Author Archives: amysolovay

6″x8″ Travel-Themed Scrapbooking Layout: Santa Maria Island

Plus the Story of How Our Sailing Voyage Halfway Around the World Got Started

Scrapbooking Layout Featuring Photos of My Husband Mike Refueling Our Sailboat, Viva, Docked at the Marina in Santa Maria Island in the Azores, Portugal

Do you have travel-themed photos that you want to display in a photo book, memory book or mini scrapbook album? If so, here’s some inspiration for a 2-page, 6″x8″ travel-themed scrapbook layout you might like to consider. You’d want to use this layout if you have 2 large-sized travel pictures you’d like to display. The photos I used are both 5″x7″; the one on the left is zoomed out and oriented vertically, and the one on the right is zoomed in and oriented horizontally. I trimmed it down a bit so it would fit on the page.

Of course, you can adapt this layout to other sizes of photos if you want to get creative. There are infinite possible variations of this layout you could try.

Craft Supplies I Used to Create This Travel-Themed Scrapbooking Layout:

49 and Market Foundations 6x8 6-Ring Binder in the Vintage Sky (Blue) Color; There are also sage green and cream-colored versions of this album available.

49 and Market Foundations 6×8 6-Ring Binder in the Vintage Sky (Blue) Color; There are also sage green and cream-colored versions of this album available.

This scrapbooking layout is going to live in a 6″x8″ six-ring binder by 49 and Market called “Foundations”. They make several different styles of page protectors available for these albums. I’m using the single-opening page protector from the “Everyday Basics” style .
Graphic 45 12 x 12 Patterned Paper from the Catch Of The Day Collection: Seas The Sunshine . I cut out the cut-aparts I wanted to use from the “A” side of this paper and put them aside to use in other projects. I used some of the borders from the “A” side of the paper to emphasize the edges of my photos. Then I used what was left of the “B” side to create the background for this page. This paper is AMAZING. It is a lot more striking in person than it looks on your computer monitor. At the time I ordered this, I only got one sheet of it because I wasn’t sure how I like it, but I’m going to buy more of it to use on other layouts.
For the main background, I used a couple of gray sheets of cardstock from the 6×8 Christmas Cardstock Pad
by Scrapbook.com.
To stamp “Santa Maria Island”, I used wood-mounted rubber stamps by the now-defunct stamp company formerly known as PSX.
I also used a circle template to outline the rubber stamped letters before cutting them out. I recommend this circle template to use for that purpose.

The Story Behind This Travel-Themed Scrapbooking Layout

I used to do a lot of scrapbooking and paper crafting back in the years from 2005-2009. Then I took a break from paper crafting, because for one thing, I got a great freelance writing gig working for About.com as their crochet expert, and I also moved aboard a sailboat. Sailing and paper crafting don’t mix well, and crochet consumed most of my time, so my paper crafts took a backseat.

More than a decade elapsed, and in the meanwhile, my husband Mike and I sailed halfway around the world together. Pictured above, you can see Mike in Santa Maria Island, Portugal, which is an island in the chain of Azores that’s out in the Atlantic Ocean.

This is the first scrapbooking layout I’ve made in a long time — I think it might even be the first one I’ve made since around 2010 or so.

In 2008, my husband Mike and I were living in Santa Barbara, California in a comfortable place that was only a quick walk from the beach. I was working at my dream job designing fabric for a local sportswear manufacturer. In my free time, when I wasn’t at the beach, I had been learning to scrapbook and was working at building craft websites. Mike was working as a sales and marketing manager for a local audio-visuals company. Life was just about as perfect as it could be. Those were fun times!

Then the Great Financial Crisis unfolded. Mike and I both lost our jobs, and we were startled to realize we would be homeless in less than 6 months if we didn’t take action.

We made a list of all the possibilities for what we could do next. The list included things like moving back to Los Angeles, which we did not really want to do, but it seemed like the most viable choice. Most of the other items on the list seemed even less appealing. The craziest item on the list was “Buy a sailboat and move aboard it”. We initially were reluctant to even discuss this item on the list — but the more we reviewed the list, the more we realized that this item, although scary, had a lot of appealing things about it. Every time we discussed it, we kept saying, “Well, it’s crazy, but let’s keep it on the list for a little longer and give it a little more thought”. Eventually we came to the conclusion that it was what we were going to do: Buy a sailboat, move aboard it and go cruising.

We bought boat #1, an Alajuela 38, which turned out to not be the right boat for us. It was an amazing boat, and we ended up meeting some really cool people who also own Alajeulas. Alajuelas are exactly the boat you’d want to take on an offshore cruise. The problem with ours that it wasn’t finished, and Mike decided it would take us too long to finish the project. We were eager to get started.

