31 Pages in 31 Days: 8/3/13

Happy Saturday! Is it a scrapbookin' kinda day for you? I hope so! Summers seem to be either feast or famine in regards to papercrafting… either you have MORE time than normal to devote to it, or ZERO time like normal to devote to it. Hope you're making time for developing the creative outlet that our souls long for, whether your artistic medium is stamps and paper, or something else!

It's NOT a scrapbooking day for me, sadly! We're gearing up for VBS week at our old church, and this weekend is consumed with reunion activities for my hubby's high school class. Not sure why, but lately I feel compelled to note that Mike is seven years old than me. But anyway, I have posts set up for you even though I'm swamped, and I'll check back in at night to answer questions you might have.

I promised you an easy sports layout, and here it is. The color scheme is generic–Pumpkin Pie, Night of Navy and Garden Green–and the pennants are non-specific, so this page can be used for any time of sports and any ages of the athletes, too. If your family is into sports, Pennant Parade is a great choice, AND it has a coordinating punch, so making tons of cute banners and pennants in any color you want is super easy!

You could make the pennant handles from paper, but for a nice 3-D touch, I used toothpicks. I cut off the pointy ends with my Craft & Rubber Scissors, so there's no chance they will poke into the page protectors when I put them in my album.The pennants are accented with the new Candy Dots "brads"–such handy little things, with no backs to worry about!

This double-page layout is one we'll be working on during Scrapbooking Summer School, and I'm looking forward to seeing what headlines the attendees choose to use for their pages. I used a generic "go team," but other options would be the team name, child's name and jersey number, mascot name, or just "team spirit" or "all-stars" or "score." I'm not one to stand around empty-handed, so I usually man the Big Shot machine and die-cut their headlines for them so we can get even more pages done in a sitting. I used Typeset Alphabet dies for this one.

Got Questions?

I'm often asked why my pages are almost always shown without photos on them. The answer is two-fold. Number one, it's much easier for class attendees to "see" the layouts without cute photos of my kids in the way. To assemble the pages as I designed them (although improv is definitely encouraged!), they must be able to "deconstruct" the page into elements so they can put their own kits together.

Secondly, photos are a great distraction from actually scrapbooking! Many of my class members were skeptical of my no-photos approach when they first started coming to my events, but most agree now that they get way more done by focusing on the layouts first, and popping the photos in afterwards. My layouts are all designed with great flexibility in mind, and most pages can take anywhere from one to six photos, depending on what you need to make fit. I'll be talking more about this style of scrapbooking in future posts.

See you tomorrow for the fourth installment of 31 Pages in 31 Days! If you're challenging yourself and playing along from home, don't forget to tag your photos on Facebook or Twitter with the #31pagesin31days hashtag, and join the conversation on the 31 Pages in 31 Days Facebook Group!