Using An Album Kit

by Nicole Humphrey | More from this Blogger

03 Jan 2008 08:04 AM

If you had told me before this Christmas, that I'd be using an album kit to complete something, I would have simply laughed. However, now I have tried it and I am totally hooked. At least for smaller albums and gift albums. I cannot possibly give up the creativity that goes into my everyday layouts.

We have a grandma that lives in Montana, which is quite a distance from Missouri when you look at any map. She never gets to see the children, and as busy as we all are, we forget to send pictures out to her all the time. We rectified that slightly this year by doing a photo Christmas card, but we wanted to do more for her.

While shopping at a local discount chain for a photo album or photo box to slip pictures into, we came across an 8x8 album kit. There were two versions available, one that looked like it was for boys and one that was more geared to girls. We decided to pick one up and the album sat for days. I have never worked with an album that was so obviously limited in space and creativity so I was very worried to say the least.

One evening I opened it up. The kids never left my side. They were mesmerized with how easy it seemed to be to complete a layout and it looked really good. They were hooked. We got five layouts completed the first night. The next day I completed the rest while they were at school. The entire album was 16 pages long.

The only problem I found with the album kits were that they offered page designs and ideas, which I loved. But what I didn't like was that I couldn't exactly follow those designs because I had chosen photographs that either were vertical when they should be horizontal or I had too many photographs for one page. On many layouts I have a somewhat cluttered look. The reason is that I am very used to using a 12x12 page size and this album was a bit smallish for my liking. The good news is - Grandma is not a scrapbooker and she will be so pleased to get this album she won't care if there is one picture or 100 on the page. I have a feeling this album will be treasured for a long time. We also plan to do one each year for her. I hate that she has to watch the children grow up in pictures, but at least if she does she can enjoy the pictures in a totally cute scrapbook album.

I will be posting pictures tomorrow and explaining how I created this album.

Nicole Humphrey writes articles for the Scrapbooking Blog and for the Frugal Blog. She also guest blogs on a variety of topics. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.

More Scrapbooking Articles:

Scrapbooking Small Milestones

New Year Scrapbooking Goals 2008

Holiday Scrapbooking Gift Ideas

Creative Gift Album Suggestions

Gift Album Tips and Ideas

Learn more about Nicole Humphrey

Nicole Humphrey is a freelance writer, consultant for CTMH and a Sr. Blogger for families.com. She resides in St. Charles, Missouri with Mike and their five children and two furbabies.

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