WIP Wednesday, Quarantine Edition 2

I can't believe it's Wednesday again!  I'd say time is flying by, but it isn't, especially given the fact that we now have a stay at home order in Maryland and can't really leave the house.  I have to run to the grocery store later, so that will be my big adventure for the day (yay!).  Rather than talk about my cross stitch project, I want to talk about the other large project I'm working on, my Disney World scrapbook.  This is quite a huge endeavor, it's about 150 pages spread across three albums.  I've been working on it for about a month now (probably closer to three and a half weeks if we want to be specific), and I've completed 36 pages, including one double page spread.  I have a preview below of all the pages I've done so far.  There's no talking or narration during the video.

As you can tell from the video, it's incredibly important for my album to be an explosion of color.  This was important to me because Disney as a place is an explosion of color.  Everywhere you look, there are exciting things to look at and excitement all over the place.  The only way I could properly convey that in an album was by making it as colorful as humanly possible.  Of course, some pages are a bit more subdued, but they're still colorful and gorgeous, and they give your eyes a break from all the color.

I want to take some time to talk about specific pages in my album that I'm particularly proud of and really embody what I want conveyed in my album in terms of theme and message.

I first want to talk about this incredibly pink Minnie Mouse page.  This page was so out of my comfort zone because I really don't like the color pink.  I use it in my scrapbooking and everything, but not to this extent, it's usually just sprinkled throughout a page.  With this page however, seeing Minnie's outfit and her little scene around her, it seemed like the logical thing to do.  I also don't do a lot of monochromatic pages like this.  There's no real reason behind that other than the fact that I can't figure out how to make them work and when to use them and when to not use them.  I may do one or two others in my album to make sure this page doesn't look out of place, but I'm not entirely sure which pages.  I have an idea or two in my head, we'll just have to wait and see how this plays out.  I do have to say, even though it's outside my comfort zone, doing a monochromatic page is a little easier than a regular page since you're only grabbing embellishments that are one color.  If you enjoy scrapbooking, I definitely encourage you to try out a monochromatic page at least once, what do you have to lose?

Another page I want to talk about is my Goofy page.  I love this page so much, I feel like it completely embodies everything I want in my album when it comes to explosion of color.  I wanted the striped paper on the bottom to be the entire background, but I only had a piece of it, so I had to improvise with the green on the top to finish off the page.  The purple was something I added after the fact to cover the seam and add a little bit more color.  I used a method from my favorite scrapbooker, Shimelle Laine, and that's a paper stack.  It's quite simple, you start stacking up papers behind the photo to create a wild, colorful background.  Usually you start with larger papers of varying sizes that you put behind the photo that's supposed to look like a haphazard stack of papers on your desk, then you add smaller papers as embellishment.  I, on the other hand, did it a little different.  While there are some larger papers, I mostly focused on smaller papers from my small scraps pile (I have two scrap piles, one full of smaller papers and one full of bigger papers).  This is the perfectly opportunity to get rid of some smaller scraps that are just sitting around.  Once done with building the paper stack, I added in all the embellishments, which, like the papers I picked, were meant to be all different colors.  The final product is one of my favorite pages that I've created so far with all the color and movement on the page.

While it might not look like it, this page really took me out of my comfort zone.  I don't do a lot of grid pages, but, once again, I was inspired by Shimelle Laine.  I had to modify her design a little, as she used squares that were over 3x3 inches, but I was using a 6x6 inch paper pad, so I couldn't make the squares bigger without using more paper.  I wanted to use this paper, as it's perfect for Toy Story, so I'm definitely going to use more of it in future Toy Story layouts.  I also used some less than conventional embellishments for this page, but I absolutely love how it came out.  First is the word "Howdy".  Those are actual Scrabble tiles I bought on Amazon for craft projects.  I haven't really used them for anything, but I've been meaning to.  I think they look great, and I want to include them on future Toy Story pages to draw them together.  I also used a bit of string, which I also bought for other craft projects.  Given the rope Woody's holding in the picture, I figured it would be the perfect addition to the embellishment group.  This is probably one of my favorite pages that I've made so far, everything just came together perfectly.

