I’d been feeling rather sorry for myself at the beginning of the week; I had a cold, I’d hurt my back which made doing anything rather than standing hunched over unpleasant, and it looked like I was going to miss out on meeting Heidi Swapp as part of her Spotlight tour. Boo.

On Wednesday morning I was feeling much better on the cold front, and my back was better than the previous day, so I decided I would go. I hadn’t arranged for someone to look after Elijah so along he came with us.

I’m so glad I went. Heidi is really personable and I found myself nodding a long with quite a lot of what she was saying. I also love that she’s so hands on. She showed us her newer products, and put together one of her lovely marquee letters which was really useful for me given I have an unopened R here that I was scared I’d muck up. We all were able to make the mini booklet above which used bits and pieces from her new Memory Dex system, and Wanderlust range. I’m going to use mine to pop the photos from the day in, along with my journaling, then slot it into my weekly Project Life spread.

We were also all given a raffle ticket for the chance to win signed prints designed and created by Heidi and Amy Tan (of Amy Tangerine). I was so excited when I won them! The photos don’t do them justice as they are gold foil and a bit hard to photograph. They’re so shiny and pretty in person and 8.5×11 inches each. I’m going to frame them for my craft room wall. I didn’t get to meet Amy, who was also on tour, as she didn’t make it to my local store. I had been really disappointed about this, but winning her print made it a bit better.

Something Heidi spoke about that really had me nodding in agreement, was album sizes. She said how people use all kinds of albums these days; minis, journals, their planner etc and how she thinks the smaller albums are nicer to hold and flip through. As a 12×12 Project Lifer and previous 12×12 scrapper I have to agree with this and it really cemented to me what I have been thinking for a while; I don’t like 12×12 albums. I find them cumbersome to work with, a real pain to store as they always hang out of my bookshelves, and a bit of a balancing act to look through.

When I first began scrapbooking in 2001, I started with a 8.5×11 inch album. Of all my old scrapbook albums it’s my favourite to look back through simply because it’s not big, heavy and cumbersome. I’m not sure now why my subsequent albums were all 12×12’s. Perhaps it was easier to find refills, perhaps I liked fitting more photos in. After falling behind in 12×12 scrapbooking, I did make a few little albums in notebooks, but then I stopped all scrapping until 2013 when I dived into Project Life. From the start I did wonder how I was going to store all the 12×12 albums if I did years worth, but I pushed that aside and soldiered on. My December Daily’s are both in 6×8’s and I really love how they feel in the hand, but they’re probably too small for daily use. My friend Essie has used several 4×4’s and they really are sweet little albums. I’m currently waiting for one to arrive for a pressed flower album I want to begin (more on that later!).

At the beginning of the year I squashed the voice of doubt in my head and began another 12×12 album. I really think this is the reason I’m now so far behind; my heart just isn’t in that size. I’m not about to start again though so on I plod, but I will try some smaller albums for other purposes this year, and rethink what I’ll use for PL 2016.

So meeting Heidi was a pleasure, and it definitely has me thinking about albums and constraints. Did you meet Heidi or Amy? What size album did you go for this year? Do you secretly dislike 12×12 as well?

This photo makes me laugh. Aside from the fact that the camera focused on the background, Heidi had picked Elijah up for me because of my back, and was tickling him to get him to laugh.