Far East Album

I finished last year's cruise album in record time (it was only a short cruise), I've finished my 2019 annual album for now, and my 2020 album is up-to-date (all one page so far). So, it's time to start a new project, or rather to finish a very old project.

We went to Singapore and Malaysia in 2009 for the wedding of my husband's brother to his Malaysian girlfriend, and the album for that trip is a UFO when it really shouldn't be. I probably started that album in 2010, 10 years ago, when I was a novice scrapbooker, and my style has inevitably changed since then. I want to finish that album, but I also want the whole thing to be cohesive rather than it being obvious that I took ten years to finish it, which will mean some compromises about the way I would otherwise scrap the photos now.

My first step has been to look through that album several times recently, getting a feel for the pages and the supplies. I've pulled out all my leftovers: I always kept the papers separate from the rest of my stash so they were easy; I had the matching ribbon too, though I never use ribbon any more; my alphas are rather depleted now but I still have some left of most of the packs I used originally. Enamel dots didn't really exist when I started this album so I won't be using them, but I do have plenty of gems and pearls to add instead. 

I used the 12 Days of Christmas kit-building prompts from For the Love of Pretty Paper to guide me with other items and assembled a mega-kit for this project. I will need to pull more alphas but I'll do that as I go along and then leave them with the kit until I finish the album.

The existing overall colour scheme is mostly red/pink, green, beige/brown and gold, but there is some teal blue and a few touches of yellow too. I typed most of the existing journalling on the computer and printed it out which is something I rarely do these days. I'd like to change this on some of the existing pages, but not all of them.

My next step has been to look at the individual pages, and to sort them into categories:

• Pages that are 'done', including those which I wouldn't make in that way now, but I still quite like them or at least feel no urge to re-make them.
• Pages that I would like to tweak, adding a few pieces where they look too plain or unfinished.
• Pages that need some re-working, where I will try to use the existing background and photos but add more layers or make other changes.
• Pages that need to be replaced - these are the ones that jar with me every time I turn the pages of the album. Some of these are pages that I still like, but I veered away from the main colour scheme and they just don't look like they belong.

Of course, there is also a list of pages that don't even exist yet, pages that I need to make from scratch bearing in mind the older techniques of the existing pages. There will be no cut-files and hardly any mixed media in this album, though I'm happy to add stamping in places.