Digital Scrapbooking Travel Album - Taiwan

I shared a little while ago about redoing some of my older layouts. This is actually a somewhat giant task, as I'm going through all the photos from the year that Jordan and I backpacked around the world and finishing albums for all the countries we visited. Even though I was digital scrapbooking at the time, looking back at my layouts now they often feel incomplete and not my style. So I'm both adding in lots of new photos to finish these albums, and redoing many of my old layouts so I can include them. I do hope to get these printed eventually, but for now I thought I'd share stop #1: Taiwan (see all the images here).

Taiwan was both our first stop on our trip and possibly our favorite. Everyone in the country was just so kind to us that it was hard not to fall in love it.

To complete these travel albums I am using my formula of combining full photo pages with pocket pages and regular layouts. I talk all about this in my Everything About Travel Digital Scrapbooking post. This formula works for me because it lets me include lots of not great photos (pocket pages), with creative pages that I enjoy making (regular layouts) and then for the really good photos that don't need the distraction of embellishment, they can have their own page.

I think one of the reasons it has taken me so long to make these travel albums is that I felt that I should make more minimal layouts to not distract from the photos, but I don't enjoy making minimal, photo focused layouts, therefore I never made them. Repeat this thought process over and over and you have me with many interesting travels under my belt, but no finished travel albums.

But it's okay! I have finally found this formula that works for me and the benefit of waiting over ten years is that it's much easier to pick out the photos that really need to be in the album. Also, it's super fun to revisit these memories and I'm really enjoying working through all these old photos.

Another block for finishing these albums was the idea of limiting myself to only travel themed kits. It's natural to think you want travel themed items when scrapbooking a trip, but it was feeling very limiting to me when I have hundreds of layouts to create. So I use whatever the heck I want and it feels good. I have been relying heavily on all the neutral travel word art that's available in my World Traveler #2 bundle. This gives me a little of that travel flair, without too much limitation.