Another Christmas Present (Scrap)book

So the other day we happen to accompany Pater Pollux Dragon Doctor to shop for his scrapbooking material, and we were lamenting our difficulties in beginning our Christmas shopping for the family (which we wonder how he has manage to finish his already, and just what percentage of his shopping is actually for himself).

As it is with every occasion that requires gift-giving, the headache both sis and us have is in the shopping for the parents. Sis isn't around to keep an open ear to what mum wants, and we keep different hours from the parents so it's always a question of, "Eh, what to get for dad-ar?" and "Mum got say anything or not?"

Yes yes not that much of a good son. At least family friction is at a minimum which is very good.

So anyways somehow the idea of making a scrapbook for sis for Christmas must have rubbed off from Pater Pollux Dragon Doctor onto us. Because as we finished up at the gym today we ended up at Papier by ourselves.

The problems started once we touched, yes touched an album...

"Eh, maybe should start with a smaller one...easier to fill up. Dang, why all the pre-set scrapbook kits so...girly one-ah? And about babies! Cannot!"

[Quick aside: Congrats ya 3-Seconder on peanut! Yes it's peanut! Go read about peanut! You see even her blog is now in baby-wallpaper colours. :D]

So we decided on a smaller album, a nice raven-coloured 8"x8" album after perusing the ready-made kits and larger albums. Well, this means the papers will need cutting down to size from the 12"x12" that is the default size, but heck, it's a scrapbook which will mean that there's gonna be lots of loose bits of paper for all sorts.

"Aiks, what was her favourite colour already?"

Now this one even the helpful assistant was at a loss. We decided to go peach to red.

"That's it. We're just gonna do about 3 pages for her, the rest she can start creating herself. Oh wait make one more page with Christmas motif, after all it's gonna be her Christmas present mah."

So we dumped in some ribbons, a few more solid pages for photograph borders, and some alphabet stickers. We could have gone haywire in the shop and just simply anyhow pick stuff that caught our fancy, but the price tags there can catch you off-guard. Still, was almost done with purchases when we picked up a Photo Signature pen to test test for calligraphy purposes (this one is ours!), and a bottle of acid-free glue (admittedly we also know that the UHU Glue Stick cannot tahan lasak one when it comes to glueing anything more than paper).

Ok. So now, the bill. Photo Signature pen, Red Ribbon pack, Alphabet Thickers, 7 assorted artsy/solid papers, acid-free Super Tac glue, and the Photo Album - RM205.70. Only the starting materials for 4 pages whey! We're not counting, except to make an observation that we don't think we shall be doing this for our own personal enjoyment lah. As our own hobby this will be waaay too expensive and we will have mum harassing our ever-diminishing shelf space.

Of course, the alternatives are Photoshop and photobooks like Pixart (which we already got for mum on Mother's Day). But Pixart can't do personalization to this level, and we'll take ages learning Photoshop.

Now, we're gonna have to find a day to start experimenting at making the template pictures (and let sis put in photos of her choice) as well as scrounge the house for more stationary. Oh and print out fonts from the PC to make rub-ons. After that, put a warning so that she knows that we are setting her up for an expensive hobby.

But it would make a lovely coffee table book!