I started documenting with pocket pages regularly sometime last year, but have wanted to go back and document 2015, the year my daughter was born. I’ve been completing a few weeks here and there, but find I can complete spreads much faster using digital supplies.

When I saw the Autumn Vibes release from Paislee Press, I knew the perfect week I could use these digital elements with. Unfortunately where we live in southern California, it doesn’t feel much like Autumn in October (it was 97 degrees yesterday!) but I had photos from a previous year, spent in a city where it looked and felt like Autumn.

Here’s a look at the entire spread.

As always, I first started by selecting a series of photos from the week. I wanted to use the “Fall Foliage” photo template and had a perfect photo for it.

One of the great things about digital elements is the ability to modify everything as you like it. I used the “Fall Treats” photo template to include two horizontal photos and replaced the words with the “Leaf Love” element. I used one of the Autumn Vibes journaling cards to hold the photo of my daughter and her “pumpkin” (actually a potimarron) and replaced the title with the “pumpkin crush” element. I also extended the journaling card with the patterned background to a 4 x 6″ canvas and added the Oscar Wilde quote as my title card.

While I like white space, there seemed to be a lot of it in the spread, so I re-colored two of the journaling cards with blue and magenta.

When I have too many photos, I like to include similar ones in a collage. I did this using a 4 x 6 photo template from Vol. 6.

After printing out all of these finished cards, I just had two 3 x 4″ slots I needed to fill, which I easily did using a couple of cards from my stash. A little bit of journaling and very simple embellishing with a few gold stars completes the spread.

If only the weather would start getting cooler in California now!

Are you documenting past years? What are your tips for quickly completing past weeks?