in case you want to see it all.