Hello! Kristie here again with another mini album. This album is very special and dear to me. This month my husband's family is celebrating their 50th anniversary since arriving in Canada. My husband's grandparents, along with their nine children, immigrated to Canada from Holland in 1967. Just imagine that for a minute. Nine children! I can't even make it to the grocery store some days with my two girls.
To celebrate their anniversary, some of the family set out to organize a party full of fun games, great food and tricky family trivia. They asked for help in all areas and I volunteered to make a scrapbook. My husband's aunt had just recently completed the daunting task of scanning and identifying over 1400 photos. Thankfully she narrowed those down to about 150 to cover the years leading up to their big move and their first decade in Canada.
I used a Becky Higgins' album I had on hand and stocked up on Jen Hadfield's Simple Life collection. I knew I wanted a collection with a neutral color scheme to coordinate with the black and white and sepia tones of most of the photos. What made this collection even more perfect for this family album was the plant and farming themes that are recurrent in the images and patterns.
To complete this album I used the 6x6 paper pad, eight pieces of 12x12 paper, the 6x12 accent sticker sheet, tiny word stickers and the die cut pack. My favorite piece in the entire collection was the 12x12 cut apart sheet of seed package images. I used the images to set the tone for most of my layouts.
In addition to the products from Jen Hadfield's Simple Life, I also used labels for journalling. I made these using my Silhouette Cameo. If you're interested in learning how to make them as well, please check out my tutorial here. The labels add so much "value" to the album as they identify who is in the photos and the year. The woodgrain pattern on the labels matched perfectly to the woodgrain present in the collection as well!
Are these photos not unbelievable? They are so beautiful. When I first looked at the selection of images I was given to include in the album, I was surprised at just how many family photos there were. Then I was surprised at how many candid photos there were as well. Nowadays I feel like we have the luxury of having so many photos, but how many of them are photos with your entire family?
This collection was definitely different than what I would normally choose to work with, but I loved it. My favorite patterns were the bicycles, the plaid, and the orange floral. Even though there were a lot of neutral patterns, the pops of color and whimsy throughout made the album current and yet timeless.
In addition to the stickers and die cuts, I also incorporated the cut aparts from the 6x6 paper pad and the branding strips from the 12x12 papers to create layers and embellishment clusters. This collection does have more dimensional products like wood veneer and puffy stickers that I would have loved to use, but the album I was working in did not allow for expansion and I feared my album would become too thick had I used them.
This album was definitely a labor of love. It really helped that I had the photos organized and labelled for me, but working with one single collection was a real time saver as well. Even though this album took way longer to complete than initially anticipated (isn't that always the case?), it was so worth it to see my husband's family view the scrapbook while at the party.
If you'd like to see how this album came together and the steps I took to complete it, I have a series of videos on my YouTube channel. You can view the playlist here. I also have an album share video where you can see the complete album and the pieces of the collection I have left over. Spoiler alert: there isn't much! I used most of the paper and die cuts and only have a few stickers and phrase stickers left. I hope to incorporate those into my weekly Project Life or they would be perfectly suited for card making as well.
I hope you enjoyed a peak into this album and seeing how you can use Jen Hadfield's Simple Life collection when documenting heritage photos. If you'd like to purchase this collection or anything else in the shop, be sure to use the code KRISTIE to save 20%. Thank you!
xoxo
Kristie
Kristie
Great vintage album.
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