Anatomy of a Scrapbook Page

Often when somebody looks through my scrapbook they ask how long it takes to make a page. This always makes me laugh, sometimes it takes days. This always produces a stunned look on their faces, followed with why do you bother?
I bother because I enjoy it. It has also given me the chance to revisit and sort out the thousands of photos over they ears and record the story behind the picture. Nothing there that any scrapbooker would be surprised by.

I decided to photograph a page coming together. It all started with a challenge over on UK Scrappers.  On the first Thursday of every month they post a colour palette and sketch are posted, then on the third Thursday of the month a variation of the theme is posted. The idea is to rummage through your stash and adapt the challenge to suit what you find. This is perfect for me this year, I want to use as much as I can and not buy unless it is going to be used up immediately. 

In January the colours were Hot Pink, Storm Grey and chocolate brown. You can add more colours to this to complement if you wish. I am challenging myself further to try and find these colours in one of the kits that sit on my shelf. I subscribed to a kit for two years and had stacks of them that have only been stroked so far. I decided that the leftovers from one of my Sarah's Cards kits from June 2009(ish) was the nearest. This was all that was left of the kit.

 then I also found this mini page kit that I had bought eons ago

so this was thrown into the bag as well. Next step the photos, I usually start with the photos and then pick the papers, but if I want to play along with the UK Scrappers challenge I'll have to do this the other way round. I finally settled on these

Next it was on the choosing the final few photos from this pile and choosing the background card.The first was too pink

 the second the wrong shade of pink

 the third one was just right and really matched the colours of the flamingos.

I now decided that 4 photos on a single page layout was too crowded so I picked another photo, pulled out the sketch for Shimelles 4x6 photo love from last May and bingo we had the basic idea.

I left this on my counter for a couple of days to make sure I still liked it. I didn't feel the need to change anything so the task of sticking down and finalising began. The end product was this

So that is why it sometimes takes me days to make a page, but the end result is worth it.