Clubbing and Touring

Tonight is Crop Club. Mom & Kathy - my most faithful customers - are here. Summer is asleep (at least, she is trying to get sleepy!). Right now, she is laughing, but she'll settle down. I just finished professionally cutting three-inch daisies for Kathy. Now, I turn my attention to the next page in my Biltmore album.

This page continues with pix of the Winery tour, and I want to keep this one as simple as the last. I decide to mat the pictures using the old trick of bringing out subtle hues in them (image 1).


I select the mats from the Cottage Storybox. The battery in my camera is dead, so I have to recharge it before taking any more pictures, so I take this opportunity to do a little paging (my term for staging a scrapbook page).

In my stash, I know I have a small 3-D sticker of barrels that will go with this page and several large 2-D stickers of wine corks. I'm not planning much journaling for this page, and I'm planning to keep captions minimal. I find another epoxy sticker with a quotation on it that also might work well on this page.

Kathy ponders, "Why aren't there ever any icons on Father's Day stickers of the stuff that my dad does? There's just golf or fishing." I say, "Yea, they should have a TV. That's universal."

"Or computer," Kathy offers. I joke, "I doubt they'll ever have any firearm stickers!"

I consider background paper as well, but ultimately decide against it. It's tempting to want to use printed background paper with every page, but often the print will visually usurp the photos, which should bve the focal point of the page.

Mom needs help cutting paper. She's cutting a mat for Ethan's sonogram. I show her my pencil technique, then suggest using a photo sleeve or sticker sleeve to hold the sonogram. Sonograms are printed on facsimile paper and will deteriorate quickly if left to the air, particularly where it's humid. So, it is advisable to protect them within a scrapbook using a method called encapsulation. Another option is scanning but sonograms are very grainy and scanning could further obscure the image.

Looking through my pink project tote, I find a leftover strip of background paper I already used that combines all the colors of my photo mats for this page. I add that to the layout (image 2).

The epoxy sticker I've chosen will leave a large amount of white space if I apply it solely. So, I decide to give it a little help by cutting a semi-circle with one of the circle patterns and custom cutting blades and mat. I choose the same purple as the photo mat. I add the circle to my layout. (image 3).

Mom makes a mistake in her journaling. She writes "all pictures taken in Odenton" but one wasn't. One was taken @ St. Agnes Hospital. I suggest that she write in parenthesis (except 6 mos).

About this time, my camera battery has recharged, so I take all the photos up to this point. Then, I number and title each picture (1 - Fermentation; 2 - Barreling; 3 - Corking), adhere all items to the page, including the small 3-D sticker of barrels. Next, I add the cork stickers.

Mom wants some Ebony ABC/123 stickers. I go upstairs and get her a set.

The last element is journaling. I'm having a good handwriting day, which I'm glad about. I can't decide on just one ink color, so I use a combo of three to correspond to the photo mats. I choose purple and periwinkle fine-tip pens and petina precious elements pen. I normally just dive right into writing, but because I'm writing directly onto the page aand because I want to use each of the three ink colors as equally as possible, I scribble a draft separately first (image 4).

After writing, I decide to carefully lift and move the barreling pic and mat to the right to make everything a little more symmetrical (image 5).

That completes this page! I wipe photos down with the polishing cloth, slide on page protector!