When you have so many vacation photos sometimes the easiest thing for me to do is to start with the template and plan out my hybrid page on my computer. I know that Traci has been posting lots of helpful tips & tricks on creating hybrid pages and this is another way to put together a hybrid page if you need some inspiration. Traci releases templates on her blog regularly and there are many options at The Sweet Shoppe as well!

In this case, I started with a template that had lots of horizontal slots for photos and journaling like this for our photos of Stonehenge from our trip in 2024 I was loving the colors and images from the newest collection Wander & Wonder and how they match my bright yellow raincoat.

First I selected several of my photos. I know that I won’t be able to scrap every single photo, but I wanna make sure I get my favorites in the album. I added those in the template as if it would be just a digital page and I also created a title on the same diagonal with the alpha set. Traci has a tutorial for printing and cutting your titles as one piece here.

I picked a few of the pattern papers to fill in some of the slots and then also added journal cards resized to create a nice border. On the digital layout I just added a few elements and I’ll add additional items after I put the pages together.

Step two in the process is to create 8 1/2 x 11 pages for printing whether it’s on photo paper, Matte presentation paper ( I use Epson Premium Matte Presentation paper) and I even used washi paper at this time. For the Photos I add them all to a seperate file in the right size and then I straightened them to make it easier to cut.

I love having the different textures on my page to really add extra depth and interest to my layout. I also maximize my printing dollar and added extra digital elements on the sheets to be printed on the washi paper. I did the same for the printed cards as I did for the photos to print them on a seperate sheet.

I shared how I save my extra elements in this blog post. I did layout all my elements without ANY adhesive so I could make sure I had everything laid out properly before I started gluing.

I did not use a ruler, so its not perfect but I was most concerned about the text on the bottom part of the layout so that was the one I started with. I used little scraps for the bottom piece. I printed all the TN sized papers from the printable PDF as my step to work with the collection. I find for my travel pages, the TN sized pattern work great! I also keep my large sized scraps for future pages in my travel album. I added extra elements from the Sticker elements and Journalers from the pdf pages that Traci includes in every set. I cut all of those at the start of my project to have them handy.