The boat you see pictured above is Viva, a boat that is just as capable for offshore cruising, but is not as beautiful. No matter. We had some amazing adventures aboard her.

We gave notice on our Santa Barbara apartment and wholeheartedly embraced the life of cruising sailors. We didn’t even maintain a permanent spot in a marina to dock our boat; we went totally transient.

People, this was just about the craziest, scariest thing I have ever done in my life — but it ended up turning out okay. In fact, it was better than okay; it ended up being the adventure of a lifetime.

Usually, the majority of the people who visit the Azores are military people (It’s a seriously strategic location, and the USA maintains a significant military presence there), cargo ship captains and crew and some cruising sailors. The islands do get some tourist traffic, but not as many tourists as I would have expected. Santa Maria Island is completely amazing, with more interesting things to see and do than we were able to cram into our short visit. We want to go back.

Now it’s time for me to document our entire adventure by making new scrapbooks. This is going to sound silly, but I’m actually feeling scared out of my mind about doing this. Which is royally dumb! Scary is encountering a violent storm and gale force winds when you’re two weeks offshore and there’s nowhere to go (and yeah, I’ve been there, done that, and was utterly terrified!) but putting pics in a photo album, well, there shouldn’t be anything even remotely scary about that.

Yet, dumb or not, there is no denying that this project is scaring the living daylights out of me. I have been pondering why that is, and I think it comes down to a couple of things:

Its a massive project. I’ve made a few scrapbooks before, but I never really felt like any of them had to be epic. Also, I have a history of not finishing every project I start, and this gigantic of a project scares me with its overwhelming proportions.

Aside from that, I have my heart set on this project turning out impressive and epic. It scares me to think that maybe my paper crafting skills aren’t as good as they need to be to make this project turn out amazing.

The thing about me is, I get scared at really dumb stuff, but I don’t let those fears stop me from doing what I want to do.

When I first started making scrapbooking projects more than a decade ago, I spent about a week looking at different projects at Scrapbook.com and the now-defunct TwoPeasinaBucket.com, plus reading Creating Keepsakes magazine, plus staring at a blank piece of cardstock in actual terror. This is sooooo silly, right? What I was I really scared of? But the truth is, I was scared then, and I am just as scared now. I know, this is completely ridiculous.

I’m now working as a freelance writer, and I’ve heard other writers confess to feeling fear as they stare at a blank computer screen or a blank journal page. I guess the fear I’m feeling is similar to that. Creativity can be scary…

Last time this fear gripped me, I overcame it and made scrapbook layouts — lots of them.

And this time around, when I held this beautiful “Catch of the Day” scrapbooking paper in my hands, I felt intimidated at the thought of cutting into it. I had the ridiculous urge to file it in my paper organizer, crawl into bed, and take a nap instead of getting started on my epic scrapbooking adventure. But I swallowed that feeling and made this layout anyway. So here it is.

In the photos, which are close variations of each other, you can see my husband Mike preparing to refuel our sailboat, Viva. In the photos, Viva is docked in the marina in Vila do Porto in Santa Maria, Island, Portugal. I estimate that it will most likely take at least eight 6″x8″ photo albums to tell the story of our entire cruising adventure. This scrapbooking layout will most likely be housed in album #4, and there will be journaling on other pages in the album. I am still working on putting the story together, but I didn’t want to wait for that to get started on putting the photos in albums.

Off to a rocky start — I sure hope this process gets easier!

Thanks for reading! I welcome your comments, feedback, insights and constructive criticism (if you have any to offer). Please feel free to make good use of the comments area below. I appreciate it that you chose to spend a portion of your day with me.

Best wishes,

Amy

Find More Travel Scrapbooking Ideas

Check Out More Paper Crafts Ideas

Card Making
Planners, Calendars, Journals and Organizers
Collage Art
Painting
Drawing

Posted By: Amy Solovay

This page was last updated on 2-19-2022.

BEST DEAL on a 2021 Christmas Photo Album Kit: Includes Page Protectors, Cardstock, Stickers and MORE!

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Christmas 2021: Carta Bella Paper 6″ x 8″ Poinsettia Album Kit – 157 Piece Bundle

I went looking for the BEST DEAL on a Christmas photo album, and this is what I found: A Christmas scrapbooking kit that includes a photo album, page protectors, cardstock paper, alphabet letter stickers and a set of dies that says Merry Christmas — all for $19.99!

Are you in need of a Christmas-themed photo album for displaying your holiday photos — or for giving as a Christmas gift to a friend this coming holiday season? If so, I have a suggestion for an album kit I hope you’ll consider: It’s the Carta Bella Christmas Album Kit from Scrapbook.com. This kit is an AMAZING value for the money you spend on it — and it includes ALMOST everything you’ll need for putting your photo album together. (I say almost everything because it doesn’t include adhesive; if you don’t already have an archival-quality, photo-friendly adhesive on hand, you’ll want to make sure you also grab some of that so you’ll have everything you need for putting your album together.)

