If there's pretty paper in hell, I'll scrapbook there, too.

It just occurred to me that most scrapbooking pages memorialize a particular day or event. But on this layout, you'll see I chose a series of events, i.e. several photos that were taken on different days... but all related to each other: Football Season. Growing up in Utah, we didn't have a professional football team, and the American love of football just didn't quite click for me (except for the cute butts in tight pants). But ever since moving to San Diego four years ago, I've learned (sometimes rather unwillingly) to "heart" the football season. In reality, I love the things that come with football season... barbecues, beer, grown men hollering and cussing at the TV. Lovely, isn't it?

Well last June, I met Matthew... who has season tickets. For people who haven't been to a professional football game I will let you in on a little secret. They are AMAZING. Seriously. So. Much. Fun. Going to almost all the games last season took me from "hearting" football to actually having a real interest in the Chargers and their stats. And luckily, my camera was along for the ride. So here it is:

What you might not be able to tell from the pictures is that these layouts are on white paper and all those colored paper stripes match up.  As a non-measurer, it took me, well, forEVER to get them the same size and in the right location. 

Let's focus on the steps for creating a layout that showcases a series of events.

1. Pick the series of events. Duh.

2. Try to choose several photos from different days, but that are similar enough that they coordinate with each other.  In this case, in all the photos we are wearing team colors (except for Matthew who managed to show his naked chest not once, but twice in this layout).

3. When deciding where the photos should go, I like to keep them really close together... this gives them cohesion even though they are from different days. (Leave plenty of empty space for embellishments.)

4. Think about what makes the series of events unique and pick paper to accentuate.  Here I used team colors... other examples would be using paper with snowflakes for a ski season layout, paper with letters/numbers/apples for a school year layout, paper with suns or beach balls for a summer layout, etc.

5. Pick out some embellishments that further tie the paper with the events & photos.  In this example I picked a football and an actual Chargers bumper sticker.  Craft stores carry a ton of stickers and chipboard embellishments, but those can get pretty expensive - especially when they are very specific to just one type of layout.  I saw a really cute football chipboard at Michael's but it was about $5.  If you are a bit artistic you can draw your very own (or in my case, after several failed attempts, let your boyfriend join in on the scrapbooking fun and draw a damn football for you... who knew that drawing an oval could be so challenging?)

 6. After you have chosen a title, find a cool font or other type of lettering to tie it all together.  I wanted a font that reminded me of cheerleading and this one did... I'm not quite sure why... anyway, I printed the title nice and big and cut out all the letters (here is where it would have been nice to have a die-cut machine... but this is about being budget friendly... so I'm sorta against those machines for beginner scrapbookers.)  I used the same font in a smaller size for the "Go Bolts".

7. For more pizazzzzzz, add a few more things... like.... BUTTONS.  Buttons happen to be my favorite embellishment.  They are cheap like cheerleaders. They add a lot of texture to a page.  They are colorful.  And they are pretty hard to mess up. 

And there you have it... What you can't see, however, is the approximately 27 hot dogs I ingested that season, the men who sat behind us who insisted that bringing a cowbell to every game is the finest way to show their support, or the fact that the Chargers blew their shot at the Superbowl, again.  Ahhhh football.