My Scrapbook Evolution-Blog: Welcome, November!

The beginning of November marks a very special time of year for me. I met my husband in the fall and this past weekend, we celebrated our 20th anniversary together. It's hard to believe that two decades have passed. We have both been through so much together and yet, those early days are fresh in both our thoughts.

Many people are celebrating this month by keeping a gratitude journal. I want to do the same, though mine will be incorporated into pocket pages. I spent the first three days of November being thankful for my husband, the years we have shared, and for our son.I will be sharing my gratitude kit with you soon, but first, I wanted to start off the month featuring layouts of a different sort.

Like Prom by Christy Strickler Supplies| Patterned Paper: Anna Griffith, Basic Grey; Letters: My Mind's Eye; Ribbon, Prima; Ink: Colorbox; Wood Album page: Pink Paislee; Other: Doilies, jewels, vellum, buttons

During October, I participated in the Scraphappy.org Layout a Day Challenge. I was very honored to be one of the members chosen to share a sample layout for a prompt. The prompts for this year centered around clothing and trends throughout the decade. The prompt I was assigned featured gold, black velvet and lot of bows. I knew right away that I wanted to use the patterned paper seen here. What I didn't consider was just how reflective the paper was. Getting a decent photo of this layout was sure a struggle!

I did manage to create a layout a day and then some last month. Though I forgot to post my final layout on Halloween, in total, I made over 40 layouts last month. Some were for Creative Team assignments and could not be shared. I had to be very creative in how I handled LOAD.

The next Layout a Day challenge will be in February 2014. I am looking forward to the challenge and I hope to see some of you there. I have also been asked about some of the process videos I created for LOAD. These were some of my first videos ever and in some cases, the equipment did not cooperate as planned. I may share them later if I can salvage them. I have otherwise decided to learn from my mistakes and move forward to provide better content. You will be seeing my first process video this month featuring a layout I created for Get It Scrapped.

Our Honeymoon Adventure by Christy Strickler Supplies| Patterned Paper: Crate Paper, Basic Grey; Letters; Die Cuts, Tag: Basic Grey; Stickers: Skippings 5; Jewels: Freckled Fawn; Flair: Studio Calico; Ephemera, German Foil: JBS Mercantile; Other: Wood tag, vellum

I figured it was high time to try to finish my honeymoon album. I work on it off and on. This layout will be the title page. When I saw the gold foil moon in the October JBS Mercantile kit, I knew exactly what to use it for. I don't have any photos of our actual drive to New Orleans. Instead, I used google maps to get driving directions and then printed the map. It was the perfect way to slip in some geotag stickers, especially since geotags are so trendy right now.

November looks to be a wonderful month. I have set some goals for organizing more of my supplies and photos. Currently, I am in the process of cataloging my current albums and photos scrapped. I have repeat scrapped a few too many photos. I was happy to see that I am only partially behind on Project Life. I have August and September in the works. Hoping to finish October and have November part way done with the Gratitude journal project. I will share this organization system with you in one of my first around the lab posts.

I will also be focusing on color this month with the Masterful Scrapbook Design series. Though I will be working on my gratitude journal, I have plans to also work on the Your December Story class. I want to get some of my cards and pages set up. As always, I have more creative ideas than I may have time for! Do you have any goals for this month? Are you creating a gratitude journal or mini album?

You might have missed: