IMP Blog Team Melinda Staley | Week 1 Planning For 2022

Hi everyone! Melinda here on the blog today to explore my approach to scrapping everyday life with you. I’ve been scrapping for 25 years and have tried all sorts of styles and projects in both paper and digital during that time. My first love in scrapping has always been event-style scrapping, especially as it pertained to recording the lives and growth of my children. As they’ve gotten older and have started to leave my house I’ve moved to scrapping more about ME, and that has made it easier to fill in the spaces around the days where the events happen when recording more of my everyday life. While I’ve completed one daily photography project in 2009, it is a lot. Even weekly is more than I find I can do over a long period of time like a year given the other time commitments I have in my life currently. So a monthly or bi-weekly project is more of the pace that I am comfortable with saying I can manage this year.  We will have to see how things go. I’m good with a single 2 page spread for each month if that is all that happens. Things could also fluctuate a bit during the year, and that is OK.

I have primarily scrapped in a square format since I found this hobby so long ago. I have done smaller projects in other sizes and orientations, but square is where I am most comfortable and what most of my supplies I have collected are designed for. Since I am primarily a digital scrapper, I scrap in the full 12×12 inch size. I mainly print my pages at 8×8 inches though as the cost is much less, and I have found it to be easier to physically handle – especially for smaller children. 8×8 albums also take up much less shelf space giving me room to store them where they are more easily accessed by family when desired. I save my pages at both 12×12 and 8×8 sizes when they are finished, as the 12×12 can always be resized to smaller dimensions without significant loss if I want to print in a different size format later.

For long-term and larger projects I have found one of the best things I can do to help me get to a completed project is to choose a set of products to use, and then sticking with them with only the occasional variation. Limiting my choices helps me get it done because I spend less time thinking about it and more time scrapping. Being a digital scrapper the first decision I need to make is what style of page and templates I want to use for this particular project. I’ve gone through phases over the years in style of scrapping, and that is a good thing! It means I’ve explored and tried all sorts to find what works best for me. Lately I’ve found myself using pocket style pages of various types, with artsy pocket page styles being my favorite. Make my grids just a bit messy and ‘out of the box’ please! These templates still follow the basic grid style, but some blocks are painted and grungy for blending and photo spots can be placed on top across the boxes below. My current favorite templates are the following, and I use them for several different types of projects or individual pages right now.

Anna Aspnes FotoInspired Templates
Rachel Jefferies Pocket Art Signature Kits Templates  [most pocket page templates are included in the bundles only still] Brittish Designs Painted Pocket Templates

I’m thinking that along with the Life Stories collections this year, I’m going to use the pocket page templates from Rachel Jefferies that are included in her Pocket Art Signature series. They have more straight line pocket edges, but still offer some ‘messy’ to my artsy side as well.

I will close today’s post with a peek at some of my pocket-style pages from previous years. I hope you find some things in them inspiring as you consider what you want your scrapbook for 2022 to look like. All credits for these pages, and a few others if they were part of a 2 page spread, can be viewed through my IMP Blog Post Pinterest Board found HERE.

Faves 2017 – each month of the year had a dedicated Faves page made from the monthly template by Nettio Designs and also a supporting page featuring photos of some of the listed faves items in a pocket style format. I started this because I discovered that Shutterfly requires a minimum of 20 pages in a photo book and I needed the second page for each month so that I would have enough pages at the end of the year to print my project. I’m showing the January through April pages here. This was the first year that I really took on the pocket style for an extended time.

Disney March 2019 – Confession: I most definitely failed at doing a 2020 and 2021 project like I had done for several previous years. I got a lot of 2020 done, but this darn pandemic kept dragging out and messing everything up constantly. I needed some happy things to think about, so I switched gears and started working in earnest on the first Disney trip I had taken since I was a kid with my daughter in 2019. It is a work in progress still. I’ve got more than 136 pgs done so far and the end is finally coming into sight.

Misc everyday pages – My experiences with the 2 above projects and some others have definitely steered me into the pocket-style express lanes a lot of the time now for pages of all themes. It creeps into my various everyday pages quite frequently. Here are a few of those.