3-to-Inspire with Ingunn

 

Happy Saturday, friends! For my 3-to-Inspire this week, I want to focus on keeping things clean and simple. I was hit with a pretty bad case of RMS (Reverse Midas Syndrome, where everything I touch turns to crap) this winter. RMS usually requires some time off, which I took, and it also helps to flip through old albums to remind myself of what I love about this hobby. 

This time, my RMS was definitely based in design – I felt like everything I made was ugly, especially compared to what I was seeing online from other scrapbookers. After looking through my albums, I noticed that the pages I loved the most (at least design-wise) were super simple, with the photos in focus and just an embellishment or two to add interest. When I try to be all cool and fancy with layering of die cuts, the way I see so many scrapbookers I admire do, it just doesn’t look right. And you know what? That’s okay. I can love those pages from afar, while keeping my own stuff ridiculously simple. So this one is for us clean and simple gals, which means I’ll keep my three categories this week more vague than usual - instead of listing specific products, I'm writing a recipe for a clean and simple Life Crafted spread:

(1) Your favorite embellishment from a kit to highlight 

(2) A striking title

(3) An additional embellishment to make your title look less naked

In order to keep the focus on my photos here, I spread my main photo across the two pages (the measurements of this entire spread is 10.5in x 8.25 in), leaving space for journaling underneath. I added an instax page protector in order to include some of the underwater photos we took while snorkeling around the cay, and left a white border around them to help them stand out (and have room for captions).

I left one pocket empty so that I could highlight my very favorite piece from the Travelogue kit – this puffy circle designed by Elif Sahin. I just adore the design of this thing, and I am trying to be better at not hoarding my favorite pieces. I added another sticker in the same size to the back of the page protector, and, happily, the color matched the coral in one of the photos. Woot!

Next, I added the my title using the beautiful puffy letter stickers from the kit. This color is so perfect for beach vacations!

One of the chipboard stickers matched my title perfectly, so I adhered it on top of the title. And then I stopped. No more products! And it’s okay. Bonus: now my kit will stretch so far!

Thanks for hanging in there with me as I attempt to scrapbook therapy my way out of Reverse Midas Syndrome – if you’ve been feeling the same way, try to look through your albums to remember what it is about scrapbooking that makes you happy!