100% Motivated

Right now, I’m working on an album (multiple albums?) of the European cruise I took in October with my mom and a good friend.  Guess what kind of cruise it was??  Yep, a scrapbooking cruise that I learned about in Creating Keepsakes magazine (and that’s a whole story in itself…I’ll tell ya’ sometime, k?).  In 12 days, we hit 7 cities:  Savona, Italy – Barcelona, Spain – Palma de Mallorca, Spain – Tunis, Tunisia (okay, that’s in Africa not Europe) – La Valletta, Malta – Palermo, Sicily – and Rome, Italy.  Lisa Bearnson, the founding editor of Creating Keepsakes, was on board too.  She and some other great instructors gave awesome classes each day while we were at sea, then went on tours with us at each city.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, which is why I took so many ding-dang photos.  I mean, when is little ol’ me going to get back to Italy again?  I’m embarrassed to say how many photos.  My husband will kill me when he finds out how many.  Okay, between the one’s I took with my digital, with my point and shoot, and the one’s I copied from my friend Kim, I have about…….(drumroll)…….900 photos.  And most of them are so good, they have to be scrapped.  Don’t ask me how I’ll ever accomplish this, but I’m going to try.  I have 22 pages done so far, with 92 photos (along with some memorabilia) scrapped.  So let’s do the math here:  at an average 4 photos per page and roughly 800 photos remaining….let’s see…that’s um….only 400 pages to go!  I was PLANNING on getting this all into 2 albums – one for the cruise, and 1 for the 3 days we spent in Rome.  I think I need a new plan.  What do you think?

When I do theme albums, I like to keep at least some continuity in the colors, etc.  So I’m using all Basic Grey papers (because they are distress-y and Old World looking, like much of what we saw on the trip); coordinating Bazzill cardstock (because it is the best of all cardstock and my Europe album deserves only the best.  Plus the Bazzill colors look great with Basic Grey papers); and computerized journaling in a Lisa Bearnson font (I have so much to say and so little space.  I want to always remember every detail of this trip so I’m writing down just about EV-erything we saw and did).  I’m inking the edges of each photo and journaling block.  It saves me from taking the time to mat almost 900 photos and the distress-y look of the inking looks good with the distress-y look of the papers.  I’m using my new and much beloved Cricut machine to cut the titles.  So far, I really like how it’s coming along.  I wish I had more time to add accents, etc. to the pages but, you know, I’d like to get this thing completed before I forget the details of the trip!  “The Project” is currently spread across 75% of my dining room table…I’m absolutely sure my husband is 100% thrilled…because my scrapping area is a bit disorganized at the moment with not much clear desktop to work on.  Also, I figure if it’s taking up valuable dining space, I will be more motivated to get it done in a timely fashion.  I’m 100% sure my husband is motivated for me to get it done in a timely fashion.  Have you ever taken up the dining table for an extended period to get a scrapbooking project done?  How’d that work out for you?  Well, wish me luck…