Got to Journal?

Okay, I may be a writer at heart, but I am not a journalist in my albums by any means. I generally try to avoid anything more than who, what, where and when. However, there are times when it is absolutely necessary to tell the tale with more than just photos.
I found this tag border challenge on cafe mom. I was struggling with what to do with all of the tag space. As I paged through my son's baby album, inspiration hit. I needed to redo my son's baby gift page. See I had never really completed it in his album and it was just a few photos with lots and lots of writing. Perfect for this journalistic layout!
As I neared the end of rewriting the names and gifts onto the tags, I realized I was quickly running out of room. I had one of those ahha moments early this morning. As I was digging through looking for a brad I spotted a hinge. HMMM, what if I add a tag to another tag and make me a book to list the rest of these in? I love it! It was the perfect answer to my journalism problem. Pretty cool huh?

Love this layout!

Just wanted to post this layout because I love this design. the original layout only has one row of four photos going between the other six larger pictures. But again I had more photos so I improvised.

Nightmare on Scissors Street

Now on the verge of completing my son's school books I decided that his baby book was in desperate need of  some serious touch up. You see , it was the very first album I ever did. 19 years ago I was not quite the scrapper I am now, and let's face it folks, there is only so much one can do with tupperware stencils and micro pens....

One of the pages I have been having nightmares about was my "Watch me Grow" Page.  I took a photo of my baby with a stuffed toy as a point of reference and then took the same shot every month for the first year. The problem was that back in my early days of scrapping, I was scissor happy. I cut every photo into mincemeat- hand cut ovals and sillouettes.... I didn't even use the old cm stencils to make the ovals- I just cut them by hand. I know what you are thinking....just reprint them right? Nope, can't find half of the negatives and although I am sure there were doubles at the time- those doubles are long gone to Grandmas or Aunties or somewhere. I managed to find six of  the twelve shots, and then decided to add in the first year formals that were taken as well- since I had found plenty of those leftover. But what to do with the remaining six shots that were cut up?
   Frame it. Instead of putting the photo on the matte, matte the photo behind the matte, and hide the shape behind the frame. To create this effect I cut squares the same size as my "calendar squares" on my new layout and then used my cm circle and oval cutter to cut the inside shape. I used the negative portion of the oval to frame my cut photos.

Finding Inspiration

It's interesting where we scrappers find our inspiration sometimes. Okay for some of us it is downright sick... who of us has not bought an outfit for our baby just because you already have the perfect paper for it, right? No? But surely you have spotted that Hallmark commercial with the circles or the Safeway commercial that has the photos all in a row....look around you. Inspiration is everywhere.

One of my favorite new tricks is to take a leap from a card to a layout, something I have recently started doing with my scrappin pals on the Scrapper's Patch. This layout was inspired by a card challenge.

This is the original card...


Here is my layout... Just a note, the tag behind the heart was originally a ready made white tag, I embossed it with my big shot, then inked it with a sponge and distressed the edges with a blade add a rub on swirl and it turned out great!

 

Stretch Your Imagination

 There have been many times that I tend to ignore single page layout ideas- because I mainly do two page spreads. Recently, I have been very inspired by a scrapbooking group on cafe mom that I have started doing layout challenges with. Most of the layouts they post to challenge us with are single page layouts, but I am on a mission to complete my son's scouting book and school album by December, and I do not have time to waste on single page layouts...
   So I have gotten pretty good at stretching them out to a two page layout I can use. It's pretty simple. You find the focal center of the layout and mentally stretch out the page around it. Try it. I know I have been having a blast doing it! So here is the layout I started with....


And here is my completed two page Layout-I added two extra photos and increased the size of the four photos on the right, to S-t-r-e-t-c-h it out! Easy huh? I don't know why I was so afraid to try it before. So go on Stretch your imagination!

Here is another single page layout I turned into a two pager.

Make those Photos pop!

One of the things I like most about Scrapbooking is that it truly is all about the pictures! Some of my favorite layouts truly have found ways to literally PLAY with the photos and make you look at them in a new way.
In this layout from the Butterfly Pavillion, I had tons of butterfly pictures and accidentally used the wrong size punch to cut two of my photos... but as my favorite pal Wanda says..."There are no mistakes in scrapbooking, only opportunites for extra embellishments!" So I used my mistake to accent the photos...I matted the small squares with a 1/8" matte and popped the matted photos up with pop dots (Foam tape) within the frame of the cut out photo and I love how it came out!