(Easy) Scrapbooking makes me happy

I wish I had all day long to create my scrapbook layouts but I don't.  The only time I get to craft is weekends.  I still squeeze in as much time as possible to craft.  Scrapbook pages can be tricky as they tend to take longer time to finish, compared to cards and tags.

So I must say that I appreciate simple scrapbooking.  Today I am sharing one that didn't take me too long:

I finally figured out a way to take a picture of a two-page layout.  Yay!  But I haven't figured out how to do it without flash to avoid the glare.  Sorry. 

To me, the first step of easy/simple scrapbooking is to print the pictures in 4x6 and 4x6 only.  Every time I develop my photos I upload a big volume without even sorting through them carefully.  Had I spent time to decide what size to print before I hit that "checkout" button, I could have spent days just to print the pictures.  (On that note, I did seriously consider buying a photo printer at home, but thus far it has not happened and I have moved onto becoming interested in other "toys.") 

The next step of easy/simple scrapbooking is to use the pictures as is.   Unless the composition of the picture is truly an eyesore, I tend to keep the picture as is.  The same size of each picture does not add interest to the page and many of you may think that it is equivalent to a boring layout.  But hey, my goal here is to have some creative fun and get my page done.  It's okay for me to have a rather plain layout.  This time I was just lucky that I got six pictures taken from this event, where four of them are landscape and two of them are vertical.  I just simply put them in a symmetrical manner over two pages.  I didn't even have a photo mat.  That's easy (or lazy). 

Choosing the perfect patterned paper and cardstock could be time-consuming because I just have too much to choose from!  I'm glad that I do have quite a good system to organize my paper and so even though I have a lot of paper, I just need to take out what I think would be a good match and confirm that it will work fine with the pictures.  You know, what I have in mind could be drastically different from the reality.

I sometimes do journaling next but this time I added embellishment before journaling.  This is the fun part.  I love adding bits and pieces to a layout!  For a layout like this, I'd keep the embellishment minimum because I'd like the focus to be on the pictures.  There are six pictures and I do want each one of them shine.

Journaling on this layout will have to be quite short.  I want to keep the balance of the layout so I only have two small boxes for journaling.  Well, I'll just have to keep my journaling concise.

That concludes my journey of easy/simple scrapbooking.  I had a fun time making this page and I think years later, whoever looks at this page wouldn't know that it is "easy."

Thanks for stopping by!