Pocket Life with Trina: Keeping It Simple

Hi, it's Trina here today sharing how I keep up and stay guilt-free with my 6" x 8" pocket page album using a simple approach, always working with a monthly Pocket Life kit and a scrapbooking kit and adding in a few extra embellishments either from my stash or from one of the monthly scrapbooking embellishment kits. My handy mists (love the new mini mist trios by Heidi Swapp!) are always within reach.

I have to say that I love how the Seven Paper holographic alphabet stickers from this month's pocket page kit pick up the colors that you place them by. You can see by the photos that the letters reflect the colors that I used for my pages.

Here is my newly finished spread for this week and I even made a small vertical shaker insert:

No. 1.
Have photos ready to print at home (or at a local pharmacy). I find myself shooting mostly with my smart phone these days and occasionally reaching for my Canon Rebel. I have 2 printers (my Canon and my Instax) so I can easily print my photos out when I sit down to scrapbook.

No. 2.
Print out only the photos you are going to use as you sit down to scrapbook. I only print out the photos I'm going to use. Piles of photos I haven't used make me feel guilty (and behind), so printing photos as I go keeps my Pocket Life fulfilling. A picture speaks a thousand words, so I tend to print out only the photos I love best. NOTE: I do not do one page per week, but work around fun outings, memories or events that run chronologically in my yearly pocket page album (except for my flashback page).

No. 3.
Focus on completing 1 (or 2) pages. When I sit down to scrapbook I focus on just 1 or 2 pocket pages that tie in around an event, a photo or a small group of photos. (For today's project I created a flashback page plus a page for a family outing last weekend. I do have a stack of my childhood photos that I know I will never make an album of. The flashbacks allow me to include older, unused photos and weave them in with current family life.)

No. 4.
Keep your scrapbooking time condensed. I keep my scrappy time short so I can work it into my life easily, typically finishing 1-2 pages within 1 hour and making a total of 2-6 pages per month.

No. 5.
Use PL cards for your layers. It's easy to use 3" x 4" journaling cards for layers. (In the "flying" page below I used two of the 3" x 4" cards from our February Pocket Page kit, then added in a piece of patterned paper and a tag to build more layers.)

Here are a few close-ups of my spread, including a homemade "silliness" shaker I made from cutting and folding a piece of vellum, tucking in colored card stock, filling the shaker portion with leftover sequins and stars (then stitching shut) and finally stitching a misted Heidi Swapp watercolor paper word on top:

Thank you for stopping by today. Have fun with your Pocket Life and remember to keep it simple and guilt free!

Trina