Returning to Basics - A Father's Day Mini Album

I sometimes feel like my evolution as a scrapbooker mimics my evolution as a home cook.  Before I was married and with kids, I insisted (with my wanna-be Martha Stewart assertiveness) that good meals had to be made from scratch.  To make the Thanksgiving stuffing, I use homemade bread, homemade chicken stock, and even insist on using home grown herbs.  Obviously, with a husband that always seems to be gone at sea and two little ones, I'm unable (and unwilling) to go to such extremes in the kitchen.  I reach for my Stovetop Stuffing with no hesitation these days.  That same reality check applies to the craft room.

Once upon a time, I would spend hours or days on a single layout, thinking that it had to mimic those gorgeous creations I saw on the manufacture blogs or in the magazines. While I still enjoy making those mini pieces of art every once in awhile, I have realized that the heart of this hobby for me is the memory keeping.  It's putting those layouts onto a page and into my albums for my family to enjoy.  It's taking those photos off of my hard drive and into albums.  It's about making stories from the past tangible in the present. 

While this mini album I made for father's day is nothing fancy, it represents what I love about this hobby.  I love taking beautiful photos of my family.  I love using digital tools like Rad Lab and digital brushes to make these photos look cool and special.  I love using up my scrapbooking stash.  I love projects that are super simple to put together and easy to enjoy. 

To make this album, I started off with this super cheap photo album from Target.  You probably have a ton of these lying around your house.  I bought mine for around $2.

I then removed the front and back cardboard covers and replaced them with these Project Life style cards by Splendid Fiins (Hello Daddio Collection) that I printed out on my home computer.  Note: when you buy the digital kit, you get a bunch of JPEG files that you can easily print to any size you want a home.  I personally used Photoshop to resize the card files to fit my album and then printed them on glossy photo paper.

For the journaling pages inside the album, I just used the journaling cards from my Simon Says Stamp June Card Kit.  They were sized perfectly to fit the 4x6 openings and included plenty of journaling space.  And when I did spend some time embellishing the cards, I just reached for the stamp set in the card kit (from Kelly Purkey) and some other father's day themed ones that I had on hand (including Lawn Fawn Dad's Day).

For the photos in the album, I quickly edited them using Photoshop and Rad Lab.  In many of them, I also added various "digital brushes" (i.e., the word art) directly onto the photo before printing.  The brushes I used were from Splendid Fiins (Spot On Collection) and Simple Scrapper (Stories of Summer Toolkit). 

The longest part of this process was selecting the photos and editing/ printing/ cutting them.  I think if I had spent more time on the journaling cards, it might have been a bit fancier.  But I ultimately knew that it was for my husband and I just wanted him to have something to keep on the ship when he was at sea.  So keeping it quick and simple was perfect.

Here are photos from the rest of the album.  There are a lot of photos so beware...  :)

I know that it's simple but I genuinely loved this mini album.

As always, thanks so much for stopping by!!!!