Holiday-themed scrapbook pages

It had to happen - the block of casual work that's been looming on the horizon had to eventually impact on my crafting time.  I was really hoping for a super-organised, get lots done around the house kind of impact, but sadly, it's been more of a freak-out, panic about how I will get the kids all off to their respective schools and get to work on time kind of impact.  Our teachers had some industrial action last week, which threw me into a spin, (one strike often follows another and I simply cannot, CANNOT work out how to get three children to three different school at 11 o'clock if I am already at work at 9!)
Today, on my last non-work day, I have cancelled all my outings except soccer photos this afternoon to monitor two children who are at home, somewhere on the spectrum between "sick" and actually sick.  I've been quite productive, ticking off lots of things on my "to-do" list, and now, while I'm having lunch, I can finally, finally show you the two-pager I promised last week!
Perhaps you will forgive my tardiness somewhat, when you see that it ended up being, not just a two-page layout, but three 2-page layouts, all about our road-trip to Queensland a couple of years ago.
I started with this sketch, which is the second (and probably last) challenge I've done for Lets Scrap (Inter)national Scrapbook Month:

This holiday already has it's own themed album, which you can see a glimpse of  here.

When I do a page like this one, I usually adopt a very clean style, with strips of paper running the full double page.  And I can spend ages trying to match colours!  But with photos with so many different clothes and locations, making anything matching was going to be a nightmare, so I opted for a clean white base, and paper strips from my stash.

Page one

 I decided to try and not "over-think" the process, and just went for bright!  (Usually when I hear/read someone use the phrase "try not to over-think" I can spend twenty minutes trying to analyse my own process, wonder what exactly the definition of  "not over-thinking" is and whether I do it. LOL).
As you can see, I allowed myself to take this sketch quite literally.  For those who may not know it, Queensland likes to think of itself as "the Sunshine state" so the sun was perfect for this page.  It may even have been why I originally put this sketch and these photos together. 

If I was going to use all the photos I wanted without making a whole other album, I was going to have to add more than 6 photos to a page.  So on the second page, I added two extra landscape photos . . .

Page two

and made mini accordion albums for the portrait shots.  The left hand side opens up to show two extra photos . . .

Left hand accordion

while the right hand side has three extra photos and a journalling block.

Right hand accordion

Page three

These pages were a great success from the Product Challenge to Self perspective.  Each double page uses fibres (on the tags), strips of patterned paper and cardstock, and the stamps are from a Stampin' Up set. So that's a whopping 9 points!  I've also decided to award myself two bonus points - one for using the little tags which I might have included on my challenge if I'd remembered they were there. The other is for stamping with my Marvy Markers - they represent a serious financial investment at some point in my crafting past, and I want to get as much use as I can out of them before they dry out. 

PS. How are you going using your stash?