I went looking for the best deal on a Christmas photo album, and this is the one I ended up buying.

I think this Christmas scrapbooking kit is a truly fantastic value for the money you spend on it. But to be honest, I was a little skeptical about this kit at first, because I’m honestly not a fan of two-ring binders. However, now that I have this one in hand, I’ve had to revise my opinion; it turned out to be a LOT better than I thought it would be.

My first experience with two-ring binders was in the Middle East. All the office supply stores in the Middle Eastern areas I visited had full-sized two-two ring binders available instead of the full-sized three-ring binders I was accustomed to from my school days. The full-sized two-ring binders are not at all ideal for holding loose leaf paper that you use for school or work. My experience was that two-ring notebook paper is much more prone to tearing than three-ring notebook paper is. As it turns out, that third ring somehow seems to alleviate a lot of the pressure on the notebook paper. When using two-ring binders, I had to buy bunches of page reinforcement stickers to use for mending all the torn filler paper in my full-sized two-ring binders — a huge time waster.

So that experience initially soured me on the idea of wanting to ever use a two-ring binder in my scrapbook albums, which need to last much longer than my work notebooks do.

When I first decided to switch over to using 6″x8″-sized photo albums instead of the larger 12″x12″ photo albums I used to use, I initially decided to try a six-ring binder instead of a two-ring binder. The six-ring binder is fantastic! But the biggest downsides with them are the high cost and lack of widespread availability of the page protectors to use with them. I bought two of them, and then the page protectors for them went out of stock at the store where I bought them. I found another source for them and bought the last few packages that source had in stock. Then after that,
I discovered that Scrapbook.com has them in stock, but I decided to hold off on buying more of them in favor of trying a different style of album.

Honestly, I’d prefer to have a simple three-ring binder, but I haven’t yet found a 6″x8″ three-ring photo album I like. (If you know of one, please comment!)

But in this smaller album size — which is 6″ x 8″ — the two-ring binder turned out to not be a deal breaker. I think there are two things saving it from being a disaster:

The page protectors you put in it are substantially heftier and stronger than ordinary notebook paper, and so they are less prone to tearing.
Although the entire album ends up being heavy, this smaller-sized album isn’t as heavy as a full-sized filled notebook, so there’s less of a burden on the pages in this binder than there is on the paper in a full-sized two-ring binder.

I haven’t had this album long enough to comment on how it will hold up in the long term, but so far it’s doing well. It seems pretty sturdy overall. When it’s filled with layouts and photos, the album turns out to be heavier than you would probably expect, but so far the binder is holding them effectively.

In the end, I decided to give this kit a try because I thought the deal on it was too good to pass up. The poinsettia-print Christmas album alone sells for $12 and change, and the Christmas cardstock pad sells for $18 full price or $9.99 on sale. So for $19.99 total, with this bundle, you also get the page protectors, stickers and dies in addition to the photo album and cardstock pad. Overall, the bundle looked like it would be a really great value for the money, so I decided to give it a try. I’m SO GLAD I did. I liked this kit so much that I’m likely to go back and buy a second one.

The poinsettias printed on the album cover are lovely and festive. This print coordinates beautifully with the prints on the other products in the “Home for Christmas” collection by Carta Bella (which are sold separately). I didn’t buy any of the other products, but if you’re inclined to do so, those look super pretty and festive, too.

The cardstock pad that comes with this bundle offers you a varied selection of Christmas-friendly colors that are all totally usable (although they aren’t an exact match for the colors printed on the cover of the pad. In the cardstock pad I got, there are two reds shown on the color, but there aren’t really 2 reds; the one that looks like the darker red on the cover is really a brown — which is fine with me, as I find browns easier to use in my pages than the reds are).

Overall, this is really a fantastic selection of cardstock colors. The grays, browns and black are totally easy to use, even if you’re a beginner to scrapbooking. If you have cardstock left over when you’re finished putting together your album, you’ll find that these colors work well for designing everyday layouts in addition to your Christmas layouts. Aside from the greens and the one red color, the other colors are all highly usable neutral colors.

The black alphabet letter stickers come in a basic, narrow font. The font is a great size and shape for using on 6×8 pages.

