Mouse Love

My family has made a number of trips to Disney World, and we're going again this summer.  Consequently, it sometimes seems like I'm always working on Disney pages and, frustratingly, it often seems to me like they all look the same.  I REALLY struggle with Disney pages, and I think I've identified why.  For one thing, I like to use Disney-themed embellishments, but at the moment, there isn't much out there that I am crazy about.  Also, Disney pages almost always scream out for the use of colorful patterned papers and backgrounds, to go along with the colorful clothes that everyone is usually wearing, and to reflect the joyful feeling of being at Disney.  It can be challenging to make non-subtle pages.  And finally, no matter how many times we go, I take a lot of pictures.  Even if I am ruthless about tossing similar shots and bad angles, I still generally end up with a lot of photos from each day or each event that I'd like to scrapbook.  So, for me, Disney pages can be hard.  Are they hard for you, too?

  

I suppose I should make a disclaimer -- I'm not sharing any easy answers in this post, because I don't have any easy answers.  I just keep plugging away!

One thing I've done is that I organize my pictures into layouts differently for each trip.  If I really go over the things we did and the places that we went, themes will often suggest themselves.  For our very first Disney trip, I created a whole special scrapbook, and I had one or more layouts for each day.  The book moved chronologically along for the length of our vacation.  That worked fine, but for subsequent trips, making layouts by day didn't work for one reason or another.  Plus, it was boring!  It's not like we remembered things about that trip by what day they happened.  So, I've tried to be more creative in that respect.  One year when we went to Disney World near Christmas, I organized my layouts into special things that we saw and did, and then I had a layout showcasing all of the fantastic Christmas trees around Disney World, another one showcasing the special Christmas "storytellers" that are featured at Epcot.  I guess the point is just to try to think out of the box a little bit, instead of always organizing your Disney pictures the same way for each trip.

So, I do really like the layout above, which I completed at a crop a couple of weeks ago.  I had some unusually good photos of my kids and hubby with Mickey and Minnie when we went to Chef Mickey's for dinner, so I decided to make a few of those shots into their own layout.  I am not a fan of Disney-themed patterned papers, because for me (a clean-lines, simple scrapper), the patterns are usually just too large and overwhelming, or they're too specific to a certain character.  I like small, repetitive prints that I can use on multiple layouts for multiple purposes.  Since the companies that have Disney licenses to make patterned papers haven't made very many of those kinds of papers yet, I find myself sticking to more readily available fare.  Here, I chose an old KI Memories pattern, because the red plaid was bright and cheerful and went perfectly with the colors in the photos.  You'll notice that the embellishments on this page are super simple.  I own two Mickey-head punches, both of which I adore.  They are each cute on their own, but I also LOVE them when they are combined, which is what I did here.  I punched the plain Mickey head from scraps of the plaid paper, and then punched swirly Mickey heads from blue cardstock, and simply laid those over the plain punches.  I stamped my title (something I should do more of, as I love how it came out), and also used an Ali Edwards stamp along the side for a bit of detail.

Since I'm currently working on Disney pages, my plan is to post a few more completed layouts that I like for one reason or another, or that have something special about them.  So if you are a Disney lover like I am, stay tuned!