Hey everyone! Some of you may remember the reading album that I created last year, which held all of the books that I read in 2020. I've been consistently keeping up with adding in my 2021 books this year, and have been totally up-to-date with adding in photos and journaling cards. I finally took the time this week to create my number cards and pick out filler cards.
Since this is the first look at my 2021 reading album pages, I wanted to do a quick recap of how I'm approaching this album project and what, if anything, is changing with this year's album. Not much has changed from last year, and I'm fine with that. I was happy with how last year's pages turned out, and went with the same basic ideas for this year as well.
I knew I wanted to create an on-going album to document the books I read – an album that I can easily add to as I finish new books. I brainstormed quite a bit on what format and album size I wanted to do. I figured a 6×8" album would be the best fit.
I decided to do a card to go along with each book that has the book number for the year. I used a label from Kerri Bradford Studio's Label kit, and a digital stamp from Studio Calico's On The Shelf stamp set, to create the "book" label for the upper corner of the number card. Once I had one label ready, size-wise, I copy and pasted it to fill an entire page, and then printed it out. I now have plenty of "book" labels on hand and ready to go.
Last year, I used patterned filler cards for the number card, and this year I'm using white textured cardstock which I ran through an embossing folder to add a little texture.
Last year, I stamped the numbers, using different colored inks to coordinate with the filler cards/number cards on the page. I then fussy cut the stamped numbers out and adhered them to the number card. This year, I decided to go a simpler route and I did cut my numbers from black textured cardstock using my Cameo and Kerri Bradford's Weathered Door Alphabet kit.
I will be adding a digital journaling card to go with each book, like the one above. I wish I had it in me to do an actual review of each book – but I'm really not that deep. Lol. So this journaling will most likely be short and sweet, and somehow related to how I enjoyed the book (or didn't), why I picked it, etc.
For my journaling cards, I went with a single design. I did the same thing in my 2020 album. I have a ton of digital reading themed stamps and cards, but I found last year that I was having a harder time trying to use different designs on each card. So I came up with a single card that I'm using for each book this year.
I ended up tweaking a journaling card from In A Creative Bubble's Read Journaling Card kit, deleting certain parts of the card and adding in a few different digital stamps – the row of books and the "pages read" at the bottom. I thought the "pages read" would be a fun addition, and it will be fun to see not only how many books I've read at the end of the year, but how many pages as well.
For the filler cards, I mostly just pull from the collection of cards I've had printed along with my photo orders each month. A huge majority of them are right from the Project Life app, but I also add in cards from other digital kits here and there. These filler cards are all printed on photo paper.
By keeping with a super simple, and repetitive, design, it's an album project that I can easily keep up with. One thing that's really helped me this year, is that I've been typing up my journaling cards right after I finish each book. Last year, I fell behind a little and found myself trying to remember what some of the books were about or what stood out to me about each one.
I'll be back to share more pages from this album next week. Last year, I set a goal of 25 books for the year, and I finished the year reading 29 books. This year I have a goal of reading 50 books, and as of today, I've read 33 books.
Laura Vegas 