Three years ago, I decided to something completely different as a Christmas present for my boyfriend, and set on doing a scrapbook of memories of our years together.

I quickly regretted this decision, as it took me a hell of a lot longer to do than I thought it would – so much so, that I actually had to delay the present until the Christmas after that!

I had never done scrap-booking before, so this was completely new to me. I quickly learned of brands like K & Co, and Papermania who create scrapbooks and scrap-booking paper, but I did need other bits and pieces like string and ribbon to make it extra special. There was a shop called Pack Lane Wool in Basingstoke that I found some great craft products in.

I bought ribbon to create little borders around photographs and yarn to bring pages to life with other little features. Pack Lane Wool also have a website, which is brilliant as I could look around the products before driving the 10 miles from where I lived to Basingstoke. They have a page on their website about Intelligent Retail, which provide their till system they use for the website as well. This turned out to be pretty useful, as I could see that certain products were in stock before I headed down to the shop to buy them!

Believe it or not, creating the scrapbook was incredibly hard work, although perhaps that was down to my complete lack of experience. I spent a long time simply looking for the right papers and little tools I needed like a basic paper trimmer, and special scrapbook glue. I also had to be sneaky and take old tickets from my boyfriend’s photo albums to use in the book, as well hunt through my own stuff to find ideal things to include.

When I look back on the hours and hours I put into that, I really wonder why I did. My boyfriend never looks at it, and it’s a very girly thing anyway – I used a monochromatic colour theme, but somehow it still looks like a gift that a girl would be given. Oh well, it’s a lesson learned I suppose!