I have been meaning to create a scrapbook specifically for the beginning scrapbook class I teach for a while. A LONG while. But the idea of putting pages in a book that my family wouldn’t think to look at bugged me.
I use Stacy Julian’s Library of Memories approach to photo and page storage, and while I love sharing my albums with my students, I didn’t always have what I wanted to show when I wanted to show it.

Enter this past May’s Layout A Day challenge. The theme was scrap your style, and Lain Ehmann created prompts designed to help you figure out what you liked and didn’t like to do and look at on your scrapbook pages. One of her prompts was “Why do you scrapbook?”
While I created a simple digital page about the subject, I really didn’t feel like I had completely answered the question. There are so many reasons I scrapbook. A simple list just doesn’t cut it for me.
So I’ve got these two thoughts brewing in the back of my mind when I decide to start making a list about the things I want to have in a sample album.  And then I get it:

I can make an album that showcases all sorts of techniques with the theme being why I scrapbook. And then it gets better (I think) I can make a page about a reason, and then on the other side of the two page spread I can have a sample page that shows how I document that reason in my everyday albums. This excites me so much!

So here’s my first page:
There are some things I could have done to tighten up the page from a design stand point. But I’ve demonstrated a monochromatic scheme, used a quote as a title, hand made my own embellishment (yes I made the flower! Thank you Cheryl!), mixed patterns, cropped and matted. Well, there are a lot of things I can use this as a sample for during the class, including what not to do as well. Next time, I’ve got to remember to stand up while moving things around, so I can SEE what’s working, and what’s not. Mythbusters, while a blast to watch can be distracting while completing a page.

I’ll post more pages from the album as I go. This is going to be FUN.