My First HSN Adevnture + A Look At The Album I Made Using The Travel Kit

Last week I traveled to Tampa, Florida for my first adventure going live on HSN

The first day of my trip was a training where I learned more about HSN and had the opportunity to have on-camera practice time. I loved learning more about the company and seeing how it all works behind the scenes which I found totally fascinating. 

See all those cameras in the image above? Those cameras aren’t operated with guys standing behind them. Nope. They are operated remotely in a control room. I had no idea about that and totally envisioned a bunch of men (I’m sure there are women camera operators too but in my mind they were all men). 

I really like how HSN really encourages a conversational style on air. I totally welcome that and loved hearing that as their guiding philosophy. It made it easier to get up there and talk about my products as I would explain them to a friend. 

As I mentioned in this post, the first thing we are offering on HSN is a Travel Kit and a 3x8 Album. The travel kit product configuration is a little different than what we are offering on my site - it includes the 3x4 cards, some 3x8 cards, the sticker sheets, and two chipboard sets (these chipboard sets are ones that sold out here in the shop). In the future what we offer on HSN will be past designs in new colors. This means when you see December Daily® offered there later this year it will be some combination of 2018 designs that have been recolored (that will most likely happen in October). We will offer a newly designed 2019 December Daily® kit and coordinating products on my site in early September just as we’ve done in years past.

My hope is that this expansion of our offerings will introduce my projects to even more people who may not have been exposed to my memory keeping projects and philosophy previously.

My on-air time for the Travel Kit and Album was part of their 24 hour Craft Day and it was cool to run into familiar faces and to meet new people who were just as nervous as I was and just as excited. 

So how did I feel when I was doing it? I was actually really excited. I loved having an opportunity to talk - even if it was brief - about my scrapbooking philosophy. If you've been around a long time you know I have a lot to say about it and most of the time I have unlimited time to talk about it within my classes, here on my blog, on social media, etc. I love that this was something new and a bit of a challenge to condense it down to the most important pieces. I also know that I'll get better at it the more I do it. 

If you want to see my actual segment here you go: 

You can order the Travel Kit and the Travel Album from HSN here

For my on air appearance I put together a travel album using the HSN kit and the 3x8 album. Here's a close up look at the pages of the album I shared on air: 

Telling your travel stories can often be a big task that is easily overwhelming. Often we feel like we have to add EVERY PHOTO and EVERY THING we might have collected or experienced on a trip or vacation. 

My general philosophy about travel documenting (and memory keeping in general) is a little different: I look for stories to tell vs. feeling like I need to follow a chronological flow that includes every place we stopped and everything we saw and everything I felt. To be clear, sometimes I do choose a chronological flow but for me it depends on the overall story I want to tell. I talk a lot more about my general travel memory keeping philosophy within my Stories Of Travel workshop

For this project I used the five "travel story" journal cards from the Main Kit to hold five main stories from our vacation. I took a look at the photos we took (for us this was a true vacation meaning we barely left the hotel property vs. other kinds of trips where there might be a lot more seeing of sights or adventuring outside the place you are staying) and selected five main stories or topics to focus on for telling the story of this vacation. 

To simplify my storytelling process I break it down into manageable story chunks. 

The 3x8 Memories card I added here was an overview and a reflection of the trip overall. Across from it I inserted the "go" card and the "itinerary" card. When designing these cards I thought about the overall story flow and literally started with the "go" card and ended with the "coming home" card you'll see below. In-between those two cards I created 5 numbered story cards to hold some pieces of our story. 

Travel story number one was about getting there. Traveling with five kids at this age is actually really fun and I love seeing all my people lined up there in the airport. 

For each of my stories I used a Faber-Castell Pit Artist Big Brush Pen to add my story theme. 

On many of my photos in this project I added chipboard from the two sets included in the kit. 

Story number two was about the water. Looking back through my photos there were a lot of the water which makes sense when you consider that we were in Hawaii. Did I include every single photo I took of people in the water? Nope. This was enough for me. Again, you don't have to include every photo you take to be able to document and tell a story about your adventures. 

