SCRAPBOOKING 5 KINDS OF TRAVEL & VACATIONS

Helpful links:
Uniting multi-page events
Scrapbook page planner for trips
6 coordinated page sketches
6 coordianted page templates (layered psd files)

While some travels are best looked at chronologically, others benefit from a “subject” approach. Consider the following types of travels

A weekend getaway can be as much about the company as the destination. It might be a short trip to hang out with friends, find some romance, see an exhibit, or just take a break from your typical weekend routines. With fewer photos from fewer activities (than you’d have with bigger trips), the scrapping of weekend getaways can focus on impressions, stories, companions, and moments.

layout from a weekend in boston

Try this: find a strong opening photo and a strong closing photo. Put each of them on their own pages and then make several pages for the middle that show the key stories/moments on this short getaway. Get the stories written down as soon as you can, in a diary or on a blog, if you’re not scrapping the pages immediately.

A “road-trip” type vacation is not necessarily a literal trip in a car on a road or highway. The “road-trip” vacation is one that takes you to a series of what may be quite different locales over the course of one trip. The road-trip is a story that’s well-suited to being told in chronological order (more or less).

Try this: Use the Travel Page Planner to start detailing the different stops on the trip. After you’ve listed them all, go back through and think about whether they all really need to be included. Think, also, about whether there are some stories that merit their own pages and how best to get the pages and stories in order.

Traveling from LA to Vegas with cousins

Some trips take you to one locale. There’s limited sightseeing on this type of vacation, and it’s more about enjoying place, people, and activities. Examples of this kind of vacation include:

• visiting family
• staying at a lakehouse/beachhouse
• going camping
• the ski slopes

Try this: It’s often more efficient and makes a better presentation when “Being There” trips are by categories or logical groupings. These groupings (which translate into pages) might be:

• the people
• the place
• the spots at the place
• the constants
• the hightlights
• the activities

The “On Tour” travel experience is one in which many of the details are decided ahead of time–and, in fact, taken care of for you–so that you can relax as well as experience new sights and experiences. There are many ways to go “on tour” from taking a cruise to going on guided hike and camping adventure. You might take a bus tour through Europe or go on safari in Africa.

The photos you take while on tour will include those of the sights you visit as well of those of the aspects of the tour experience (i.e., lodging, people, routines). A combination approach that mixes chronological telling of the trip with select subject pages would work well for this kind of travel.

Try this: Make two lists: one of the trip chronology and one of the aspects/subjects you want to feature. Use a chronological flow with the featured aspects inserted where they flow best.

The “themed” vacation is one that takes you into a created world where you are doing more than viewing, where you’re entering into and experiencing a manufactured reality. You may have gone on a Disney vacation, visited a historic settlement where you’re re-enacting the way things were done in the past, travelled to Santa’s Village, or many other variations on the themed destination. The photos from a themed vacation can cover a lot of territory, and they don’t usually require a chronological telling. Aspects of a large theme/amusement park may include: characters, rides, performances, events, posed portraits, sights and more.
Try this:Begin with your “stack” of photos (prints or digitals). Select the keepers AND select the photos that are spectacular and that should be featured. Use the page planner to start defining the pages your photos demand of you. Once you’ve made a first pass at this, you might need to cut the planner up and play with order and arrangement of pages.

Be sure you’re on our mailing list so that you receive notice when my self-paced class, “Scrap Your Travel & Vacations,” is available in the Get It Scrapped! store. It should be available before Thanksgiving.

Do you grade on effort or performance?

This summer Carpenter ants felled a big tree in the river where we swim and launch our kayaks. Most of the tree has been under water until now. Now: Newmarket has opened up their dam for maintenance and the river has gone down substantially. We've never seen it so low. A good part of the tree isn't submerged any more--though there is a lot of tree top under the water.

Neil really wanted to go down and see if we could saw it up. Got down there and found that would require standing in 4 feet of freezing water. And even getting to the water required navigating a steep and oozy drop off (first challenge was pulling one of Neil's boots out of the mud). So he borrowed our neighbor's Come Along (we thought it would work--it pulled Neil's car out of a messy situation recently--another story ;) ). So I shimmied out and wrapped the rope around the tree and we tried. No luck. And the rope we had that was long enough wasn't real thick and we were worried about it snapping. Then we thought it would be good if we could cut the main branch to all the major branches under water. So I shimmied back out and sawed ---- for a long time . . . I think I must have been at least 3/4s of the way through -- and then the cut closed up on the saw and it wouldn't budge.

Neil said I made a great effort--that he really wanted us to at least try :) Unfortunately I've never graded on effort. I like performance!

