Color and Symbolism Add Impact

One of the best ways to add more to your layouts is though symbolism and color. Recently, I was challenged to use orange for it's color associations with nature. Orange connotes change and transition. I immediately thought of some of our moving photos.


Moving to P.I. by Christy Strickler Supplies| Patterned Paper: Jillibean Soup,My Mind’s Eye; Alphas: October Afternoon; Tape: Target; Other: Buttons; submitted for shape up your scrapbooking at Two Peas in a Bucket

We are expats. An expat or ex-patriot is someone who does not live in their home country. This means we rent a place to stay. We didn't intend to move around as much as we do. However, for various reasons we usually end up moving every 2-3 years.

Triangles are also a symbol that signifies change in chemistry. Having a background in science makes them a significant symbol to me. In some cases, the viewer of a layout will instantly get the symbolic associations with the items used. Other times, those symbols are more meaningful to the person who created the layout. This doesn't make them less of an impact. When you use colors and symbols that have meaning to you, the viewer can still feel it. The more thought behind the things you use helps you to make a more cohesive layout.

This is just one set of moving photos for me to document. You can bet I will be using more orange and triangles on future moving layouts. The next time you create something, give yourself a moment to think about colors or symbols that will make a meaningful impact on your story. I bet you will find more satisfaction in your layouts when you incorporate supplies that trigger your own memories.

Related articles

• Finding your " Go To" Embellishing Approach
• Mixing Black and White with Color Photos
• The Scientific Method: The Work Around
• Vintage Doesn't Mean Old
• You Can Have This Back!

LOAD 512 Progress report

  At this point, we are nearing the halfway mark for LOAD. My husband paid me a compliment about it today. He told me that he was amazed that I had managed to keep up with the housework, homeschool my son, work on submissions for SNR magazine and make a page a day. Honestly, I am still not sure how I am doing this. I guess the creative juices are flowing and I am taking advantage while I can. I will say this...when you are doing LOAD some things do get sacrificed. LOAD pages are not always the ones with the deepest of stories. They are not always the pages with the most intricate details. Nor are they always the ones with the best photographs to upload to the gallery. Often times, they look a tad blurry. That's all ok though. At the end of the day, you are supporting a good creative habit and the rewards will benefit you so much more down the line. LOAD pages done now translate to more pages done on a daily basis each month. Once the creativity starts flowing, it's good to let it keep on growing.

 On a side note: I'm noticing quite a trend in my pages lately. My cats seems to be making an appearance on almost each and every page I have been making in the past week or so. Can you tell our pets are a huge part of our lives?!?! I took a ton of photos of both Boo and Ju Ju Bee over the past few months. Having a new kitten in the house certainly calls for many photo ops.

cardstock: Colorbok; patterned papers: Echo park and My Little Shoebox
Alphas: My Little Showbox; ribbon: Making Memories
flower: Jillibean Soup; brad: Karen Foster
title sticker: Momenta; Die cut: Echo park

  I'm off to create some more. I know I made my page for today, but I want to keep on going. I hope you do to. Oh...and if you want to see another pet themed page, head on over to the SNR blog. This week's color palette features a page with my itty bitty kitty.

What's Your Trend?

 I recently realized that I have certain techniques that have become trends. I am not necessarily talking about industry trends. I am talking about the trends you may see in the way that you work. I have tried a lot of new things over the past year. Some of those things have become staples in the making of my scrapbook pages. Misting and paint are one of those. I hardly make a page on which one or both are not present. So much so, that many of my friends now identify a page as truly me when they see the mist and paint. Last year, I really felt the need to hand stitch on quite a lot of the pages I produced. I now find that I am not hand stitching quite so much these days. My latest love is to use pen to outline the letters on my titles. I saw it done during a Masterful Scrapbook Design Seminar. Now I hardly feel a page is complete without it.

Let's Scrap sketch 1-4-12 ribbon-jillibean soup, glimmer mist-fairway,sapphire and tiger lily,SEI ink blue ink, Fancy pants to the moon papers,Amer. Crafts thickers-orange alphas,My little Shoebox tiny type alphas, Sassafrass green alphas, K and co. star chipboard sticker. superhero bands- from our egg dying kit, tags made with toilet paper which was embossed, inked and cut to fit the tag.

Who knows which techniques will become a regular part of your design style or which ones may become your scrapbook trends. The important thing is to observe your process. As you do so, you will learn more about who you are and the things that work for you. This will be a big help in developing your confidence and in making your scrapbook budget go farther. You will know which supplies to buy, because you will know the supplies you use most. So now, take a look at your work and ask yourself what your scrapbook trends are.

