Red Herring

One page or two?  Simple or fussy?  Few pictures or many?  Chronological events or stories about people?  Do you tend to stick with a certain style, or do you adapt your style to fit the project? 

I read a lot of message boards and talk to a lot of scrapbookers about their styles and how they like to work.  I like to think I notice some of the scrapbooking trends and I often try to emulate the styles or learn the techniques that become popular.  But I one thing I notice is that a lot of scrappers get stuck in a rut.  Once a technique or style becomes popular, that’s the only style they will use, and all the other “favorite” styles fall by the wayside.

Not me.  I like to think that I absorb techniques and styles, blending them with my own and adding them to my repertoire like a librarian adds books to her library.  I don’t like to use a technique on my pages too often.  I like my pages to be different.  I change from one page to many, from plain and simple to extremely elaborate.  Likewise, I don’t work on pages in any particular order most of the time because I don’t want the pages to be dated by the current trends or paper styles.  That’s why you’ll often see me using old paper on this blog and shabby chic pages right next to a few that use the color-blocking technique.

Today’s page is my answer to the LOAD 513 Day 6 prompt, “Red Herring”.  If you don’t know what a red herring is, it is a literary device, often used in mystery novels, to introduce a bit of subterfuge, to intentionally mislead, to lead a reader to the wrong conclusion.  I had to think really long and hard about this one, because I’m a pretty open and honest person and I just couldn’t think of any instance where the story might include some kind of red herring.  I actually put off working on my page all day because I couldn’t think of anything. 

While I was procrastinating, I decided to clean up my room a bit and I started doing a bit of planning/packing for a retreat I’ll be going on in a couple of weeks.  I knew I needed to go through my pictures and get a few more printed out.  So while I was sorting through those pictures, I stumbled across the perfect red herring story!

You might note that this is a very simply-styled page.  There’s hardly any embellishments, and the paper is several years old.  I actually bought this paper long before the pictures on this layout were ever taken, but given that my son was well on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout and the fact that my husband is the Scoutmaster of their troop, I figured it was pretty likely I would need this paper some day, so I bought it when I first saw it…just in case.

Could I have used a more modern style on this page?  Sure, but flowers and rhinestones and tons of layered embellishments really didn’t seem to fit, and I was very limited by the paper itself.  Could I have used a more modern paper?  Sure, but I don’t like to waste paper, and honestly, I couldn’t think of a better use for it. If I was ever going to use this paper, now was the time.  So what if my page isn’t the most modern, magazine-worthy masterpiece.  It tells the story, I got to use up some patterned paper that would have otherwise gone to waste, and I managed to stay on prompt for LOAD 513.  And that makes me very happy.

Plain Pages

I’ve made about a bazillion Boy Scout pages.  Seriously.  I count seven 4-5 inch thick albums, and I’m only caught up to 2007 plus one Eagle Scout book.  I still have three years to go.  That’s a lot  of Boy Scout pages. 

One of these days I’m going to compile the best of them into a book and sell it.  You might think I’m joking, but if you are the parent of a Boy Scout, you know how frustrating it is to find ideas for all those scrapbook pages.  There’s just so many activities, and they all start to look the same.  Sometimes you get to the point where you just want to slap the pictures on the paper and get it over and done.

Today’s page is one of those kinds of pages.  This was a Layout-A-Day page, and the prompt was to scrapbook a nature photo.  There are always nature photos on Boy Scout campouts.  That was the easy part.  The hard part is making this layout stand out from the 20-30 others just like it.  It’s not easy, and I don’t think I mastered it with this one.  This page is pretty boring.  It lacks “umpfh”. 

I posted it here because I think we all have pages like this – pages that, for whatever reason, lack that special something that makes us like the page.  In short, boring.  I keep thinking that if I look at it long enough, I will get inspired to do something cool that will make it better.  It’s happened before.  I know a lot of people who just wouldn’t care.  The pictures are on the page for people to see and that’s all that counts.  I don’t know if I can do that.  I’m way too much of a perfectionist.  Still, I’m tempted to just let it go.  I need to be less of a perfectionist and learn to love simple pages.  I just don’t know if it is in me.  I’m always drawn to the more complex pages with a lot of detail and eye candy.  Plain just isn’t my style.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of scrappers…the ones who tinker with a boring page until they’re satisfied, and those who just stick it in the album and move on to the next page.  Which kind of scrapper are you? 

LOAD 213

Yesterday was the first day of LOAD 213, the first Layout-A-Day challenge for 2013.  For the entire month of February, I will be creating a scrapbook layout every day and posting it to the Flickr group for LOAD 213.  This is the third time I’ve done this challenge, and I’m really excited, although I’m more than a little nervous about all the work I’ll be doing trying to keep up with this blog, the art journal for the 365, and LOAD.  It’s going to be a real challenge, but I look forward to it!

