One of my hobbies is scrapbooking, which dovetails nicely with my love of writing. Those are two things I can do that really get my juices flowing. Over the weekend, I worked on a gate album to commemorate my daughter's 8th grade graduation. I thought I'd share, since this is a project I'm especially proud of.

1. Pick your pictures. Just pick the good ones. The not so good ones can go into your regular album, but you want a special album like a gate album to shine. By saying good pics, I don't mean just those that are perfectly composed & lit - I mean those that mean something, those that bring back memories.

2. Pick a color scheme based on your photos or your theme. My album was celebrating my daughter graduating from 8th grade and going into high school, so I went with the high school's colors - green and black - and added pops of pink and yellow to accent. I let my daughter pick most of the papers since this is her album.

3. Choose your base. I've been on a tree hugger kick lately (not sure what's up with that, but last week I stopped twice to help box turtles across the road), and decided that recycled materials would be good. We still use old fashioned telephone message pads at work, so I started saving the backs of them. It's like chipboard, basically, about 4 1/4" x 5" or something like that. I mounted 4 of them to cardstock (or mounted the cardstock to them. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.) to use as the base, then I built up from there, using 2 across for some pages and 2 stacked atop one another for others. Just remember to trim your pages that are not the base to allow for binding.

4. Scrap each page, leaving room along the outer edges for binding.

5. Bind the outer edge of the album using whatever method you prefer. Personally, I like the Zutter Bind-It-All, but you could also hole punch holes then use yarn or ribbon to tie your pages together. You could also use jump rings through the holes. The reason I like the Zutter binding  is that it is easy to use, easy to turn, and is sturdy. Another note: if you use the Bind-it-All (or some other binder), flip your pages so that the album back is at the front when you bind, so that your rings will be "clean" on the outside and the rough binding wire will be concealed inside your album. If you're not sure what I mean, email me and I'll send detailed instructions.

And here are a couple of images:

The front of the album (which is actually 2 half pages):




And here's one of the inside pages:




If you would like to see more of my scrapbooking, check out my gallery at www.clubcreatingkeepsakes.com. My links don't seem to be working now - but email me and I'll send you the link.

Thanks for looking - and let me know what creative projects you're working on.