I guess it’s natural that a photographer should also want to scrapbook. I used to complete about three layouts a month—at least until we lost our home to a fire. Then I stopped. I was able to salvage some supplies, and other kind people gave me more. I have a craft room now that the boys have moved into their own homes. However, I have not been an active scrapbooker in five years or so.

Well, I started scrapbooking again—sort of. I’m making a couple of mini-albums. Each year I’ve kept a gratitude list during November. Sometimes, I’ve challenged myself by using the number of the day as the number of things I would list that day. I’m not going to do the math to figure out how many things would be in the list at the end of the month.

This month, I have joined Jacquie Smith for her gratitude challenge. She provides a prompt for each day and a creative way to present the response. I admit that I’m not following her creative prompts so much. However, I am looking through my pictures to find something and I am putting the photographs in a gate fold mini album that I made using product from my stash (and my kitchen). I have not yet written the journaling for each photograph, but I am putting them in the book and making notes in my Happy Planner to refer to later.

Here are some pictures of my book so far.

I used the tutorial here to assemble the book. I normally do not use white as the base for a scrapbook page. However I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with embellishments, so white provided a neutral base.

There are quite a few little pockets to tuck journaling cards or tags or other things. Each of the six large pages has a two-sided pullout card of its own to use for photographs and/or journaling. Most of the papers came from an older My Mind’s Eye pack (I don’t know the name of the pack, though).

To make the chipboard cover, I used a cereal box, cut to size, covered with Kraft paper, and then glued on some patterned paper. I found a piece of ribbon with a motif that matched the patterned paper and used a piece of velcro to hold the book close.

I am in the process of putting together my December Daily/Journal Your Christmas mini-album now using a different technique. It’s nearly done, waiting to filled during the month of December. These little books are easily displayed and get images off the camera and out of the computer.