Scrapbook Layout: Football Season

The Story: Football.  Need I say more?

Key Ephemera: I have to have someplace to put my season tickets and our fridge magnet.  I love mixing them up with photos.  See more on how I scrapbook with fridge magnets here.

Changing up the Fonts: I’ve used Bebas almost exclusively on older football pages.  I decided to go with a smaller, more sleek headline this time.

More Football Layouts: I’ve done similar layouts for every year that I’ve been a season ticket holder.  They’re similar, but each have a slightly different take: 2004 part 1, 2004 part 2, 2005, 2006.

Go Bears!

Fonts: Futura, Nevis, Cambria | Tools: Silhouette SD (headline), Epson Stylus R2000 (photos) | Supplies: Pioneer SJ-100 Jumbo Scrapbook (scrapbook & pages), Epson Semigloss Photo Paper (photos) | Ephemera Included: Season tickets, fridge magnet.

 

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Snapshots: Football Roadtrip to Chicago

We’re just back from a football roadtrip where Mr. P and I along with a bunch of our friends from college watched Cal take on Northwestern and spent the rest of the weekend enjoying Chicago.  I’m sometimes reminded that I’m not as young as I used to be in college, but we still managed to pack in quite a weekend.  It went something like this:

Land, dinner, drinks, sleep, transit, lunch, work, dinner, drinks, more drinks, sleep, gameday, transit, bar, tailgate, touchdown bears, transit, dinner, drinks, fireworks, sleep, brunch, sleep, lunch, sightsee, rest, dinner, drinks, sleep, breakfast, pregame, baseball, lunch, drinks, dinner, sleep, home, exhaustion.

I don’t keep travel journals for these short trips, so it’s all starting to run together.

I got to see my very first Cal road game win ever!  I’ve been going to games for fifteen years now and I had never seen a win when I traveled to see them.  I pretty much assumed it was a curse at this point.

It’s really important to me to see the local sights and eats in addition to the football game.  I’m working on a post with tips for taking a football roadtrip — look forward to that in the coming weeks.  For this trip, we spent a lot of time in Chicago and ended the weekend with a Cubs game.

As our group headed into the bleachers at Wrigley Field, we all kept saying how lucky we were.  Thunderstorms were predicted for the entire weekend and we carried ponchos with us to both games.  We didn’t get rained on at all.  Not once.  Sitting there in the beautiful sunshine with our friends watching a ballgame — it was one of those perfect life moments.  We are very lucky indeed.

Scrapbook Layout: 107th Big Game

Time for another football scrapbook layout!

Inspiration: My own.  I had to design this around the newspaper and the ticket.  Everything else neatly fell into place.

Why I documented this:  It’s the Big Game (!), practically a pilgrimage to anyone who follows Cal or Stanford football.

I’m really pleased that I was able to get everything on one page.  Maybe it was because I didn’t have a ton of good photos?  My last Big Game layout (link below) was 2 pages.

For this layout, I cut out the newspaper picture (yep, Aaron Rodgers) and then the score from elsewhere in the issue.  I sized the pictures to fit the leftover space next to the picture.

Earlier: 106th Big Game layout.

I promise, no more sports layouts for this book!

Fonts: Bebas | Tools: Epson Stylus R2000 (photos), Silhouette SD (headline) | Supplies: Epson Semigloss Photo Paper (photos) | Keepsakes Included: Newspaper clippings, ticket.

A Poem for Graduates

It’s getting around that time of year when people start planning graduations, making graduation cards, or even thinking about graduation scrapbook layouts.  I shared this poem last year as part of my final college scrapbook layout, but wanted to show you again.

I found this poem in the 1911 edition of the Blue and Gold yearbook, the yearbook of the University of California, Berkeley.  It really conveys a lot of sentiment that many graduates feel as they are at this turning point in their lives.

