Happy National Scrapbook Day! If you are blog hopping with the Sketch Support team, you should have landed here from Katrina's blog and next you will head to Allison's blog. There are some awesome prizes up for grabs so be sure to visit all of the blogs! To be eligible to win a prize from me, leave me a comment on this post before 12 am CST on Monday May 9.
If you have stopped in today because you are a regular reader, I encourage you to jump in on the blog hop and check out all of the great inspiration happening today from the members of the Sketch Support design team.
For the hop today, all of the team members are creating pages from the same sketch. For my take on the sketch, I converted the two page sketch into a single page. I stayed fairly true to the left page of the design. I had to shift several elements to the left a bit but for the most part included all of the elements from the left page on my single page. Because I wanted to focus on a single photo, I changed the second photo on the sketch into a larger journaling box. On the sketch there is a second patterned paper along the left edge (under the T in title) that I moved around under my title. Because my title letters were so muted, they were easily lost on the pattern paper. Adding the solid blog under them helped them to stand out more.
Today on the hop, all of the team members are answering the question "Why do you scrapbook?". For me the answer is all about creativity. I love to create things with my hands from simple materials like paper, inks, and embellishments. I get a real sense of peace and happiness from making things. I feel like every stress and worry in life washes away, even if just for a little while, while I am at work with paper and glue.
For this page, I challenged myself to include hand written journaling. As I continue to push myself outside of my "stuff maker" box more, I find that journaling, especially hand written journaling is very difficult for me. I am an over thinker and worry way too much about something sounding corny. I felt like this photo of my daughter Emma, one of my absolute most favorite photos ever, deserved journaling and to make it more personal since it is very personal thoughts, it should be hand written. I actually like my handwriting, so I think the part about being an over thinker is what causes me to not want to hand write journaling. Once it is down, it is down. There is no backspace and re-do. I don't want to tell you how many times I have re-made journaling blocks because I was too critical of what I had written or couldn't look past small mistakes.
I challenged myself on this page to do the journaling one time. I made one journaling block and adhered it to my page and just did it. I used pencil first and inked over it. My only regret with the finished piece is that the space to write was just a bit smaller than I should have made it. There was another thing or two that I would have liked to have said, like the fact that Emma's middle name is Grace and why I chose that for her. The journaling as it is focuses mainly on the feeling of grace I felt when she was born. There is a lot about why I felt that way that I couldn't fit in. Perhaps I should write a journal page and include it on the back. . .
For my title, I altered the Hometown Summer alphabet stickers that coordinate with the patterned papers I used. I sanded the surface of the stickers to remove some of the surface coating and then applied Worn Lipstick Distress Stain over them. The stain adhered to the letters in the areas where they were sanded and wiped away in the other areas. I applied Vintage Photo Distress Stain to the edges of the letters once they were dry. To finish them off, I applied a coat of Glossy Accents to create an epoxy like look. I used a piece of packaging from the collection for the area behind the title.
For the border along the lower part of my page, I used three border strips from the Pink Paislee Hometown Summer collection. I sanded and inked each strip and then stacked them together.
For my embellishment cluster, I combined two ribbon flowers by Maya Road (which I brushed with ink to add aging) with stars from Prima, and buttons from Pink Paislee. I layered two cardstock cut out tags from Pink Paislee next to the flowers, adhering each with adhesive foam squares.
This photo is so special to me so I really fussed over this page for a long time. I really wanted each element to be just right. I am pleased with the end result.
----------Supplies----------
