Confession Time: I just finished my first album!

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I feel like shouting from the rooftop, "My 2010 Family Album is DONE!" I'm thrilled to finally have one finished!!

Technically, this is not my first completed album. I have finished a couple of my daughter (baby & preschool years) and a few trip books. But this 2010 album is my first {completed} annual family album.

I have completed pages that will eventually go in over 10 year's of incomplete albums. A couple more are like this one was a few hours ago: assembled with over 90% of the work completed but waiting for me to finish a page or two, add journaling (my least favorite part) or other minor tweaks.  This morning I decided "Today is the Day" and finished everything that was outstanding for 2010.

Not perfect, but done!

Most of what I did today was journaling. When it comes to journaling, I am a horrible procrastinator. You know how some people have math test anxiety? Not me, I love math, but the sight of a blank essay book scares me to death! So I tend to put it off journaling because it is so hard to get it perfectly. Today, I decided I'd rather have it done than perfect and incomplete. So I just grabbed my journaling pen and started writing in all those blank boxes the first thing that came to mind.

In order to wrap this album up, I utilized Studio J digital scrapbooking on several pages. These beautiful pages mix perfectly with my traditional paper pages. This title page is from the Year In Review Express Collection, so all I just dropped my pictures in and updated the title and journaling.



I also mixed full layouts with pocket pages. For example, I had several random pictures of things that happened over the summer that didn't really fit on layouts, but helped tell the story of what we were doing that year. I used the Horizontal Divided Page Protectors (Design 2) to include these pictures in my album. I created the journaling card in the top left pocket in Studio J.


I also used Flip Flaps throughout when I had more pictures than space on my pages. This allowed more room for the titles, journaling, embellishments and just space for everything to breathe :)

A stack of 4 " x 6" pictures with Flip Flaps

3" x 3" Flip Flaps to add a mini-book to my Christmas page
I finished the album off by putting the year in a Label Holder and clipping it to the spine. Now this album truly is shelf-ready.


So, I've shared my secret of incomplete albums. Now it is your turn! Do you have unfinished projects waiting for just a few minutes to wrap up? Tell me about it in the comments.

Keep Creating,
Rebecca