If you are using this in a card or layout, please credit The Blue and Gold at the University of California, Berkeley:

“Four years behind us,
And maybe more
The whole world in front of us
It’s time to score

Now with the years behind us,
Now that the goal is won,
With everything to remind us
We wish we’d just begun”

Senior Farewell
The Blue and Gold 1911
University of California, Berkeley

Scrapbook Layout: Wedding Scrapbook Ceremony Site Layout

Yes, an entire layout dedicated to our ceremony site!

Selecting a meaningful ceremony site was important to us.  Since we met at college and are both die hard fans (if you need evidence, please refer to my last college scrapbook), the beautiful Berkeley campus was just the spot.

I used a large statement picture for the top of the page (much like I did before in this layout).

Underneath the picture, I included a campus newspaper article from Valentine’s Day the year we were married.  It was a story about getting married on campus and they featured our upcoming wedding.  I added a second smaller picture of the actual spot where we would exchange vows and a block of text about what the site meant to us.

I backed all of these pieces in alternating colors from my Engagement Color Scheme.

I did the headline in grey cardstock and added a pink flourish, both cut with the Silhouette.

I love the simple elegant look of this – hopefully I’m finally starting to hit my stride on this project!

Scrapbook Layout: A Layout with Zig Zag Binding

This is a really picture-heavy event.  I had scrapbooked it two times already for previous years and it always took up 2 pages.  I wanted to do something different and try a vertical headline.  2 pages just wouldn’t seem to work.

This was one of those layouts I had to stare at for several days, waiting for the light bulb.

Enter Zig Zag Binding

Stumped, I was surfing around and saw this video tutorial by Elise on zig zag binding.  That’s it!  It was the perfect way to include more pictures in the layout without them being overwhelming.

Zig zag binding is very easy.  You use an accordion folded piece of paper as the base and then glue your pages to it.  The result is a cute booklet.

I had the program from this banquet, which was an 8.5×11″ piece of paper folded in half.  I attached it to my accordion-folded piece of paper and then added extra pages.  Looking at the page, you only see the program.  However, when you look through the program, it now has several pages of pictures behind it!

It went something like this:

Gluing the pages to the accordion and to each other (just watch the video and this will make sense).

Presto!

I won’t go into detail about how to do this because the video is pretty comprehensive.  Make sure to check it out!  It is super easy to do but there are a couple ways to go way wrong if you don’t cut the accordion correctly.

I will definitely use this method again, maybe on a smaller scale next time.  I can see  making a small photo flip book to go on a page highlighting something from that event.  What would you do with this technique?

Scrapbook Layout: Two Events, A Single Layout

Two separate events.  Both involve wearing pretty dresses.  Both involve celebrating the University’s birthday.  How about combining them into one 2-page layout?

My goals for these two pages were:

• Keep some “white space”
• Experiment with photo blocks
• Use one keepsake per page.

Scrapbook Layout: The Statement Picture

My second all-digital-photo layout was also another sports theme.  Time to put my skills with the photo printer to the test.

The challenges here were very similar to my bowl game layout: break out of my standard sport layout mold and try something new.  I was popping by another scrapbooker’s blog and found something to get the creative juices flowing!

Inspiration

My inspiration came from this layout I found at Ginger’s Life of Spice.  It’s a large statement picture with a small photo collage below it.  I knew if I could find the right action shot, it would be an awesome statement picture!

Photo credit: Gingers Life of Spice

The Big Picture

I found exactly what I was looking for – a picture of the game starting right before tipoff.  Perfect!  I printed the large picture and then created two smaller photo blocks to fit underneath it.  Each photo block featured 2 pictures.

Big statement picture and 2 photo blocks.

I like to feature keepsakes in my layouts, so I cut out one of my favorite newspaper pictures from that season.  It fit right between the two small photo blocks.

Picking a newspaper picture to go on page.

Tying Two Pages Together

This was meant to be a two-page layout.  I was on the cover of the Cal Sports Quarterly with the head basketball coach that season and I was going to put that cover on the second page.

But how to tie the two pages together?

