Scrapping The Windy City

I always have so much trouble picking what pictures to scrap from my vacations. As you can imagine, I took a BUNCH of pictures during our six-hour train layover in Chicago last month. I knew that some of the pictures I wanted to frame and put on our "travel" wall (which doesn't exist yet, but it will some day) so I just needed to weed through the others. What pictures were scrap-worthy and what pictures should I just have not printed? I think all the pictures on these two pages were keepers.

This first page I made using a sketch from ... somewhere. I think it was a sketch challenge but I didn't do this for the challenge. I just liked the sketch and needed a way to get multiple pictures on one page. This page also uses super awesome October Afternoon papers and embellishments.

For this layout, I knew I had to use the background paper (that I got from a friend) because it had a Chicago stamp on it. I didn't want the pictures to cover up the background paper too much, so I trimmed them down a bit. I added a few embellishments, a journaling tag, and a title and I was done! It's not my most favorite page, but really, I wanted to let the beautiful buildings of Chicago do most of the talking.

What are some of your favorite vacation-themed collections? Have you finished your summer vacation albums yet? If you have tips on completing a vacation album or just new ways of creating them, please share with us in the comments! I've got a lot of stuff on Pinterest, so don't forget to start following my Get Crafty board for everything scrapbooking!