In a her online class "Souvenirs of the Season," Sharyn Tormanen is ready to take you on a holiday ride that begins with peeks at both cultural and personal histories of Christmas memorabilia. From there she’ll show you the practical and creative aspects of gathering your own Christmas souvenirs and then getting them onto holiday pages. Don’t miss this experience that’s sure to trigger memories of holidays past while inspiring rich memory-keeping of holidays future.

Class starts November 17th, and anyone who took this class last year is welcome back at no charge. You'll receive access to the private forum on the 16th.

Isaac has been talking about going to Applecrest since early September. After many busy (or rainy) weekends, we made it--and just in time. Bluegrass music, hayrides, pumpkins, apples, cider doughnuts---and being together. We sat for a while watching music near a man who told me about how my heart would be broken when my sons grew up and attached themselves more to their wives' families than to mine. He told the boys to remember their mother was their best friend--that she'd take a bullet for them before their wives would. So . . . it's always good to be reminded that every day is important and these times will pass so I need to treasure them now . . . and then it's time to move forward, so we excused ourselves and took a storybook hayride. It was fun, really.

I'm interested in the ways we tell and preserve our stories. Whether you consider yourself an active memory keeper or not, I'd love to hear from you. What's more, I'm happy to share the results with all who participate.

I've been offering online classes alongside 12 other teachers at Get It Scrapped! for two years now. The result is a heck of a lot of information about scrapbooking, photography, journaling, page design, product use, digital techniques and much, much more. We're in the process of making changes to the Get It Scrapped! website so that much of this information we've put together can be accessed for free. We want anyone who is inclined to "Get It Scrapped!" to be able to easily find the resources needed.

What's in it for you? We're glad to share the results with you AND we hope to build a better website informed by those results.

click here to participate in: Memory Keeping: Do You?

I looked through the November issue of Creating Keepsakes while waiting for my husband at an appointment. This page, "Shoes" by Amy Peterman, caught my eye -- first because of the awesome title--but, then, it was that mat with pinking on 3 sides and a torn notebook edge on one side that I kept looking at. I like to do a lot of layering and I'm always looking for good mats or foundations -- this would definitely add interest to a page.

And -- it provided a way to play with my digital product stash. I remembered Katie Pertiet had some torn notebook edge masks (they were one of my early digital purchases!) and I knew there were lots of border templates in the Designer Digitals store, too.

I layered and sized the edge and border masks until I had a good fit. I merged the two layers and then clipped this patterned paper from Lynn Grieveson's Fall Festival Kit. I had a great new piece to layer into a page--and I'm keeping that new merged mask handy.

All supples are from www.DesignerDigitals.com. Click on the page name to see supply links.

Autumn Outing

To School '09

Looking for other starts? Jane Howden will be posting a new sketch in the Get It Scrapped! public forums this morning and a challenge to go with it. Everyone who participates in Jane's Friday challenges this month is entered into a drawing for an October Work In Progress kit.

Other starts? Doris Sander's Product Pizzazz classes are available in self-paced form. Each includes detailed product, technique, and design lessons and then ends with a "Use It Now" challenge. 

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Establish theme before you pull any product. This is the foundation underlying every one of the lessons in every one of Doris' classes. "Time 2008" is by Doris. "Time with Grandpa" is mine (click for larger pop-up of any layout).

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Cleverly executed titles are great thing. Check out the alpha detailing on "Shark Week" by Doris. "Heart of a Farmer" is by me.

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Try "Diagonal Pull" for your page flow. Doris uses this masterfully on so many of her pages. Here's one: "I got the Blues." "Hobos" in March" is by me.

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Use borders! In all kinds of ways -- here to divide a page in half. "Busy Bees" by Doris. "Airborne" by me.

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Use images that support your theme . . . and stitching is always a nice addition. "Sunbeam" by Doris. "Sunshine Math" by me.

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How can you study with Doris?

Product Pizzazz 201: Details is running live now. (earlier classes are not prerequisites). Product Pizzazz 101 and Product Pizzazz 102 are both availabe in self-paced form. You immediately receive links to the 8 lessons in each -- within 24 hours you'll receive access to the private forums and gallery where you can see the extra resources and chatter, ask your own questions, and see and share layouts.(On sale thru Oct 22.)

Things just keep getting better. I get settled in with my diet coke and google reader and find THIS (via Chris Brogan)! Which is a perfect start to my day and confirmation of what I've been working on recently. I'm collaborating with 5 other designers on a project right now and the work they're doing is feeding my energy and taking the project to places I hadn't originally envisioned. Collaboration rocks!