Photo Freedom and Echo Park

Hi Everyone,

Well I'm back from holidays and have had fun sinking my teeth into the new Echo Park range for Photo Freedom. Katherine from Scrap Everything! sent me a pack of the new range called Happy Little Moments. The whole concept is based around creating fast, efficient albums that look great even if you don't have an artistic bone in your body.

The pack contains 5 photo sleeves, each with a different arrangement of pocket sizes, 5 sheets of paper, some of which are sized to fit the photo pockets plus a sheet of stickers. I found this to be ample to create 10 individual pages. If you tend to use all one size photos, say 4 x 6 inches, you can buy the sleeves that just fit those photos.

Here's my first page:

 My brother and his family came to see us in January. We don't see each other very often so it was great to spend so much time together. I chose to use one of the 12 x 6 inch journalling blocks on this page so I could tell the story.

Here are pages 2 and 3:

You can see how there are plenty of pocket size options to slide your photos into. When a particular photo orientation doesn't work, just print two say, portrait photos onto one landscape 6 x 4 size photo like I did in the pic in the bottom left-hand corner.

There are plenty of options for "bumping up" the dimensions on the pages if you want  One option is to simply wrap twine or ribbon around a journalling block like I did here:

Here are pages 4 and 5:

I tried to keep all the "silly" photos on one page but there were so many that they spread further. What does that say about my family?
Here are some other ways to bump it up if you prefer:

 Try adding items to the outside of the plastic pockets like these tags.

Layer a 3 x 4 sentiment onto a 6 x 4 journalling block and add some texture with ribbon and lace:

Add extra dimension with foam tape:

Here are pages 6 and 7.

 Adding stickers adds interest but still allows the pages to sit flat:

The last double page is this one:

Again, I've used two photos to fill one 6 x 4 pocket in the top left hand corner.

The last page is a 12 x 12. Here's a better pic:

I used some of the leftover journalling blocks and papers to make the flowers. The natural colour of the chipboard leaves worked well with the paper colours. Here's a close-up:

I added some pearls and some brads to this page.

On all the pages I only added ribbon, twine, some letter stickers and ink. All the rest of the products are from the Echo Park set.

If you've got this far reading this mammoth post then you're probably interested to know what I thought of these products!

Pros:

• Very quick to put an album together. There are a whopping 37 photos on these pages! If I hadn't have used this system those photos would still all be sitting on my computer.
• I love the colours of this range. They would work well with many styles of photos.
• The pack, which included the pocket pages, had just the right quantity of items.
• There are other ranges available as well. The ones I've seen look great.

Cons:

• Some of the double sided 6 x 4 journalling blocks didn't line up exactly with those printed on the back. This could have just been in my pack or might be an issue with all the papers, I'm not sure.
• Sometimes it can take a bit of fiddling to make your photo orientations work to suit the pockets.

Tips:

• Don't ink the edges of anything! I began inking the edges of my photos before I realised I'd fit so many photos in! It took ages and defeated the purpose of this system, which is to scrap in a time-efficient manner.
• Keep your pages as simple or as fancy as you like. Keep in mind you can't put too many lumpy-bumpy embellishments in the pockets though.
• Don't be afraid to embellish the outside of the pockets or to extend embellishments beyond the edges of the pages.
• The stickers are great for placing in blank spaces on photos. 
• There are plenty of journalling blocks - use them! An album full of photos without journalling will mean nothing to others in future years.

If you decide that this style of scrapping is for you then be prepared to get a lot of photos scrapped. It's a great time-saver!

Til next time,

Heather