Keep It Simple

Things have been hectic lately and my scrapping projects have been sitting on the back burner. Now that things have calmed down a bit, I look at my pile of "things to scrap" and feel a little overwhelmed. I know I'll never be "caught up", but I don't like this sinking feeling of falling further behind.

That's when I remind myself to keep it simple.

I have tons of sketches, websites and even kits to turn to for inspiration and fast assembly.

One of the easiest ways to get pages done, is to turn to what you've done before.

I always try to have my son's "school days" scrapbook pages completed before the next school year starts, but now with two boys in school, I'm finding it difficult to keep up. When it came time to scrapbook their school portraits pages, I knew what I wanted to do for one, but was having trouble coming up with an idea for the other.That's when my favourite mantra, "Keep it simple", popped into my head. These pages were going into two different albums, they weren't going to be side-by-side, so why not use the same layout for both pages? Voila! Problem solved.

And I'm very happy with the results. These pages were quick to assemble, look sharp and are great additions to both boys albums.

Another way to keep it simple is to maximize the use of sketches. For years I've been using sketches. They are one of the greatest tools in my scrapping toolbox. Whether I'm following them exactly, doing my own variation or simply as an inspirational starting point, sketches have influenced a huge number of my completed pages. But with so many takes on sketches, why was I using a sketch only once then moving on to the next one?

It wasn't until I purchased a copy of Becky Fleck's Pagemaps that it sunk in that I could use these pagemaps over and over--really, the variations are infinite!

So, when I was ready to scrap the photos from my son's second birthday and was feeling a little uninspired, I flipped through my albums looking for pages with a similar number of photos. That's when I came across this layout based on a Becky Fleck pagemap:

I remembered putting this page together a year or so before and I liked how the photos were grouped together and the side bars of patterned paper. I knew the birthday layout was going to be very colourful and energetic and I thought the sidebars would frame the photos well.

The result looks very different from the original layout, and even more so from the original sketch, but the page turned out well and came together very quickly once I decided to follow the previous layout.

Keeping things simple when creating my scrapbook pages always yields great results!