SO EXCITED! My 2011 Yearbook has arrived!!!!

This is one of the most exciting days of the year for me! It's the day I receive my yearbook in the mail, all printed and bound and beautiful! I prefer to do my books hard-bound in one book. Some people prefer to print them separately and keep them in a more traditional scrapbook. Still others just keep them on the computer. But oh, the bound book is so exciting! The price, of course, is that I have to wait a full year to have the satisfaction of seeing my finished, printed pages. But to me it is SO worth it!

Here is a photo of all my yearbooks. Each of them was printed at Cherishbound.com. Lucky for me, I discovered digi-scrapping at a very convenient time--right before I met my husband. So every year of my marriage is scrapped. I usually come up with some sort of title for the year. I talk all about it here. Anyway, this year's book is "Room 2 Grow" in honor of having twins this year! As you can see, each book is quite different in color scheme, but I love how organized and similar and NEAT they are. That's the kind of person I am, I guess. It gives me satisfaction to see them lined up all nicely on the shelf, so easy to pull out and look through.

I was talking to a neighbor of mine who also does digital--but very different from me. She doesn't know Photoshop and has no desire to. She uses the templates on Shutterfly, which I understand are quite versitle. She doesn't have the full creative control that I have, but she doesn't want it. Her books are simple and straight-forward. And that works for her. And that's what I love about digital scrapbooking--you can do it YOUR way, and there are so many options, you can just do what works for YOU! So, as excited as I am about my book, and as much I want to share how I do it, do it your own way. This is just how it works for me.

So here are some photos of my new book! This book cost about $150 to print. It has 121 pages, full color, hard bound on glossy pages, and it is SO high quality. I have had things printed at Blurb, and though I love their stuff, I reserve my precious yearbooks for Cherishbound only.

And here are some of my favorite layouts (that I haven't already posted)

Some New Layouts and My Twins Announcement

I've been getting farther and farther behind in my scrapbooking. Having three children under the age of three and working full time leaves me with very little free time to do anything! But this week I just started scrapping every time I pump. Yes--I can scrapbook and pump at the same time! There's another reason why digital rocks! I managed to get about twelve layouts done! Hooray! Now I'm only about three layouts "behind" in each book. And that's THREE books I'm working on right now--one for my Year Six yearbook, which I am calling, "Year Six: Room 2 Grow" and then I have Scarlett's 1st year baby book, and Ripley's first year baby book. One thing I've noticed is that my style has changed a little bit from how it was in previous years. I am so busy with so little time that my pages have become a lot more straightforward and simple--lots of picures evenly placed, with minimal elements and "froo-froo." Anyway, I thought I'd share a few layouts from all three that I've done this week!

From Scarlett & Ripley's Books: With their books, I don't have time to scap them completely different. So I do one page for one baby, then re-do it for the other, changing the colors a bit, maybe swapping out a picture and updating the journaling where needed.

All of the above pages used a kit by Diane Rigdon--I am doing both books all with one kit.

And here are a few pages from my Year Six book:

In this one, I used the Diane Rigdon kit, Ma Bebe, that I am using for the twins' books. I use it in my Year Six book whenever I do a major page about the twins. All my maternity pages used this kit as well. So yeah, I'm going to be SO sick of this kit when I'm all done!

For this page, I used Lindsay Jane's Flower Power kit. I just love her kits. They are SO big and so diverse that you can use them for several layouts and not re-use anything. I love her glitter styles--I don't use styles much, but Lindsay Jane makes them for all her kits. You just load the style in your Style menu, and whatever layer you have selected takes that style. Very easy. That's how I did the glitter borders for all the pictures.

I always do a page each year about work. I think it's a huge part of your life that is easy to leave unaddressed in scrapbooks. The hard part is that there are rarely any pictures for work. I never have any of my husband at work, that's for sure. He works at a hospital. Luckily this year I had pictures from the baby shower my department threw me in May. For this page, I used the School Days kit by Aprilisa at Gottapixel. I also used several actions from Atomic Cupcake--the Med Torn Bottom Action, and the Sketch & Paint action--never used that one before. It's how I got the brown coloring along the top. Oh, and I also used the Distressed Edge action along the top. LOVE that action. And I made the teal ribbon all by myself! Go me!

I don't know why, but I just LOVE the way this page turned out. Sadly, I had issues saving it, and had to re-do it all again after I finished it! I was so mad! For this page, I used Connie Prince's Backyard BBQ kit. Wow. All these pages were made with kits from Gotta Pixel! I used a lot of actions on this page too--mainly the Folded Tear action--HIGHLY reccommend that one. I use it A LOT. And then I used the Cut Out action, which I have never used before and I love how it worked out. I did it on all the pictures--that's how I got the white border around each picture.

For these pages, I actually used my Ma Bebe kit from Dianne Rigdon, but I recolored it from red to peach so that it matched the hats and ribbons in the pictures. Here's an upclose shot of the announcement I made for my twins births--I can't BELIEVE I never posted it on this blog! My sister Nicki did such a FABULOUS job on the photography! Don't you love the little knitted hat? She made that, too!