Smoky Mtns 2015 - A Mini

One of my goals this year on the memory-keeping front was to make mini albums and I gave myself a count of 3 albums considering that I also document Project Life for the whole year that captured the everyday mundane, special, fun and loving moments of our life.  Some moments/events in life call for a book on their own and there begins my path to making minis! There are numerous photos in my laptop waiting to adorn multiple albums that I hope to get done sometime in the future, but I can happily say that I met my goal of 3 albums, each special in its own way!.

You can see more of my first two albums Megha Bytes and Anniversary Mini from the album links. Mini albums are cute, easy and fun to make, especially when it comes to using pocket scrapbooking to document your travel photos. I am so excited to share a travel mini of our road trip this year to the Smokies.

I used the 6x8 Cinnamon Faux Leather album from Becky Higgins with co-ordinating pocket pages. The Road Trip and Outdoor themed cards from Becky Higgins were perfect for this travel mini.

 I love to journal a lot and cannot make do without my travel notes. I dutifully take notes during the initial phase of the trip, but as time flies in fun and frolic, I miss noting down the details and that's where the pictures help out!

I enjoy stamping and most of the stamped phrases are from the story kit by Ali Edwards. I used her 'GO' themed stamp kit which is perfect for travel and adventure!

 I tend to collect ephemera (maps, tickets, etc) during my trip and love to include them in my album. Above I included the race track points card that we used for our rides.

How cute is that hot air balloon transparency from Studio Calico's FairGround Kit!

I went minimal with embellishing my photos and here I just used some mint thickers and a chipboard piece on the 4x6 photos. The photo of the girls on the top right is a retake of a similar pose taken 5 years back! It is a sweet memory of how they have grown and in friendship over the years!

There were so many photos that were little glimpses of a hike we took and the 2x2 pocket pages from Simple Stories were ideal and fun to fill with photos, pattern papers and embellishments!  

I love how the page colors above worked out so well, relevant to the picturesque place and I kept it simple with just the journaling. Sometimes I wish I digitized my journaling so I could fit more story in detail but I would then worry about losing the uniformity in the album!. I need to overlook such differences and focus only on getting the stories down.

 One of my favorite page from the album and I love how the stamping on the photo turned out. The story kit stamps from Ali Edwards are too awesome for words!

Putting down the trip stats as part of the journaling is a fun way to document some facts and figures about the trip. I kept embellishments at a minimal for I wanted the photos to be the highlight, but looking back I feel I could have added in a few more. One take away from this album is that I need to stop hoarding my embellishments and learn the knack of using them well thro' out my album.

It was fun to put the album together and more so to see the completed mini that I find myself wanting to make more of such travel minis! Glad to have added one more book  to my ever growing collection of memory-keeping treasures!