Engagement Album

The Beginning

I can't believe my lil' cousin is getting married in just a week and a half! At Christmas I received this save the date magnet from her. 

Save the Date magnet

Since it was so cute, I had to feature it on a layout using some of her engagement photos I downloaded from Facebook. I wrote about this in a former post here. 

Save the Date layout

After seeing my layout, she asked me to make a whole album of her photos which will be displayed at the wedding. Kevin, my hysband, will be playing the guitar and Vic, my sister, will be singing, so I guess I'll contribue where my talents lie. I just realized scrappy skills can be of use to others.

The Prep

I finished 19 of the 20 pages in three weeks without too much stress. Completing an entire album is usually a major ordeal for me. When completing a large project within a short period of time, organization and planning is key. Here are some of the things I did beforehand that really helped. 

• Choose a theme and stick to it. I looked at the photos and they had a soft, romantic feel to them so I wanted that to reflect in the pages. I didn't know her style so I chose a clean and simple style with straight lines that seemed neutral.
• Get some layout designs ready. I didn't want to spend time designing 20 layouts and wondering where to place photos and what size to print them. So I used sketches from one artist so they would be streamlined. I used some Allison Davis designs from Sketch Support and her books. 
• Make a kit of materials. My cousin wanted her wedding colors used, which were Tiffany blue and orange. I couldn't find one collection in those colors that matched my theme, so I assembled the papers in those colors using 4 different collections and chose matching embellishments in yet another collection. I placed all the materials on my desk and tried to mainly use those, so I wouldn't be spending time searching my stash for an elusive embellishment that would be perfect. This is what it looked like in the middle of a layout. 

Mid-process

The Results

I have 9 of the pages out to show you today, and I'll share the second half in another post. 

This is the title page, aren't they a cute couple? 

I placed their names using alpha stickers on punched circles, popped them up and used some Glossy Accent on top. I placed some twine behind the names to simulate a banner look. 

I went with a circular banner to mimic the one they had in one of the engagement photos. 

The other pages are featured below.

Three of the photos were in black in white (above), so I altered the colored photos below to match, since these two pages would be opposite each other in the album. I hope the photographer won't mind me playing with her photos. 

Since I didn't have titles or journaling for each page, I used some pre-made tags and stickers.

To make the album seem cohesive, I repeated several elements. I utilized the same color scheme, used a lot of straight lines in the design and used the similar embellishments like ribbons and flowers. But I also wanted each page to be unique so I placed at least one element that was different from the other pages. In this one I used a negative spaced heart with a dangling tag next to the title. 

I wanted to have sunflowers on these pages to match what she is holding in the picture, but I didn't have any nor wanted to go out and try to find some. My sister, Jenn, suggested making some so I did. I colored some Prima flowers with an orange ink pad and filled the center with a black Pearl Pen. 

The two layouts above actually go together as a double paged layout. 

It was really easy to scrap as the photos themselves were so lovely. If you need a photographer in the Los Angeles area, these were taken by Anna May Lam. If you want to look at just the photos of Marrina and John, you can go here. I hope you enjoyed taking a look at my cousin's engagement album. Please come back soon to see the rest after I finish the final page and photograph the layouts. I even have some of their candid photos, like the actual engagement at Disneyland.

Thanks so much for stoppin' by,