Finally, let's talk about a double page spread.  I very rarely do double pages, but I have a few planned out for this album.  I took a ton of pictures during the Festival of Fantasy parade, and I knew a double page was necessary, so I printed enough pictures from Amazon for a double page, but I never did anything with them.  Then I saw a video in Shimelle's Start with a Sketch class, and everything fell into place.  She used 3x4 inch photos across a double page in a grid layout, and I knew that's what I wanted to do.  It also gave me the opportunity to finally use my Instax printer (it's like an Instax polaroid camera but you print from your phone), which I've been dying to use for scrapbooking but haven't been able to figure out how.  Like I said, it all fell into place, and it was perfect.  My philosophy with this layout was "more is more".  It's a little hard to see, but I definitely went crazy with this layout.  Most photos have an embellishment with them, usually related to the Disney character in the photo  I also added little areas of embellishment scattered across both pages.  When it comes to actual embellishments, I used a little bit of everything: pearl hearts, enamel stars, rhinestones, puffy stickers, regular stickers, cut aparts, ephemera, washi tape.  Like I said, it was a little bit of everything.  I actually had to stop myself because I kept adding to the pages.  This isn't even the finished product; I added a bit more gold washi tape underneath the dragon (there's a little above the unicorn), to tie both pages together.  It was a lot, and I would add more if necessary, but I think it's good.  This is another one of my favorite layouts, I think everything came together perfectly.

My Disney album has been coming together wonderfully.  You may have noticed some blank spaces on cards on some pages.  That's where the journaling will go.  I have what I want to write planned out, I just haven't written them on the pages yet.  I may wait and do that all in the end.  We'll have to wait and see.

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How to Prepare Yourself for a Disney World Scrapbook

I'm going to be honest, I wasn't entirely sure where to put this post; I almost did a "Work in Progress Wednesday" instead (it would have been my last one until after my Disney World trip in February).  I decided to do this post now so the rest of my Disney posts can be related to the parks.  That doesn't mean this will be my only Disney World scrapbooking post, but it'll probably be my only one for quite some time.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Christina, your trip isn't for three months, why are you getting scrapbooking materials ready now?"  Well, the answer is quite simple: why not?  In my mind, it's better to start sooner rather than later, especially when you know you're going to have a huge monstrosity of a project to tackle.  It has also given me the opportunity to start collecting supplies at a slightly cheaper rate as I see them appear (but more about that later).

Right now, I'm in the pre-planning stage of my scrapbook, because I have no photos to actual scrapbook from my trip.  I'm simply collecting ideas and some supplies (okay, a lot of supplies) based on the rides and activities I know Bryan and I are going to do at Disney World (which is definitely something I'll be talking a lot about later).

One thing that's important to know about me is my unhealthy addiction to Pinterest.  I seriously love it and can't get enough of it.  It's actually a bit of a problem because I don't see it as social media (even though it technically is), so I'm on it all the time without realizing just how much time I've wasted.  With that being said, of course I created a Pinterest board.  At first, everything was dumped together as I jumped from board to board that other people created, pinning every single idea or cute clipart that I came across.  Within two days, I had over a thousand pins to my board, and there was no rhyme or reason to how they were pinned.  I needed a better system.  Thankfully, Pinterest realized this a while back and created sections, which is a part of the platform I've come to love and use extensively.  I set aside a huge chunk of time and created sections for every little thing I pinned.  I created sections for characters, parks, rides, movies, locations and even one for our hotel.  It didn't take long for me to have over 90 sections on my Scrapbooking Disney board.

A quick glimpse at just a small portion of my Scrapbooking Disney Pinterest board.

What's in each section varies based on the section.  As you can see from the picture of my board above, there's only one lonely pin in my 101 Dalmatians section, which is because those characters (ie: Cruella de Vil) really only comes out for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party, but I saw that journaling card, thought it was cute and pinned it, just in case.  There's nothing wrong with pinning something; it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

The Lilo and Stitch section of my Scrapbooking Disney Pinterest board.

