Welcome back for another day of LOAD 2019! Today, I am sharing my page for Day 4, using the prompt based on the twister in the “Wizard of Oz”. The prompt was to tell a story with a twist, but I chose to focus on the twister itself, and tell a tale from my childhood about living through a tornado.
One of the things I love about doing LOAD is that it reminds me of all the stories I need to tell. I think we often get so focused on the PHOTOS of our lives, that we forget all about the stories and events that DON’T always have photos. And we are so busy creating pages and albums of our children, our trips, and our holidays, that we don’t always tell the stories of our own childhood or share the bits and pieces of our life that share who we are and where we came from. For me, that is the whole purpose of scrapbooking…to tell those stories so they aren’t forgotten…to share them with future generations who will want to know who we are and how we lived.
I didn’t have any pictures of my own from this event, but a quick search of the internet turned up dozens of photos I could easily download from various archives. I printed them at a smaller scale so I could fit more to one page, as I didn’t really think this warranted a 2-page layout. I also found a photo of the next day’s front page of the local newspaper, so I printed that (reduced, of course) onto parchment and inked it for additional aging.
The background paper came from Basic Grey, sorry I can’t remember which line. I was looking for something distressed looking. It probably didn’t matter since it’s mostly covered up anyway. I wanted to really add to the sense of chaos and destruction, so I skewed all the elements on the page, and even ripped and inked the edges of the journaling that I printed on parchment paper. I didn’t think it needed a title in the true sense of the word, since the headline on the paper says it all, but I did add a date near the top, using a rolling stamp. I think the stamp’s messy imprint adds to the disarray of the page.
A word about the parchment paper…. If you follow my Facebook page, Instagram, or this blog, you may have noticed that I’ve used the same parchment paper several times lately. If I were scrapbooking chronologically, as many people do, I certainly would not have done that because then all my pages would start to look the same. That’s one of the things I love about scrapbooking in no particular order – I work on the pages as the inspiration comes to me, perhaps telling a story from my childhood one day, and creating a page about my son’s high school orchestra the next. Since the pages are never side-by-side in the same book, you would never know that I went through an “eyelet stage” or an “embossing stage”, or even a “parchment paper stage”. So as new products come out, I feel free to use them on any of my projects, and my albums are never “dated” by a certain style or technique.
I also want to give a shout out to everyone who will be at Scrapbook Expo next weekend. I will be in the crop room most of the time, so if you are there, or if you see me on the floor, come over and say "Hi," and mention the blog. I love hearing from you! Even better, ask for a selfie and post it on your Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram page. You can tag me, Crafty Neighbor, or both! Your tag will enter you in a drawing for a cool prize pack, and everyone will get a little gift for tagging me!
Next up – our prompt is about being in an unfamiliar environment, and we can use a technique we’ve never tried, or one we don’t use very often. I’m thinking I might do something digital! If I do, I may make a process video. This should be fun!
Keep crafting!
