Guess what? After a bit of a marathon this week I am pretty much up to date this year. I have to finish off week 8, but the rest complete, yay! I’ll share the layouts over a few days rather than bombard you all with 5 blog posts.

Writing my manifesto earlier this week really helped get my head around the direction I want to go in with scrapbooking. I’ve come to realise that a perfectly uniform album isn’t me as I’m a bit of a hodge podge person who likes a lot of different things, so why restrict myself. Completing these layouts challenged me in that I used my own handwriting, I stepped out of my comfort zone with colours, and I didn’t plan it all digitally then just print and pop everything in pockets. In a way I guess I winged it, and winging has served me well.

This week’s photos have a lot of strong colours and the kits I couldn’t wait to use (Maggie or 5th and Frolic) just looked all wrong. I have a partial Sunshine kit that I don’t love, but it’s perfect with the reds of Elijah’s top and I think I like it much more than I expected. I’ve been printing my photos at Croydon Camera House lately and am really pleased with the quality. You can now access your Instagram photos using their online ordering so I had some printed to use up my insert pockets. They came up quite well, although as with most digital printing you do lose a little of the borders.

The date stamps from Studio Calico and have little words attached. The photo isn’t all that clear but it says ‘Instagrammed’ in front of the date which I thought was a cute way to document when it was taken (although ‘latergrams’ with no doubt catch me out with incorrect dates!)

I’m not overly thrilled with my handwriting, but I figure the more I write the better I will get. I used to write in a journal every day for many years as well as doodle in notebooks and I’d like to get that aspect of my creativity back. The heart with all our names is done in an app called Wordpack which is quite cute. Lastly, I debated about how to share layouts with pictures of others in them this year and decided to blur them out. I think that’s the fairest approach as not everyone is happy to appear on the internet!

Becky Higgins Core Kit – Sunshine

Studio Calico roller date stamp

Heidi Swapp sentiment stickers

Basic Grey alphabet stickers (boy?)