Way back when ...

Way back when I first started to scrapbook, in the days when Lisa Bearnson still ruled Creative Keepsakes and we had 12 bumper filled monthly issues and back before Becky Higgins had even thought about abandoning traditional scrapbooking in favour of plastic pockets and printed cards, in the days of Creative Memories, see through vellum and coloured eyelets, I, in my infinite wisdom, decided it would be a good idea (nay a wonderful idea) to scrap my around the world honeymoon some ten years after the event. 

We'd visited 15 countries in just over 6 months and while my husband had taken his expensive SLR camera, we'd decided for ease of use and economy to use slide film to take the vast majority of our holiday photographs - and this he did - some 1000 of them which in the pre-digital era was a significant amount of holidays snaps.  I, on the other hand would take my trusty point and shoot and "point and shoot" I would do - taking "highlight" pictures which would sit alongside our holiday diary in a normal photograph album.

In my beginner scrapbooking enthusiasm I decided to take that process one step further. Wouldn't it be a wonderful idea to revisit those photos and create a double page spread for each of the countries we visited? It would make the album so much more appealing!! So armed with paper, tape, my trusty CK Becky Higgins Creative Sketches magazine, I embarked on my mission like a woman possessed.

Sounds fine in theory doesn't it but you guessed it - it fell over very quickly in practise.  The double page spread worked just fine for the 2 hour stop in Lichtenstein and Monte Carlo, it even worked with the slight expansion to two doubles pages for Singapore and Hawaii but it came to a crashing halt when faced with three weeks in Greece, eight weeks in the United Kingdom and nearly four weeks in seven countries of Europe.  My double page spread per country almost immediately became a double page layout per city, then per tourist location.  My simple honeymoon album became bigger than Ben Hur and more wordy than War and Peace and while my resolve remained strong my enthusiasm did not and like many a good intention, scrapbooking class or "wonderful idea" it fell by the wayside, half way complete yet half undone.

So why am I telling you this? Well mainly because I came across a new challenge site called Archi-Scraps run by the lovely Julene Matthews and her first challenge has a picture of the Duomo di Firenze, in Florence Italy and I had one of those eureka moments.

Julene's challenge is not necessarily about the Duomo but to take an aspect you see in the photo (the colours, the shapes etc) to create your layout.  But for me it was all about Florence because you see this was one of those stops on that around the world trip and it was still in the pile marked "yet to do".  How could I not answer the Archi-Scraps call? 

One thing that sits with me with this project is how very, VERY differently I scrap these days.  I've moved on a long way since the days of Becky sketches, as have scrapbooking manufacturers with their paper products and assorted embellishments and tools.  All the supplies I originally used for layouts in this album have long gone and I am going to have to be really careful what I use for any future pages to try and keep some form of continuity with those pages already completed. I guess it may also be time to get out my trusty Becky mag and revisit those plain and simple layouts.

Keep them coming Julene !!   I only have another 40 or so layouts to go !