12lbw_NOVtemplate-birthdays

Sounds like you have a lot of birthdays to celebrate in November. I love your concept of making this a two-pager. I know I struggled (just a bit) to find enough room on my 8.5x11 page to fit it all in. Your solution is perfect! Thanks SO MUCH for participating in Val's November designer challenge.

@mcurtt I pretty much always make 17x11 now. I figured that way I won't have any opposing individual pages clash, and I can always use the additional space. I think one of the reasons it took so long for me to transition to 8.5x11 was because it felt too small. I just have to remember I still need to make a few single 8.5x11 pages for the first and last pages in my book, and maybe the covers (although for my book about my trip in June, I wrapped a 17x11 around the whole book and it worked well, so I might keep doing that).

When I first got started with digital scrapbooking, in 2006, I was strictly working on heritage layouts, first my mom's side of the family, then my dad's. A number of my layouts were double pages, planned specifically for not clashing. But I also had a number of single pages. Believe it or not, I didn't think that any of it clashed. Maybe because the photos were sepia or b&w??? Or maybe it was the subject matter, a bit more somber than some of the layout styles I do today.

When I make my Blurb magazines for the year, I pretty much place them in alpha order by file name. Since I do tons of CT work, and my file names start with the designer, there really isn't much clashing since the designers' styles shine through.

I do tag my layouts so that if I want to, down the road, I can create smaller magazines by subject, i.e. my Poland layouts, etc... I really like tagging. Since I don't scrap sequentially, tagging allows me to pull up the layouts and verify that I hadn't scrapped a photo. I don't have Lightroom, so this works for me.

Re: filler pages, those one of a kind, don't forget that you can leave it blank or use just a background paper on it. At the magazine page price, I have no problem with that. On my DYD, I added a few pages with a quote on it and nothing more to come with the page count divisible by 4. Also, I usually place a background paper on the inside of the covers rather than leaving them blank.

Your trip across the country looked amazing, at least for the pages I saw. If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to see the preview. Blurb allows a preview option to share if you set up the book for sales, but then not have it be visible to the public. Not sure if that makes sense???