A week or so ago I was attempting to put away the stacks and stacks of completed layouts piled upon the dining room table and get them into albums where they (according my, ahem, husband!) belong. I speculated that we might need the table for Thanksgiving dinner and, given the number of layouts residing there, it just might take until November to get them all put away. (It should be noted that the last time I actually put a layout into an album, Tom was jumping on Oprah's couch, LOST was my television obsession, and both were confusing the hell out of me. Ah, some things never change...)
At any rate, in sorting through the piles and inserting layouts into albums, I came across a few pages that left me somewhat disappointed in myself as a scrapper. Now, I don't expect every single page I make to be a work of art that causes the heavens to open and angels to sing, but I do have my standards. Namely, the page should (1) successfully display a treasured photo; (2) have some sort of documentation of who/where/what/when/why that photo relates to our lives; and (3) show some shred of artistic merit and creativity. But one such page I found met none of these criteria:
Eeeeeek! It's horrendous, right? While I adore this sweet photo of Hayden's friend Sophia, the layout itself is truly horrible. Granted, it's several years old, and was created in the time when my style wasn't fully developed. I think I had thrown it together in a last minute application for the AC design team. It's no wonder I wasn't chosen for the team, and I should probably be thankful AC didn't ban me from ever using their products again after seeing this haphazard mess of a page. But even beyond the design, the fact that there is no relevant journaling on the page really, really bugged me. Of course, we know who Sophia is and why she's important in our lives right now, but if we see this page in 10 or 20 years, will we still know? Or will we just see a random (albeit CUTE!) photo of a little girl that is in our scrapbooks for some unknown reason? I didn't want the story to go unrecorded, so I set out to re-design this page.
Here's the new version, complete with the journaling that the original was missing:
Sweet Sophia • 12 x 12 patterned paper (Cosmo Cricket Pinwheels, Making Plans, & Flower Fields; Sassafras Lass Mellow, Affection, Studio Calico Down to Earth) + frames (Maya Road) + mist (Studio Calico Mr. Huey) + letters (Cosmo Cricket) + punches (Martha Stewart butterfly, EK Success notebook) + flower gems (Making Memories) + die cutting machine (Silhouette SD) + fonts (Handsome Pro - title, Veteran's Typewriter - journaling) + misc buttons, twine
I used supplies from Studio Calico's kit, Back 40 (and the add-on, Fresh Cut) to create a collage of frames and simple embellishments next to the photo. The title is a mix of chipboard letters and shapes that I cut using my Silhouette (I cannot even begin to express my love for this little machine. It has already saved me so much time cutting things I used to painstakingly cut by hand. Time that can be used to do more important things. Like shop online. And play Jewel Quest. And avoid housework.) I printed the journaling directly onto the cardstock background, overlapping the title just a bit.
Now, I realize that redesigning a scrapbook page isn't revolutionary work that's going to save the world or anything. But I'm so much happier with the version of the page! (And around here, mama's happiness counts for a lot. Just ask my kids.) The soft colors of the product make the photo shine, and the story behind Sophia and her importance in our life is now documented. And hey, if there's one less poorly designed scrapbook page in the world, maybe it is a better place after all. Happy Thursday, my friends!
