First Pages for Project Life-style Albums

I know many of us struggle to create first and last pages for our Project Life-style albums.  I thought that I would tackle this topic on my first blog post.  I am a 36 year old mother of two girls, a wife and I work full time.  I live in Minnesota and enjoy all things scrappy!  I have been doing Project Life since January 1, 2014.  I quickly tired of the Becky Higgins products and longed for the traditional scrapbook supplies that I had been using since I started scrapbooking in 2007.  My first scrappy guru was Melissa Stinson.  I loved her simplicity, emphasis on documenting, and her embellishment clusters.  She has an amazing sense for design and balance. Sadly, she has retired from design teams and youtube. About the time Melissa Stinson retired I ran across The Scrappery, an Australian scrapbook kit club.  I fell in love with their style. So began my obsession with all things super-embellished!

The first page of my current album is inspired by Kayla, one of the girls at The Scrappery.  Kayla is an amazing Project-life and traditional 12x12 scrapbooker.  She experiments with mixed media, texture, mists and super-embellishing. I adored her bravery with mixed media, but I struggled to create my own pages like hers. Finally I came to a realization: in order for me to change my style I needed to "scrap-lift".  

So I started small and used what I had on hand to create my version of what she had created.  Suddenly I was using Heidi Swapp Color Shine, Kaiser Kraft Rhinestones and a ton of gold!  "Scrapl-lifing" a few Project Life-style spreads made me more confident to start creating masterpieces of my own and it helped me learn new techniques.  

Most of the products I used for the first page of my album are from Hip Kit Club. I have been a subscriber since January.  You can find full product listings on her website for all items in the kits. They are a great value and always have the latest and coolest products! I usually make a first page when my album is about half way full. Then I can use up my kit leftovers and it will coordinate, more or less, with the pages in my album.

You can find me on instagram @scrappysarah and on youtube as Sarah McClellan.  I am a member of several scrappy Facebook groups as well.  A few that I frequent are: Project Life Obsessed, Scrapaholics Anonymous, Project Lifers, and Hip Kit Club Member Forum.  If you've gotten this far, thank you!  Look for another post tomorrow.  I plan on doing a post-a-day on different scrappy topics!