Saturday, January 1, 2011

The Crafting of an Imperfect Scrapbook Layout

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” 
-Albert Einstein, German-born Theoretical Physicist

I scrapbook. Over and over again. Yet, the process of crafting a scrapbook page can change according to the mood I'm in or what I want to visually display.

Sometimes I start with a photo or story, other times a gorgeous combination of paper or even a prompt from a scrapbooking class. For my very first ScrapTiffany challenge, I chose to begin my scrapbook page with embellishments.


The ScrapTiffany Challenge was to scraplift a layout from the last design team (see other design team creations at the ScrapTiffany Blog). I chose a page by Becca from a November 2010 blog post because I liked the butterflies that graced her page and how she incorporated a group of squares on the layout.

As I dug through my supplies, I found three flowers and felt butterflies that were orange, pink and red. Now I was in for another challenge...how am I going to make a layout with orange, pink and red (when I'm not a big fan of orange)?

The search for additional supplies began, so I...

  • Grabbed some leftover lace from my graduation layout.
  • Picked out a pink and reddish notecard to add to the background behind the journaling.
  • Chose black rub-ons.
  • Decided that the background needs to be on 12x12 white cardstock.
  • Cut out orange circles using a small Christmas cookie tin as a guide.
  • Planned to doodle with a black marker.
  • Knew I would definitely be distressing!

Once I had the supplies, I decided on photos. I had three different sets of photos to chose from, all with scrapable qualities and would have done well on the layout I was in the process of creating, but I had that special feeling, these are the ones, when I chose the two photos of my girls being silly. The colors in the photo worked well with the chosen three (orange, pink and red) and with the additions of green and blue, my layout color scheme suddenly expanded. (My original plan with the layout was to use the "chosen three" colors with black and white and no other colors.)

To bring everything all together, I remembered the paper I bought at my last scrapbooking crop and thought Scrumdiddlyumptious! These are my squares!

Crafting of the layout began, so I...

  • Cropped the photos.
  • Added lace.


  • Doodled on the orange circles and notecard.
  • Distressed some squares, crinkled others and inked them all.




  • Played around with placement.
  • Started adhering the elements to the page.
  • Used brads to secure the flowers (and used scrap paper on the back of the layout to cover the brads).


  • Added a rub-on title.
  • Doodled on the paper (I think I went overboard on this).
  • Distressed and inked the 12x12 edges (It's okay to be messy).
  • Stamped a journaling box, distressed and split apart the edges and inked.


  • And added rick rack.

Done!

This is definitely not my favorite scrapbook layout and I see many flaws, but it's still another layout done and a few memorable photos scrapped. The truth is, I've never been big on scraplifting or following sketches. I just let the process take me where it wants to go.

Thanks for stopping by Snap.Scrap.Blog.Tweet! Be sure to visit the ScrapTiffany Blog to see what all the other design team members have created.
  
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