A pair of Boy's Shorts, part 1

  The shorts were ripped. Worn thin from frequent use, they were, at this point, beyond repair. Maybe some moms would be sad, but I saw an opportunity. Here in my hand was some of the coveted fabric appearing on scrapbook pages everywhere. Now, despite being on a limited budget, I had some fabric to use on my own pages. It might not be brightly patterned...but perhaps, I could change that with a little creativity. Perhaps, I thought, this one pair of boys shorts could go a long way. So here they are in their wrinkled glory, ready to use:

one very wrinkled, beat up pair of my son's shorts

I felt kind of lucky that they were khakis. I think it will make them easier to find uses for. I can envision myself cutting away the pockets, stamping on some of the spaces with paints, or using strips to make masculine looking flowers. There are a ton of possibilities.  Possibility number one was a simple one indeed. I noticed the drawstrings on the shorts were the right colour to be used as trim on a page that I was working on.

         Cathy Z sketch and journal spot, October Afternoon papers,
                              salvaged trim, Jillibean soup flowers-red with BG brads and misc. buttons,
            Maya road flowers- check, October afternoon checked alphas,
Cosmo cricket tiny type alphas

This was not an easy page for me to make. First of all, I had challenged myself to use up more of the patterened paper in my stash. I also endeavored to use up some cardstock scraps. That was not the hard part though. This is a page from the Cathy Zielske design your life series at BPC. The idea being to step into Cathy's simple style so that you learn more about page composition and design. Once upon a time, I was a more simple scrapper. Now I find myself reaching for paint, and though I do like how this page turned out, I am still thinking I should have splattered it up somewhere or somehow.
  Regardless of how hard page one might have been for me to complete, I still had page two to work with. I also had just one piece left of the drawstring trim. So I sort of replicated page one's design. The  drawstring

  

made for the perfect trim for both pages. Now, I still have quite a lot left of the shorts to use up. I can not promise you that will happen right away. I scrap where creativity takes me. I do promise to share the pages I do when I do use up those shorts...so stay tuned. 

Battery Powered?

  I homeschool my son and one of our favourite subjects is science. I tend to hoard science kits like I hoard scrapbook supplies. So my son and I made a commitment to not bring any more home until we used some kits up. This kicked off some good fun in our home, though I must admit, some of those kits were duds. As in...duds, not working, it's a no go. This was one such kit. Maybe the citrus was too old to conduct a charge.( we live on an island and it's shipped in). Maybe we had the wrong kind of penny or paper clip. Who knows!?!? We never got the light to come on using oranges and lemons as batteries. We still  had a great time and managed to learn about electricity. I took a bunch of photos for me to scrap which meant I not only used up a science kit, I used up stash too. It was a win-win all around.

Sketch from Cathy Zielske
Jillibean soup papers, stickers
Webster's pages sparklers
Twinery Twine- cappucino
glossy accents
star punch
DMC floss
Glimmer mist- Electric blue
Maya Mist- Creme Metallic
Pink paislee alphas

  Can you tell what's new on my page? Probably not. No hard feelings about that. It's hard to tell unless you know. I got Adobe Photoshop elements 10. I must say that it has helped me out quite a bit in the "having better photos" category. I still need to learn to take better pictures, but at least the ones I have look a tad better. I also used a large photo on my page thanks to the Cathy Zielske Design your life class at Big picture Classes. It's not something I would normally do. There is one other new thing on my page...I finally got around to weaving.
  Initially, I had just stitched boxes on the right hand page to even out the design.After stitching the boxes, I thought it needed a bit more than just a plain box with mist droplets in it. I was, sadly, too lazy to stitch a whole pattern inside the box. If I had planned things out, I would have evenly aligned the holes to make the weaving easier. So the weaving is a bit uneven. No matter, it turned out to look pretty interesting. I added some punched stars with a bit of glossy accents and ended up with some nice texture on my page. Here is a close up:

I wove the threads at random through various strands of the thread. It created this lovely pattern through the block. Proof positive that trying something new can yield a wonderful result.

So now it's your turn. Try a new tool, a new technique...anything new will do. Then share it with us at Scrap Our Stash!

Christmas Is Not Too Far Away!

  If you are like me, you may already have Christmas on your mind. My son is already accumulating his list of things he might like to get. Which only serves to remind me of last Christmas' photos waiting patiently to be documented. For whatever reason, I always struggle with getting those holiday photos on a page. So as I shuffled through my small stash of pre-printed and stamped quotes, I thought it just might be the right time to get out those holiday photos. I had come across a stamped quote which I had received in a stamped image swap. It's a quote by Washington Irving which reads " Christmas is here- Merry Old Christmas, gift bearing, heart-touching, joy- bringing Christmas." Definitely a wonderful quote for a holiday page!
  With quote in hand, I pulled out my holiday paper pack. It's chock full! I have promised myself not to buy any more holiday paper until I use some of it up. We shall see how that goes. Anyhow, awhile back, I had begun scrapping the 2010 Christmas photos with a crate paper kit.I decided to carry on with the same paper in order to keep the similar look to all of the pages.

