I can hardly believe that nearly 8 weeks have passed since we went on the very special journey to lay my grandparents to rest. I meant to share right after the trip – but honestly the last two months have been such a whirlwind of soccer, surgery, Girl Scouts, school, new website, and other assorted everyday wildness that I forgot! So, I’m here to share some thoughts on this book as well as what I liked, loved, and tips for you.
Above you see the first page – and some cool grass stuff I recall my grandma liking that I grabbed from a creek.
This was a story book. The point was to capture the minutia of this trip, as well as jot down stories about my grandparents that happened into my head while we were on the trip. Since it was just me and the girls that went, in the evenings in our hotel room I was alone with my own thoughts and had time to glue, write, and otherwise just document this weekend.
I grabbed business cards along the way, and other things that I saw that related to our trip and easily fit into the book. Postcards, menus – whatever struck my fancy. We even saw a few random stickers that worked well. The size of this album was perfect. It could fit into my bag easily, but it was big enough to let me add so many things.
Above you can see a page where it was divided (and stories were told) as well as a postcard page. Below more stories, a 395 sticker, and an instax photo.
One thing I made sure to do – if someone said something cute or memorable I jotted it down as a quote like you see below.
Instax photos were ok – it was a fun addition to our trip – but I still found I needed my 4×6 pics to fill in some blanks. I didn’t use tons, I just filled them in after I got home and got my photos ordered.
Overall? I’m really overwhelmed with how much I love how the colors, patterns, and details of stories + stickers + photos + memorabilia came together.
From eating pie in a creek (yeah, that was epic + amazing) to riding horses around an unbelievable lake, what we had to dinner to which movies we watched, it’s all here. So are my favorite stories I tell about my grandparents, and pictures to go along with it.
Truly? This book embodies all I love about scrapbooking and I can’t recommend you try a book like this sometime. It doesn’t have to get really emotional or anything either. It could just be for a fun, as a week in the life kind of project, trip or stay at home.
I am definitely thinking about how I can do a book like this again in a few months, I had such a good time with it.
The best part? There were no rules. I could swear. Talk about who irritated me or what family member was being a jerk (and yeah, there were a few of those moments), I could keep it short. I could write whole pages. I made this book as a record for myself and the girls, to remind us of all the ways we celebrated my grandparents that weekend and to let us relive the good times, trials, and details of a most memorable weekend.
You can watch the part 1 (aka supply gathering) video here, and read the part 2 (the pre-trip but nearly completed/embellished book) post here.
Nicely done! It looks like a really great memory book with exactly what you wanted to put into it. That is what scrapbooking is about. Have a fabulous Halloween and weekend!
May, I love this. I recently returned from a 3-week road trip. I collected a ton of memorabilia and took hundreds of photos. I plan to use the large format Smash book. I hope it turns out as great as your book!!
Leanne said it just right.
What a great book
Such a beautiful and fun journal. 🙂