Today’s prompt was to create a layout with no words – no title, no journaling, no caption.  I found this picture right off and decided to myself that it really needed no explanation, especially if I used this Eagle Scout paper.  I had a second piece of the paper and used it to cut out the Eagle medal and pop it up.  Yes, there are words on the paper (on the medal), but I feel like they don’t count because they are part of the embellishment.  I made the medallions from scraps left over from another scout page.  I also inked the glitter paper stars to give them a more muted/bronze look instead of the straight silver.

If you are interested in LOAD 213, I’m sure it’s not too late to join, albeit a day late.  Just click on the logo below for more information.

http://www.layoutaday.com/load213/

Two Simple Layouts

I never did post the last two layouts from LOAD 512, so here they are.  They are very plain pages because by this point in the challenge, I was pretty much worn out!  But simple is sort of what Lain was going for with this challege, which is obvious from the prompt she gave us for Day 30:

30. Simple Simon : cardstock, photo, letter stickers, one embellishment

Everything on this page is made from cardstock.  I chose a stamp (the large medallion in the background) as my "embellishment".  My title is made of die-cuts that I turned into stickers with my Xyron Sticker Maker.  The small medallion is made of cardstock as well.  I can tell you this isn't my favorite page.  It needs something, but I'm not sure what.  It is very plain.  I keep thinking I might go back and add something to it.

31. Found photo

Day 31 allowed for a little more wiggle room, but quite honestly, I couldn't think of a darned thing that this page needed, so I just left it as it was -- clean and simple.  The found photo is a postcard of a Norman Rockwell painting titled, "The Scoutmaster", which he created in 1956.  The type-written story attached to the layout was written by one of my husband's Boy Scouts as a school assignment.

Well, that finally wraps up LOAD 512, just in time for LOAD 213 to start!  I promise...I will try to post those layouts in a much more timely manner!

Boy Scout Layout Ideas and more....

I teach a beginner scrapbooking class for the parents in our Boy Scout troop each year.  My focus is on teaching them proper preservation of photos and memorabilia as well as some easy techniques for embellishing pages without breaking the bank.   Here are a few pages we've made in these classes and a few I've done for my own scrapbooks.

For this "Court of Honor" page, I used a flattened bottle cap, a couple of circle punches with some leftover paper, and ribbon to create a cute doodad.  The photo mats were embellished with a corner punch I bought for $1 at a garage sale.

How simple is this one?  We used a Crop-o-dile to punch holes at intervals around this photo mat and then laced it with some hemp cord purchased at the dollar store.

A tag, some buttons, ribbon and a Dymo label maker were all I used on this color-blocked page.

The "pole" on this fishing page is made from a grill skewer stained with distressing ink.  The "fish" were a graphic found on the internet that we printed onto shrinky dink paper.  The "lures" were made from jewelry eye pins, construction paper, and some loose feathers from a boa -- and don't forget the googly eye!

Even a more formal page is dressed up with a bit of ribbon and a bit of glitter.  The fleur-de-lis was stamped on cardstock with a glue "ink" pad and then glittered.  The title is a combination of stencil, die cuts, and a stamp on a tag sticker.  A dotted outline around the word "scout" makes it standout from the background.

Four New Layouts

Be sure to caption your photos. Kids grow and change quickly, and others may not recognize the people in your photos.

Two-page layouts are great when you have lots of photos!

Here's another great way to use lots of pictures -- make a collage!

Cindy wanted to poke a little fun at her son's second trip to a popular Boy Scout site.  This digital layout captures the essence of a website hawking software upgrades.

Pages Without Pictures?!

No photos? Use a movie poster! Pages about movies, music, and sporting events add personality and a glimpse of everyday life.

The focus of a page doens't have to be a photograph.  In this layout, Stephanie wanted to show off a guitar pick and autograph she got after a concert.  Extensive journaling tells the story behind the memorabilia, and a die cut microphone as well as the band's photo and logo (found on the internet) make colorful and unique embellishments.

Don't forget to make pages chronicalling achievements and to display certificates and other memorabilia.

A sign of the times...include pages about your real life and your lifestyle in your albums. Events alone don't tell your story.

Layout Ideas

Every scrapbook deserves a great opening page.

For this opening page, Stephanie cut a focal point out of her patterned paper (the Statue of Liberty), matted it on a contrasting color of cardstock, and used pop dots to adhere it over another piece of the same patterned paper to give it a 3D effect.

Cindy used a Cricut Expression to cut many different sized circles for this layout.  The circles echo the rings in the olympic symbol.

A layout of last year's Pam's Pals event.

More pages of the same event. The doodles were made with Inque Boutique's "Nightingale" stamp collection and black Staz-On ink.  I then highlighted portions of the doodle with a white Uniball pen.

In keeping with the pink and black theme, Cindy used Staz-On "Brilliance" ink and then restamped a little off-set and embossed in light pink.