Pages with a theme

Sometimes pages are easier to assemble when I am in a groove of a theme: say when I'm thinking Christmas, it's easy to do multiple years because that is what I'm excited about scrapping at that time. Well, the theme I have scrapped more recently has been my cousin (yes the cool one)- we have been friends forever now and so of course there are many pictures of the two of us together- recent ones and not-so-recent ones. Some of those pictures I have struggled with making a page because I wanted to tell some of the story of us and not just the events of the pictures...which I ignored completely in one of the pages!

So here is the page that started it all:

This page was based on my visit to Chicago this year...and I just wanted to highlight our friendship :)

Close-up of the embellishments on this page: it's hard to tell on the screen, but the grey paper is embossed with flowers.

And then I got inspired to pull out some pictures from ten years ago: I have scrapped this Christmas, but I was struggling with what to do with these great shots- I didn't want to make them more Christmas pages but I didn't have a plan or an idea of what I wanted to do! Then, I got into the "cousins" theme and saw a bunch of fun pages in this month's issue of Creating Keepsakes- so I modeled this page after one from that magazine! I really liked the way it came together with the grey, orange, and blue elements :)

Note: the number "1" fell off somewhere after I painted it in my craft room somewhere...I plan to locate it before I put the page in my scrapbook :)

30 minutes...yep, that's a page :)

Sometimes I over-think things....ok, I over-think EVERYTHING! And scrapbooking is no exception: I will spend literally hours pouring over magazines, idea blogs, and making plans for all my pictures. Unfortunately, once I have done that, I seldom turn that energy to actually crafting a page! I will plan multiple things, write up checklists and put aside products to put on those pages...and then not ever scrapbook. 

So today, I decided to give myself a challenge of sorts: I would put 30 minutes on a timer, pull out some random paper, gran an idea from a magazine that I wanted to try, and scrapbook a page! I ended up grabbing a random photo from my "need to crop" pile and did this page :)

I grabbed some random kraft colored paper, some coordinating card-stock (even though I ended up with red and green I decided that it looked ok), and some random embellishments :) I used the chevron-making technique from the magazine (this was a difficult technique....it almost made me go over my 30 minute limit) and a stamped banner- Overall, I'm happy with the way it turned out! 

Here is a close-up of the chevron technique...as you can see it's not perfect- but I really liked the way it looks on the page.

I tried doing a mini version of the chevron pattern for the title...again, it could be neater but I like the piece-meal look it gives to the page :)

Not bad for 30 minutes and NO PLANNING! It was so exhilarating to do this- I'll have to try it out with the rest of the Chicago trip pictures :) Challenge for you: if I can do this in 30 minutes, you can do it too...just throw the thinking and planning out the window :)

Dark and White Space

I usually scrapbook in waves...leaving "white" space on a page or trying to fill every single crevice of the page with some kind- but this time I seemed to be jumping from one extreme to another! And of course, both of these pages were inspired by some one else's sketch: but I still tried to make it my own :)

This page is definitely a case of a lot going on: first I'm obsessed with Graphic 45 paper so even though I had no circus pictures, I had to have the paper....so the flaming lips concert seemed a great way to use it! The left side page is actually 2 different papers: the border I cut very carefully around the clown and put the black dot paper under it. The rest of that paper is on the right side page (the busy elephants)

 

This is the "white" space page: even though I tried to leave a lot of negative space on my page, I still had to dress it up :) I love all the yellow and purple and the random light blue...but I DID keep myself from filling in all the empty space :)