Jim's 1st Deer

My husband's passion is hunting. Even if he comes home empty handed, there is nothing he enjoys more than heading into the woods and up in a tree stand. Not only is hunting his passion, but he is also very good at it!

Jim credits his love for this sport stemming from his great Uncle Jim - the man he was named after. His uncle took my Jim under his wing when he was about 11. When his uncle passed away from cancer a couple years later, it was Uncle Jim's son who took my husband hunting when he was legally old enough - give or take a year.

That's when Jim shot his first deer - a buck. To add to the excitement of his first kill, there was a newspaper reporter doing a story on the opening of hunting season and she interviewed Jim. I wish I could have seen my husband giving this interview. Reading the article, I could see a young, excited Jimmy Bleau bragging on his uncle and talking about his first deer.

Shortly after we were married, Jim proudly showed me his hunting scrapbook and I was impressed. He actually had all his photos in one of those old sticky back photo albums - the kind where you had to lift the clear plastic sheet up and place your pictures on the gluey piece of cardboard. He had even labeled the photos with pertinent information such as the date, where he was hunting, who were in the photos and what weapon he used.

Jim turned over his scrapbook to me so I could make it look pretty. I was excited to work some creative magic, but also was intimidated. There was no easy way to replace a photo if I made a mistake, and I wanted to do my best in creating an album he would treasure. Although he knew I was going to tackle the photos, I did not tell him when I started. When I had about twenty layouts done, I put them in an album and gave that to Jim for Christmas a couple years ago. To this day he says it is still one of his favorite gifts, and I continue to add layouts from each year. We have one hunting themed album already filled and a second one started.

Scrapbooking Tips

I was nervous when I set out to do this layout. I knew how important these particular pictures were to Jim and I did not want to do anything that would ruin them and the fragile newspaper article he had saved. When I have irreplaceable items, my go to design usually follows the saying "less is more." I found a sketch from Scrapbook Generation to work from and trimmed the photos down to 4x4" squares. I cut strips of camouflage paper for my background and then arranged the photos across both pages. I also cut simple border strips from coordinating paper.

To give visual interest to the page, I tilted and overlapped the pictures, but adhered the newspaper article straight on and made that the focal point of the layout. I also wanted it to be easy to read the article. Although Jim had clipped the whole article out of the newspaper, he was only mentioned in the little bit you see here. I made the tough decision to toss the rest. It only contained statistics about the deer population in NY, how many hunting licenses were issued that year, etc., and was not anything pertaining to Jim and his buck. The longer I scrapbook, the more I realize that I cannot save every little thing. If the layout is complete, and I didn't adhere certain pieces of memorabilia or extra photos I will typically toss them. If they were not important enough to make the cut, chances are they won't be missed.

In keeping with my "less is more" theme, the only embellishments I added were three deer that I cut out of dark brown cardstock with my Silhouette Cameo. I placed them in a visual triangle to draw the viewer's eye around the page.

I was so pleased with Jim's reaction when he first saw this layout - he loved it and that was my goal. I tried to keep his pictures intact but also add a little bit of my creativity.

Supplies Used:

Cardstock - Bazzill

Pattern Papers - Authentique

Letter stickers - American Crafts Thickers

Deer Family Cut Files - Sophie Gallo