The page protectors are high quality and attractive. You can get them as part of the kit, and you can also buy them separately at Scrapbook.com. The album will hold many more page protectors than the amount that comes with the album — so if you take a lot of photos during the holidays, I recommend picking up an extra pack of 30 page protectors. The page protectors are also available in packs of 10 in case you need a different amount. The album has a 2″ spine and holds bunches of pages. I haven’t tested its upper limits to know for sure how many it will hold, but I’m guessing it would hold around 50 filled page protectors, assuming you make pages that are relatively flat and not too weighed down with heavily textured embellishments.

The die looks like it will be really useful, although I haven’t had a chance to use it yet. In addition to using it for making your scrapbook album pages, you could also use it for making your own professional-looking Christmas cards to send to family, colleagues and friends.

Overall, I’m more than satisfied with my purchase of this Christmas photo album kit. If you celebrate Christmas, I’m delighted to recommend it to you, too.

Where to Buy This Christmas Photo Album Kit:

Click here to shop for the Carta Bella 6″ x 8″ Poinsettia Album Kit – 157 Piece Bundle — at Scrapbook.com.

Over to You:

Have you found a better deal on a Christmas photo album or Christmas-themed scrapbooking kit? If so, please give us the details! We’d love to hear about the Christmas-themed scrapbooking goodies you’re LOVING for Christmas 2021.

Also: If you have had any long-term experience with this album or with two-ring binders in general, how did it work out for you? Thanks in advance for any insights you have to share.

More Christmas Crafts You Might Enjoy:

Big Book of Christmas Crochet, Published by Annie’s

Posted By: Amy Solovay

Are You Ready for the Holiday Season This Year?

This photo collage shows bunches of different Christmas crochet projects. These projects are all current for Christmas 2021, and are ideal for Christmas gifts or decorating your own home for the holidays. Ideas include Christmas tree motifs, wreaths, Christmas blankets and more. These designs are all available as free crochet patterns on the Internet.

The holiday season is coming up quickly. We’re more than halfway through September, and next month is Halloween. Then the following month is Christmas, followed by the New Year.

Are you ready?

Now’s a great time to make a list of all the most important thinks you want to get done before the holiday rush. This is particularly important if you want to make holiday crafts. You can’t do everything, much as you might like to. Having the list prioritized on paper makes it so much easier to remember the most important things, and to not get sidetracked by less important stuff. Your list can also be a helpful motivator for accomplishing your most important goals.

So, what’s going to be on your list?

Making a few Thanksgiving crafts for your holiday table?
Making all your Christmas cards this year?
Making unique Christmas gifts for your friends and loved ones?
Adding a few cute handmade Christmas ornaments to your stash?

Our holiday craft patterns and tutorials could help you with any of these worthy goals. You’re invited to load up on patterns and instructions for any of the holiday (or other) craft projects we’ve posted.

Pictured Above:

A little Christmas tree ornament is a quick, fun holiday craft project.
Festive crocheted potholders could add a little cheer to your Christmas cooking and baking this year.
A lacy Christmas wreath would be a stylish addition to your Christmas decorations.
You could delight your Christmas party guests with pretty beaded napkin rings in red, green and gold (or any Christmas-friendly color scheme you like.)
This puff stitch crochet Christmas tree is just the right size for making into a pillow front. Another alternative: You could use it for making blankets, throws or afghans.
You can crochet two different alternating squares to make this eye-catching Christmas blanket.

Wishing you and yours the happiest, healthiest, most creative holiday season ever!

Blessings,

Amy Solovay

An Early (Crocheted) Snowfall!

Crochet Snowflake Trivet: Free Pattern and Step-By-Step Tutorial

It’s September. Is it snowing yet?

No?

Well, who cares? I love crocheting snowflakes.

Free Crochet Pattern — Beginner-Friendly Snowflake Trivet:

Snowflakes sometimes look complicated, but they need not be complicated to crochet. This one is so easy that even a total beginner could make it. I’ve posted both the free crochet snowflake pattern, along with a step-by-step tutorial showing work-in-progress photos of how the project came together. I’ve also included detailed instructions which will help you make your own snowflake trivet if you’d like to — even if you’ve never crocheted before.

Snowflake Appliques:

If you look carefully at the photo, you’ll see that the snowflake trivet is 3-dimensional; the project incorporates metal bottle caps, which give it most of its shape. If you’d prefer to make flatter snowflakes that can be used as appliques, I suggest trying this easy crochet snowflake applique.

More Crocheted Snowflakes:

Here at KnittingCrochetCrafts.com, the humble snowflakes is one of our favorite design themes. There’s something irresistible about snowflakes; every time I see one, it seems to me that their symmetry and their intricacy just beg to be captured in crochet. We’ve posted plenty of crochet snowflake patterns, including patterns for beaded crochet snowflakes and more. I hope you’ll take advantage of these and all the other crochet patterns and free resources we’ve made available for you, and that you’ll enjoy them.

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