Saturday, February 23, 2013

Scrapbooking in a New Form

Happy Saturday! I spent this morning getting in a great few miles at the gym and then a good core and chest workout - those weights are going to hurt tomorrow. I haven't done that in way too long. Aside from that, I spent most of this afternoon (and by 'most', I mean 'all') on a project that I'm pretty excited about! 

Once upon a time, I was quite the scrapbooker. I say once upon a time because, well, I'm still scrapbooking college. Let's ignore the fact that I graduated almost seven years ago, okay? I'm stuck somewhere in the middle of sophomore year, and while all the photos, inserts and flyers are organized neatly in a box, they've been in that box for about four years.

As my race bib and bling collection has grown (quite quickly over the course of 2012), the bib mess has started to annoy me. This is partially due to the fact that when I made my race rack, I chose to use hooks instead of a clip - and really did not have the realization that not all bibs are the same size (the horror). And thus, you get the mess seen here:
I've been contemplating the idea of scrapbooking my races from 2012, the year that I'd say I took running into a whole new level for me. That yes, I'd actually sit down with my gallons of scrapbooking supplies and do it. Let's be honest. Not happening. So with a little inspiration from Meghann at Meals and Miles, I snagged the idea of ordering a race photo book - Shutterfly could do the scrapbooking work for me! Genius. Thanks  Meghann!

Shutterfly has a ton of custom designs, layouts, and themes you can use for your book. To keep things simple, I ordered a standard 'blank canvas' theme so I could let all my photos do the talking.
 There are hundreds of photo layouts per page, ranging from text-only to having upwards of 40 photos on a page! That's a little much for me, but some of my pages are a little crazy. I just have too many great memories that I want to ensure are captured forever in this book!
It took a lot of self control to not have three pages dedicated to just Ragnar, not going to lie. There were some tough photo decisions that had to be made!

Each page has the race, date, location and my final time, and if I placed in my age group, that's indicated also. I'm pretty excited to see it come to life, and should have it in my hands in about two weeks. Can't wait to share it! And then I can finally clean up that bib and bling mess I've got going on on my wall. 

If you're interested, Shutterfly photo books are on sale (to 50% off) through this Wednesday, February 27. The book I ordered (hard cover, 8.5x11) is regularly $54, but I got it for $27, plus a couple of bucks for the extra pages (book standard is 20 pages, 70 cents per extra page after that). You can also use code SHIP30 for free shipping on orders over $30 through March!

Do you scrapbook your race experiences? Do you do a photo book (whether running or otherwise)? 

7 comments:

  1. What a great idea! Definitely an organized way to scrapbook your race bibs and pictures! This is definitely something I'll look into doing once I get a few races underneath my belt!

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    1. Thanks Kristyn! I hope it turns out to be the way I keep all my things together in the future. Pretty excited about it!

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  2. The book looks good! I used Shutterfly for our wedding guestbook and loved all the different templates the program offered. Can't wait to see your race book when it's all done!

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    1. Thanks so much Meghann! I loved your wedding book also - excited to have it in my hands. It can't come soon enough! Thanks again for the inspiration and idea!

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  3. Gah! The longer I read your blog the more I realize how awesome you are and that we would most likely be dorky bffs if we lived near each other. I'm a total scrapbook geek, well, when I have the time which hasn't been recently. I made a shutterfly book for my MCM race but I prefer the traditional scrapbook for my other races. Each race is no more then 2 pages; I always put my bib, race details (date, finish time, ect.) and pick a few key pictures. I figure when I'm ancient and can't move it will be a great reminder of my younger years.

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    1. Can we be besties IRL one day? :) I love the idea of doing an actual scrapbook, I just don't think I can commit to keeping up with it. And what better way to knock it out in like 4 hours via a super awesome hardcover-bound digital book? Pretty stoked, it should get here TODAY! Hooray!

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  4. I also love to scrapbook my family history. I just bought some more scrapbooking supplies with the family history theme. Just hope I get time to scrapbook soon.
    scrapbooking supplies

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