PageMaps Sketch
jillibean Soup gift wrap paper
all other papers Crate paper
Crate Paper chipboard peices and stickers
Maya Road trim-brown velvet
MM trim- red
Foofala buttons

While I did add part of a sheet of Jillibean soup, the rest of the paper used is all scraps. Even the ribbon used are pieces of scraps. With careful thought, scraps can really compose a wonderful page.

Wedding Day Sandcastle

    A few years ago, We were invited to attend a beach wedding. It was a lot of fun, though I will admit it felt very odd to attend a wedding dressed in a bathing suit and beach attire. My son thought it was awesome. He hates to dress up. The bride also made sure all of the kids who attended would receive a backpack of sand toys. The sand toys kept all of the kids( and my husband) occupied while we awaited for the wedding to start. It was a definite win-win scenario!
   I left my camera at home since the wedding was at a beach. I opted for some disposable waterproof cameras as I had no idea what we might encounter in regards to sand and water. When I began scrapping these pictures, I decided to try some of the 4x6 pocket sleeve style page protectors rather than the traditional 12x12. I had received a package of them for free with an album purchase.I figured this would be a great opportunity to use them since the photos were all standard 4x6 prints. I found there were a lot of pro's and cons to using these page protectors. You really need to plan where these will go in your album as the pockets are on both sides of the page protector. Using the photo sizes the pockets are intended for makes things a lot easier. I think If I had used one of the kits, like the simple stories line, which are designed for these types of page protectors, I would have had a much easier time. Once I got going though, it made for a quick and easy page.

Items from my July counterfeit kit:
Fancy Pants Paper and rub on's
Making Memories alphas
not from kit:
Jillibean soup twine
dmc floss
DCWV chipboard bird
Studio G stamp in white inke with clear embossing powder
Coredinations CS embossed with swiss dots folder and sanded
Colorbok CS
Maya Road Acrylic starfish coloured with eggplant and ginger alcohol inks

I did crop the 4x6 photos down. Not cropping them would have allowed me to just slip them in the pocket. I also chose a Pagemaps sketch, which meant it took a little more time and thought. For a faster page, I could have just decorated 4x6 cards and journal spots and slipped those in. On a positive note, I was able to use scraps for almost the entire page!

Shown above, are the backs of some of the 4x6 blocks. The white sections are the photos. You can also see how I covered page scraps that would otherwise have had gaps or sections missing with other pieces of paper layered over it.
 I could have left the tan paper and white clouds plain. However, embossing them gave just a tad more texture to the page. The sand coloured Coredinations cardstock was embossed with swiss dots using my texture boutique. I lightly sanded it to reveal the slightly darker core colour. I chose to use white ink in a cloud shaped stamp with clear embossing powder to add a subtle lining to the clouds. While these would have been just fine plain, this tone on tone embossing gives it a more finished look as does the hand stitching under the sand castle rub on.
 Now that I have the hang of working with these type page protectors, I will certainly consider using them more often. I think I will try some soon with one of the kits that are designed for these. Maybe then, I will find I like them even more than I do now.
 

Climb: an exploration of inspiration

   Paint can be a tricky medium. It looks awesome on a page but yet, it is such a permanent thing to commit to. It takes a little getting used to when you are trying it out on a page. I find that the more I use it, the more comfortable I am becoming with it.

For " Climb" I felt that paint was just the thing to use on the page. It's a page I completed for a combination of challenges at Sketches 4 All. One challenge being a scraplift and another being an ad inspiration challenge. I also added the challenge to use circles on the page and my own posted challenge...to make a hand made embellishment. Here are the 2 inspirational pieces from which I created my own page:

by Stacy R.

ad inspiration challenge photo

The basic design of Climb is a very close scraplift of Stacy 's page. I have been wanting to go back to basics...back to when I frequently used pens or markers on a page as part of the design. I did that a lot when I first started scrapbooking and somewhere along the way, I forgot that pens were for more than journaling. I used my new Bic Marc it's to draw a border around the white paint on the kraft paper. Overall, I placed many of my page's elelments the same way she did.

From the ad, I took the color. I love the bright splash of green and orange on the white. Those colors instantly drew me to the trees in the Jillibean Soup papers. However, the black base was too much, too strong. So I chose a more organic approach with the kraft paper and the browns. It also better matched the outdoor photos. I loved the repetitive circles of the trees. So I fussy cut some more Jillibean paper and made the circle into scallops. I used papertrunks circle pattern from the Batik collection to stamp some white circles onto kraft. Layering this trim over the scallop provided a more finished look to the page. I fingerpainted a circle onto a piece of scrap kraft. Some handstitching and painted rays made a sun. However, the sun was still flat. Stitched swirls similar to the splashes of paint in the ad provided a more complete and interesting  sun. A Handstitched title and date ad to the homespun/natural tone. The bird( from K and company) completes the nature imagery.

I am definately more comfortable with the paint than the times I have used it before. It's easy to combine challenges and inspiration into one page. It can leave you with a wonderful page that you love and enjoy sharing.