A lot of my sections have a wide range of different types of pins.  I found some websites that sell adorable Disney scrapbooking materials (mostly paper), so I pinned different paper pads or open stock paper to see if I want them later on down the line when we get back from our trip.  You can see that in the above screenshot from my Lilo and Stitch section of my Pinterest board (the first two pins).  I also pinned any layouts that I like relating to that section.  Now, this doesn't mean I'm going to use every single layout that I've pinned; I just like having options.  I might take bits and pieces from different pinned layouts, or I might create something entirely different.  I have no idea, it will depend on what I want represented on that particular page.

The Minnie Mouse section of my Scrapbooking Disney Pinterest board.

You'll notice on my pages that there are a lot of blank notecards.  I very rarely used to journal on my scrapbooking pages; I often just put the pictures and some embellishments down and called it a day.  Now, however, I've gotten more into journaling to capture the emotions, information and memories associated with the particular photos.  Obviously I won't use all of the journaling cards I've pinned (the Minnie Mouse one alone has four different journaling cards).  Like I said before, I just want options.  Once I have my Minnie Mouse pictures and know the colors I'm going to use for that layout, I'll be able to better select a journaling card that will work with the page.

Feel free to check out my Scrapbooking Disney Pinterest board in all its glory by clicking here.

Pinterest isn't the only way I've started preparing for my Disney scrapbook.  I've started buying some supplies.  Almost all of my supplies have come from a secondhand scrapbooking group I'm a part of on Facebook.  It's a great group and a wonderful place to get embellishments and supplies for amazing discounts.  Of course, it doesn't work if you just want to buy one or two things, since you also have to pay for shipping, but if you want to buy a lot and build up your stash, it's a great place to start.

Some of my generic Disney World scrapbook embellishments.

Some of the embellishments I've bought so far are fairly generic, like the ones above (how cute are those little Mickey Mouse buttons!?).  I know quite a few people stay away from licensed and event-specific things such as these, but my mentality is: I'm only going to make one Disney World scrapbook, I might as well make it the most Disney-est thing I've ever created.

Some of my Disney Princess scrapbook embellishments.

Now, there are some risks with buying things for a vacation that's three months away.  The most obvious is the fact that I don't know exactly what I'll need.  For example, I won't know if we're going to see Aurora, Cinderella or Snow White, but I still have stickers for all three of these princesses.  It's a dangerous game to play, but they were also incredibly cheap (much cheaper than if I had bought them in the store), so to me it was well worth the risk.

Paper I've started putting aside for my Disney scrapbook.

Now, the paper is a significantly smaller risk.  Some of the paper I already owned.  Take the purple with the blurred lights on it.  I bought that ages ago because I thought it was gorgeous, but I didn't know what I would use it for.  While flipping through my stash looking for something else, I saw that paper and realized it would be perfect for the Tangled lanterns at Magic Kingdom (more about that in a later post), so I pulled that paper out and put it to the side.  The paper with the hotel keys came from a paper pad and seemed great for our hotel, so I put that to the side too.  I'm not going to pretend that I didn't buy some paper too.  How could I pass up the paper with the little frogs on it?  It's so perfect for Tiana, I simply had to have it!  This is all the paper I have right now, which is fine with me.  I don't need to have everything set aside, this is simply paper that I have an idea for for when I get back from my trip.  I know that I'm going to need so much more, but I'll worry about that later.

In addition to collecting supplies, I've also been watching the "A Most Magical Scrapbook" class by Shimelle Laine.  It is something you have to pay for it ($25), but it's over 40 videos, and you have complete access to them, which means you can watch them as many times as you want.  If paying for scrapbooking videos isn't something you want to do, which I totally get, Shimelle also has a YouTube channel that includes a Disney scrapbooking playlist.  It's only a few videos, and it doesn't include any of the videos in her "A Most Magical Scrapbook" class, but they're just as wonderful and informative.  She breaks down how to select pictures, paper and embellishments and make a large scrapbook flow together.

Even though my trip is three months away, I've already started the tentative planning for my scrapbook.  I know this scrapbook is going to be a huge undertaking, so there will be plenty of posts about it in the weeks after my trip.

Tune in next week to learn about the decision making process Bryan and I went through while picking our hotel and the bumps we had along the way.

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