IMP Design Team Ashley Krueger | 2015 Cover Page
Today I am sharing some of my Album Cover/Intro/Title Pages as part of Meg’s Week 2 Challenge from the In My Pocket Life Stories class. I love putting together these starter pages for my annual pocket albums. I am a storyteller at heart and, even with the continuous nature of documenting of the year, I like to treat my album as a “book” of sorts. For me, the Cover Page is the starting point for the story of the year.
Even though my Intro Pages have varied throughout the years, they all seem to follow the same formula. I typically start with a 4×6 pocket for the a title card that includes the year. From there, I like to include a photo of both my partner and I together, and then individual photos of us. Lastly, all of my Intro Pages include some sort of “where we are right now” type of journaling.
Over the years I have included lots of different things to fill in the remaining pockets. Sometimes, I have added our last name(s) or quote cards. Other times, I simply added coordinating patterned paper. There were also times that I would use a pocket or two for telling stories related to my One Little Word.
One of my big memory keeping goals for 2022 is to complete pocket albums for the past few years. Currently, I am working on my 2015 album and I wanted to share how I put together the Intro Page using the Life Stories Kit and The Practical Scapper’s Everyday Life Kit. While it still has most of the aspects of my usual formula, I ended up making small changes as 2015 was the year my first child was born and I wanted to include that as a jumping off point for the story of our year.
When pulling photos from early 2015, I knew I wanted to include this landscape photo that I took while working the first day of the year and a photo of my partner and I from New Years Eve. I used the colors of the photos to help guide my choices for the cards and embellishments and the two January kits matched so well. Working from the top of the page to the bottom, first, I grabbed the blue patterned title card from the Everyday Life kit and added the number die cuts from the Life Stories Collab kit before printing.
The center row of 3×4 pockets I wanted to use for photos and little details about us. I didn’t have great individual photos of us so I used another couple photo and a photo that showed my growing belly. Both were not great quality so I printed them black and white. I paired them with two filler cards. The first is the You + Me card from Everyday Life which I embellished with a floral from the Life Stories Collab Kit. For the second card, I cropped one of the 12×12 papers down and printed it to 3×4. On top I added a hexagon label and a number sticker from my stash. I finished that card with an arrow I pieced together from an exclamation point.
I finished this cover page with a 4×6 journaling card talking about where we were in life at the beginning of the year. This card was made by layering two of The Practical Scrapper cards. The lined portion is from a succulent card and the other is the triangle card designed for the Life Stories Kit. Before printing, I added the Here We Go digital sticker from the Life Stories Collab Kit as well.
You can also watch me put this page together in the process video below. I hope you feel inspired to try something new for your cover page and I encourage you to join us in the IMP Life Stories for more fun challenges and lots of inspiration for telling your everyday stories. Lastly, I invite you to join me on Instagram @ashleyamak to check out more of my day to day creative work.