I decided to flip through the pages of the Cal Sports Quarterly and found this border at the bottom of the page.  It’s actually a reproduction of the wall above the student section in the basketball arena.  Funny thing is I’m actually on the wall.  Yup, there’s this “scenery” picture on the wall of my friends and I going crazy during a game.

The border at the bottom of the page is actually a reproduction of the wall above the student section.

I cut out the strips from the magazine and added them to the bottom of the page.  They weren’t quite long enough, so I printed a tiny close-up of my picture on the wall along with the story and added them to the bottom of the page as well.

Adding a close-up of my picture on the wall and the story.

Finishing Touches

I finished off the page keeping up my masochistic streak of cutting out headlines out of cardstock by hand with my x-acto knife.  I need to stop doing that.  It takes forever.

My hand usually hurts when Im done cutting out the letters.

Here’s the finale!  The statement picture is just fantastic to look at and everything else compliments it.  I layered two pocket basketball schedules on top of the magazine cover to complete the second page.

Tips & Ideas

• Pick one statement picture and print a very large copy.
• Compliment the picture with a couple smaller pictures or photo blocks.
• Consider a unifying border to tie two very different pages together.

Scrapbook Layout: Bowl Game and the Move to Digital

This layout is special not just because of the memories. This event marked the point where I switched from 35mm to digital photos. Remember those days? I’m extremely happy to be rid of the photo boxes, but this is a new creative path for me.

Not being wedded to 4×6 photos meant I had too many choices! I went through at least 5 ideas over 3 days before I came up with something.

Adding Fragile Items to Your Scrapbook

Sometimes there are things that can’t be glued down or you don’t want to glue down. Still, you want to include them in your scrapbook.

Remember my layouts from the Big Game? I saved grass that I pulled from the field and included it on the page.

What’s my great tool here? Sheet protectors. Yes, I mean these things that are normally used for protecting documents in a binder.

Showcasing Non-Glueable Items

I started using sheet protectors to keep things in my scrapbook that I didn’t want to glue down. Here’s a junior high school diploma that slips neatly in and out of its sleeve on the page:

Diploma neatly slides in and out of its pouch. Does my mom know that this is missing from her hope chest?

I’ve also used sheet protectors as space-savers. Does your kid have lots of certificates? You can save space by layering them on a page and still have the flexibility to use on or more of them in another project later.

Saving space by layering certificates. Plus one or more of them can be moved and used for something else later.

What about things that can’t be glued? I used a sheet protector as a pouch to keep these pressed flowers from a bouquet I received.

If I had to do it over again, I would slice the white part off the sheet protector, but I was really a beginner when I did this!

Pouch for pressed flowers. I scrapbooked this over 10 years ago.

Make Your Own Sheet Protector Pouches

For my latest scrapbook layout, I had grass pulled from the Stanford Stadium field.

Stadium grass that I’d been holding onto for 8 years.

Here is the sheet protector. It’s important to buy the 100% clear variety or else your item will have a frosty look to it.

Measure and cut the sheet protector to size. Use the bottom right corner as the base and cut around it. This will yield two finished sides.

Take a very thin piece of clear tape and seal one of the open sides.

Deposit your fragile items.

Make sure the item in the pouch is laying as flat as possible.

Tape the top closed.

Here is some detail: I take a long piece of clear tape and attach it to the very edge of one side.

Trim the piece of tape down so there is around 2-3 millimeters to fold down on the other side. Then fold it and seal it. Make sure to press the air out first!

At this point, I attached it to the page using double-stick tape. Since the tape is clear, it doesn’t show much.

Tips & Ideas

• Use sheet protectors to showcase items that you don’t want to tape down or things that can’t be taped down.
• Sheet protectors are also great for layering multiple items on one page such as school awards.
• Only use 100% clear sheet protectors (as opposed to the ones that are frosty).
• Measure and cut the section of the sheet protector from the bottom right corner.
• Use regular clear tape and cut a thin slice of it to tape the other two sides closed.