Hi everyone! It’s Steph here! Summer is a crazy busy time of year for most people—a time for taking vacations, spending time outdoors, and making tons of memories. If you’re anything like me, this leaves you stuck between a rock and a hard place of deciding whether to spend your time doing things and making memories or documenting those memories and stories. This also might leave you with a backlog of photos waiting on your computer and stories that are just waiting to be told.
To address some of these problems, I am taking a simple approach to getting my projects completed: Clean, simple, quick and easy layouts and pocket pages for the win, because done is better than perfect any day! This approach also allows me to get more done in the limited time I have so I can move on to making new memories and spending time with my family. Today I’m sharing a new pocket page spread using the Magical Memories collection to show you that simple can still be wonderful!
Supplies | Magical Memories Journaling Tags, Magical Memories Phrase Stickers, Magical Memories Puffy Stickers, Magical Memories Fun Times Acrylic, Magical Memories 6 x 6 Paper Stack, Magical Memories Stamp
The first thing I do when I’m short on time to scrapbook is work in a smaller size, which makes the work go faster. I prefer 6” x 8” albums for my smaller size with a mix of other, smaller sizes included for some visual interest. For this particular spread from a recent trip to Disneyland, I mixed a travelers notebook full-page photo with a 6” x 8” page protector with two 3” x 4” pockets and one 4” x 6” pocket. Sticking to this size limits my options for page protectors and makes it easy to make design decisions based on my photos and the products I’m using. In case you need permission, it is perfectly okay for you to mix and match sizes and styles! In fact, it’s tons of fun!
The next thing I do when I’m trying to make the best use of my scrappy time is to limit my products. The Magical Memories collection is perfect for this because it is all designed to coordinate together. (This is also true of all of Elle’s Studio products!) The design work is already done, so all I had to do for this spread was just pick the products I wanted to use that allowed me to tell part of my story and went well with my photos.
One of the most important things to me when documenting our life is to include the words to tell the story. I love the “Details of our Trip” journaling tag included in the Magical Memories Journaling Tags because it provided a few prompts to help me get those details captured and in my album. Journaling doesn’t always have to be lengthy and incredibly detailed to be meaningful and get the story told. When I’m working simply, I like to use tags that help guide my journaling, just like this one.
To make the journaling tag coordinate a little more with the other products I was using, I added a bit of stamping using some tiny stamps from the Magical Memories Stamp in coordinating ink colors. This helped to tie it all together and add a little bit of interest to the otherwise plain white card.
To round out my simple pages I like to add just a few embellishments for dimension and to jazz things up. The other 3” x 4” card is a piece of paper from the Magical Memories 6 x 6 Paper Stack that I cut down to fit and then I added the mouse head from the Magical Memories Fun Times Acrylic for a simple embellishment. For finishing touches, I added a Magical Memories Phrase Sticker, a die-cut label, and a puffy heart sticker from the Magical Memories Puffy Stickers to my 4” x 6” photo. I also added a phrase die-cut to my large photo with some puffy diamond stickers, also from the Magical Memories Puffy Stickers.
I’m so happy with how this spread turned out and how quickly it came together. When I can make fast decisions and use coordinating products, like the ones from the Magical Memories collection, it makes for fast turnaround on getting my memories documented! Let us know your favorite ways to make simple pages by sharing on Instagram using the hashtag #EllesStudio, or in our Elle’s Studio Facebook group!
