Arguably my most achievable goal on my 30 Before 30 list, scrapbooking the items that Zack and I collected during our wedding and honeymoon(s) was no less important to me than any goal. I've always been a scrapbooker, although never to the expert-level of my Grandma Rosemary or Aunt Jo — they attend scrapbooking conventions and buy incredible accessories (paper tattoos?!?) and are generally just fabulously crafty ladies. Still, although my aesthetic is a little more...shall we say...hand-made, I've always loved crafting. When I was young, I set out to try and "invent" stuff with scraps of electronics my dad would find on his runs. I also spent a few long afternoons crafting a doll house out of cardboard, fabric and paint for my mom once, and sewed stuffed animals for my brother at one point (by hand — I still don't know how to use a machine, really). Listening to music and zoning out in a creative way has always been zen for me, so while I had been putting off this goal for a bit, once I dumped everything out on a table I really got into it.
This was the epic starting point — I had to extend the leaves on our kitchen table because this project was SERIOUS, y'all. What you see above is a huge collection of cards from friends and family, some accessories from the wedding, some calendars from 2014 (the engagement year) and 2015 (the wedding year), photos, and decorative items I picked up at Michael's to add some flair to the pages. Once I laid everything out, I decided that the light blue book I purchased would tell the story of Zack and my relationship in the beginning, and how we moved on to our engagement. I also decided to put the honeymoon items in that book, because the colors seemed more appropriate. Plus, this allowed the fancy silver-and-white book to be wedding items only.
A close-up of some of the cards, the tape (I used everything in both of those two rolls, and then some) and one of the fancy accoutrements from Michael's — the LOVE sparkly sticker.
Here we have a close-up of the calendars, the photos of Zack an me, the receipt for our marriage certificate and our boarding passes for Belize.
As I was putting some of the photos in the first book, I decided to give them "frames" by putting them on white card stock that I'd decorate with fancy sharpies.
The plan for this card stock was to make a plaid design out of Zack and my signature colors, pink and blue, but the stupid blue pen broke partway through the process.
That's the last time I shop in the bargain bin. STUPID PEN. (I tried to get focus on the tip which was all tilted here.)
Never give up!! I just did an all-pink plaid instead.
I added a bunch of labels to this page to give it some dimension, and just drew a frame around one of the pictures. I feel like "have fun with it" is the best advice for scrapbooking.
I had a lot of leftover letter stickers in all different fonts and styles, so I used those a bunch to spruce up the pages.
This gorgeous handmade "card" was crafted by my Aunt Faith and it was one of the larger items I simply couldn't cut up. It currently lives tucked inside of the more wedding-centric scrapbook, but I may even get it framed.
I got lazy taking photos of my work after a while (bad blogger, bad!) so this is the last one I've got. These were our Save the Date cards that I decided to collage together so you could see them from every angle. This kicked off the wedding-centric book, which featured all of the gorgeous cards we received. What I like to do when scrapbooking cards is tape the backs of them to the scrapbook page, but then leave the rest untaped so that if you want to read the inside of the cards, you can just pull the page out and have access to all of the messages. For anything with writing on the back, I just put it near the bottom of the page loose so it can still be pulled out later.
One thing I didn't photograph but I LOVED was a set of fancy tropical drink stickers that I used for my Belize honeymoon pages - they're multi-colored and glittery and FABULOUS.
I hope that if you've been putting off an arts and crafts project out of the fear of perfection (especially in this internet-friendly, document-everything age of super-crafters and Pinterest) this inspires you to just go for it! At the end of the day, my children and grandchildren won't care that this stuff wasn't done *perfectly* — they'll just be (hopefully) excited to share in the memories of their family.
