Holiday memories with Lousette

We are so excited to have Lousette Ashton join us today. Lousette is the most fabulously talented scrapbooker and cardmaker. So, while the weather outside might be frightful stay here where it really is delightful. Lousette's amazing holiday album will certainly put a spring in your step. Over to Lousette .......................

A big thanks to Maria for inviting me to do a guest spot on the blog.

This is a 6x6 themed album I did using some of the holiday pictures from a trip to South Africa. Whenever we go away on holiday we always come back with hundreds of photos (of course, who doesn’t).

Sadly though, most of our holiday shots just stay on the pc, along with all the other thousands of photos we have taken over the last few years. I vowed this year I was going to make a change and actually scrap a holiday from start to finish instead of just the odd page here and there.

I started with a 6x6 Heidi Swapp album 100 6x4 prints Some Scenic Route papers (Laurel range) Various embellies and rub-ons A heap of enthusiasm

The biggest challenge was to get as many photos into one little album as possible, have some journaling so that we could remember what happened etc., use up some of my embellishments that are piled high in my craft room, and still not have it all look too cluttered. In the end I managed to use 86 photos in a 20 page album (so a total of 40 6x6 single layouts). That might not sound like all that much, but as a generally simple, uncluttered scrapper I really felt as if I had achieved something. I am very happy with the results too and hopefully I can keep this up and document all of our big holidays.

Here are some tips I picked up along the way and would like to share with you: 1. Crop, crop and then crop some more. I left some photos large, but I cropped others down to quite small. At first this kind of freaked me out, but once I got chopping I really enjoying cutting the pictures into manageable chunks. 2. Forget about matting photos and just stick them down as is (add a bit of ink to the edges if you need some definition). 3. Create edge to edge photo collages. Some of the pages consist of only photos, a great way to incorporate a lot in a little space. 4. Use one range of papers. I used the Scenic Route papers, with just a little Basic Grey green and orange here and there. This way all of the pages co-ordinate, but they still each have their own identities and I only had to choose papers once. 5. Have fun, and don’t get stressed over time. This album took me a few weeks to complete, I did a page or three whenever I had a minute to spare.

These are a few pages from my album, I hope this will give you some inspiration for scrapping your holiday photos.

Wow!!! Thank you so much Lou for sharing your fabulous album with us. You've certainly got me revved up to finish our last holiday album. I started it in June and it's not been touched since.

*~*~*~*~*~* Oooh, don't forget that you can still download the fabbie doodles designed EXCLUSIVELY for us. Just help yourself and if you get a mo let us see what you've created with them.

You can find them here and here.