In addition to my usual furniture painting, garage saling and gardening, I have another hobby too.  Scrapbooking!  I don’t do nearly as much scrapbooking as I would like.  In fact, these days about the only time I work on it is when I can get away for a retreat weekend.

So last weekend my sister, my friend Terri and I headed off to Lindstrom for a weekend of cutting, glueing and goofing around.  Usually we go in February when the world outside our window is frozen solid and there is nothing better than holing up in a big room with a wood burning stove and all the scrapbook supplies you’d ever need in one place.  I’m not sure how we ended up going in November this year, but there was space available for three so we took it.

I was working on two projects.  The first was my photos from our recent trip to Duluth.

I tried to focus on letting my photos be the stars on the page instead of the embellishments.

Which isn’t to say I don’t love to add some fab embellishments!  I use quite a lot of October Afternoon products.  All of the paper on this page is October Afternoon.  I’ve added some Tim Holtz rub-ons, a travel quote rub-on that I found at Hobby Lobby and some October Afternoon washi tape.

This is one of my favorite pages from the weekend.

I print all of my own photos, by the way.  I talked a little bit about this when I posted some scrapbook pages from my Danube River cruise last year.  I’ve begun using a matte photo paper instead of the glossy stuff.  I love the results.  I did a little research on the matte paper and discovered that photos printed on it will last longer than those printed on glossy paper.  I’m not particularly interested in archival quality with my scrapbooks though.  I’m just prefer the matte paper for aesthetic reasons.  The other thing I like about printing my own photos is that I can vary the sizes.  This photo was perfect for a long, skinny print …

My second project was working with photos that my dad took back in the 60’s.  When my dad passed away a few years back, my sister and I went through his boxes and boxes of slides and tried to pick some out that we wanted to keep.  I had them all turned into jpeg files so that I could try and clean them up with photo editing software and also so I could print them.  I’ve been slowly printing some out, and then scrapping them when I have time.

Some of them are quite hysterical, like this one that I have titled “the original selfie” …

Get it?  My dad is taking a photo of our reflection.  He seems to have his camera on a little stand that I’m assuming was placed in front of the mirror (or whatever reflective surface it was) for precisely this purpose.  That’s me on the right.  I can’t believe my mom dressed me in yellow, I’ve never looked good in yellow.  My sister is tucked in the back at my dad’s elbow.  The tall girl in the striped shirt is actually our baby sitter (not my mom) Kris.  She traveled with us a couple of times, and my niece Kris is named after her.

The “selfie” is cut out of October Afternoon paper using the Cricut.  After I cut out the letters, I outline them with a fine point black pen to add definition.  This is really easy to do and it doesn’t have to be perfect to look good.

This next photo is not the greatest quality, but on close inspection I just had to share it because the clothes crack me up.  This is me and my brother.  Dig those nifty threads?

I have to say, I think those striped pants I have on would be cutting edge stylish today.  They’ve come full circle.  I’m not so sure about my brother’s pants 😉

I have to admit, what I loved most about this next photo is that fantastic pink sofa that my Aunt Barb is sitting on.

When designing this page I looked through my embellishments and pulled out anything in that dusty rose color.  I was so happy to find a use for my pink typewriter chipboard (also October Afternoon).

The illustration behind the pink slide frame is from an old children’s book.  I love to include vintage items even in my scrapbooks.

We had a great time on our weekend, and I finished up quite a few pages.  I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing some of them!