Story number three was about rest. This was the goal of this vacation for us: downtime, time away from our regular schedule, relaxation. I picked three photos that represented the word "rest" to me and added them into the page protectors along with the journal card. 

I added some of the chipboard pieces onto my photos and called it good. 

Story number four was about celebrating being together. From the photos I took during this trip the ones that stood out as some of my favorites were the ones that included all of us or at least all the kids. Those are the meaningful photos to me from this time in our life. 

Story number five was a more practical one about walking and how we enjoyed staying at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and how it included a lot of walking around the property. 

I included one additional, non-numbered story spread because I wanted to make sure to include the fact that we celebrated Isaac's birthday while we were there. I also always love any opportunity to give thanks within my stories. 

Remember how I started this project with the "go" card? You know you've come to the end when you flip to the "coming home" card. For this one I just added the travel quote card from the kit and a photo of some of our crew playing a card game in the airport. 

My last page of the album includes a 3x8 card that simply says "thankful for this adventure." 

You can totally do this! There's definitely some letting go in coming to realize that you really don't have to use every photo or tell every story from a trip to still tell a meaningful story about your adventure. 

Also, a big thank you to HSN for having me and for including my products in their line up. 

Let's tell stories together!

If you want to learn more about travel memory keeping generally check out my Stories Of Travel workshop

If you are looking for specific ideas for working with the 2019 Travel Collection (including the products above) check out my Travel Product Play 2 workshop

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10 thoughts

  1. RhondaN says…
    06/17/2019

    I thought you did an outstanding job on HSN Ali! Love your album too and I love the new Travel release!

    Reply 1 Reply
    1. AliEdwards says…
      06/17/2019

      Thank you!

  2. helenhigh says…
    06/17/2019

    This is sooooooooo exciting. I'm so glad you are now having the opportunity to open up your products to those people who may not have known about your otherwise! What you do is so important and some people are so concerned about how "hard" they think scrapbooking/memory keeping can be. Hoping your products will show them that it's all the best parts are can be so simple! Can't wait to see if you can get December Daily on there. . .people will be SUPER excited about that project! Thank you for what you do!!

    Reply 1 Reply
    1. AliEdwards says…
      06/18/2019

      Thank you!

  3. amandamartig says…
    06/18/2019

    Love seeing this!!! Just want to say that I love seeing your products, your enthusiasm and that you STILL scrapbook! I just made a 6 by 8 album using your products to celebrate a special summer. So glad you are expanding to HSN. Just curious - how do you think the "general public" who get introduced to your products via HSN will handle printing these odd sizes? When I say odd, I mean, you can't order from CVS or Shutterfly or whatever. I have Photoshop and a photo printer because I have been doing this for years but I wonder what advice could we give to people who don't have that? Are there online sources for these sizes I am not aware of? Congratulations, again!

    Reply 1 Reply
    1. AliEdwards says…
      06/18/2019

      Super good question! In this case I didn't have a chance to go into it but likely what I would recommend at the start is to use the pockets that have the 3x2/3x6 configuration because they can crop a vertical 4x6 photo and have it go into that pocket and then use the 3x8 page for the journaling cards. In the case of this release, we gave HSN access to what we had available (which was this album) which I agree is a little more challenging in terms of the size :).

  4. JShimer says…
    06/18/2019

    OMG! I love the top picture so much!!!!!!! You did great!!!!!!! I, of course, was at work when it was live (I had already purchased the album from HSN for you:) But you did AMAZING! It's so great to see your company grow and you able to do something you love! And you help so many of us actually get our memories down on the page! YOU TOTALLY ROCK!!!!!!

    Reply 1 Reply
    1. AliEdwards says…
      06/18/2019

      Thank you!

  5. natalie_murphy says…
    06/18/2019

    I ordered the set even though I already bought it on your site - It's awesome. But I have to say, I wish they would of let you talk more. I thought the lady with you talked too much and didn't let you talk.

    Reply 1 Reply
    1. amorton63 says…
      06/20/2019

      I did too! But Ali did a great job with what little time she had. I purchased everything also even though I had already bought some items but wanted to support Ali. Maybe next time, they will give her a little more time.