When I started the Cathy's DYL class, I had been struggling for sometime to finish my 2008 album. I wasn't motivated by the pictures I've been looking at for over a year and scrapbooking was beginning to feel like a chore. The only time I actually scrapbooked was when I was preparing for my next class and essentially scrapbooking for others.
Lesson on Emphasis, specifically using a LARGE photo!
Being invigorated by the design principles and sketches I used the remaining pictures from that year to complete my 'assignments'. Not only was I happy to be learning new principles and understanding old ones, it also brought a new excitement to teaching my Year in Review class, as I felt even more confident about what I was teaching and design principles I was passing along. I loved the simple but strong layouts and I never ever thought I would like scrapping in a 8 1/2 x 10" format but following Cathy's sketches opened my eyes to just how I could do on a smaller canvas. I also realized I actually like practicing my ever growing digital scrapbooking skills on this smaller size so I can print them out and see them in real life. I can't say enough about how awesome this class was and how much it rekindled my love for scrapbooking.
Lesson on Repetition - note the repeating colors (Okay, maybe not the best example of reptition but I LOVE the way this layout turned out!)
This was a Real World Color challenge. She gave us the color scheme and we had to adapt. Not colors I would normally put together, but again I love the way this turned out!
It was a good thing that I was excited about scrapbooking again because Stacy Julian's Library of Memories Class is work! I mean it's good work, playing with pictures, rethinking, reorganizing, finding long forgotten things, discovering new ones, but it is indeed work! And knowing I wanted to approach my scrapbooking from a different prespective saw me through the many challenges this class gave me.
Title page for my new All About Us album. Pictures span several years and this album contains pages that show off our immediate family's personality traits and things that are just us! Other albums include People We Love, Places We Go and Things We Do.
Stacy's LOM system allowed me to keep the chronological structure I need to find my photos but also gave me a new way organize photos that I like, photos that show a relationship or photos that just sum up someone's personality. Taking these special photos out of chronological order and putting them together, showed me new connections between the people I love and things we do. My favorite part is when the kids do something fun or funny, I can go to these category drawers, pull a picture that shows their cute little personality and make a quick layout right then that gets the memory down before I forget it and it gets lost in all the "to-do" piles! I LOVE this! So, I have been converted from my strictly chronological ways to seeing stories in new ways. I've told more stories about the people we love, the things we do and places we go and I've used pictures that I just love to create layouts I never would have before because they didn't fall in to the "year" I was scrapping about it. This is life-changing in my little scrapbooking world.
As I was going through photos I found Ethan making this face over and over again. I thought it would make for an adorable personality page about my most exuberant child. Then as I was going through pictures from my childhood I found one of me making the exact same face! So this page turned in to a page about how our personalities are alike. Simple design and a story no one else could tell but me.
Again going through photos I found this "ready to go" shot from two different times of my life but still traveling the world! It wasn't until after I posted this layout I realized that in both pictures I am heading to my favorite location in the world: Salzburg, Austria!
Now that I worked my way through learning design principals and changing my photo organization and work flow, this summer I took May Flaum's Use Your Stash class.
Stash used: Travel paper (3 years old), chipboard letters (4 years old), chipboard accents (2 years old, photo overlay (1 year old), Ribbon (Who knows how old?!)
I figured this class had my name on it since I could open a small scrapbook store with the amount of "stash" I have in my scraproom. So each week May challenged us go through our stash and reminded us about older products that might be lurking in our stash from years gone by: Chipboard, stamps, eyelets, magic mesh, rub-ons (I had some so old they don't actually rub-on anything anymore.), etc.
Stash used: a sample layout I created for A Memory to Scrap (1 year old). The flower and letter stickers are from this year, but were both freebies and I had no idea how or when I might use them!
So, I was using my stash, telling the stories I was inspired to tell and designing wonderfully balanced pages and took on the ultimate challenge: Lain Ehmann's Layout A Day October 2010 also affectionately known as LOAD. The challenge is pretty straight forward create a layout, any layout, any size, every day in the month. I've made many a layout over my scrapbooking career, but never this many in this time frame and never that many days in a row. I'm always trying to scrapbook everyday, but that never happens! So, I thought having an actual challenge to do it would be VERY motivating!
This day's prompt was to use Ali Edward's journal idea of "Today You..." to tell an every day story. With the arrival of our new puppy life has changed a lot for me, I thought it would be a great way to show how she has affected every day life around here. I am in love with this page!
So, I pulled out some favorite pictures and sketches I've been meaning to use. I planned things out the night before. I worked to finish some projects I've started and never completed. I followed prompts that were given by Lain and sometimes I took those prompts in a completely different direction. I tried new techniques I saw others use on their layouts and I was totally inspired!
This day's prompt was to use photo in a film strip or photo booth style. Since I take so many consecutive pictures at the boys' sports game, I knew this would be a perfect way to use them.
This day's prompt was put the journaling or title on the photo itself. Using my new Photoshop skills, I used a Dr. Suess quote on this adorable picture of E from his First Day of School this year. He's shown some new confidence this year without his older brother being at school with him and I thought this quote exemplified that.
And yes, it took some time and, yes, it was not always easy or convenient, but I DID IT! I am absoultely positive that all the other classes I took set me up for this success and the culmination of all my efforts was really gratifying.
Now, doing a layout a day in November and December is not exactly feasible, but I've been able to get some in here and there and I am so happy with where my hobby is taking me and the pages that I am currently doing. I love my new found scrapbook freedom and I am excited about the pages and projects that I will be inspired to do in 2011! Here's to a new year of making memories!
