I found this layout photo as I was looking through my photo manager in a small album of scrapbook pages I’ve never made public. I made this page in 2008 but have never shared it online until today.
Why not?
I made it for the Memory Makers Magazine Masters contest. They required that we send one actual layout, in addition to photos of other layouts. Those of us who didn’t win the contest never got that layout back. There would be too many submissions to return so they threw them away. We knew it ahead of time when we chose to enter the contest. I didn’t win, so I don’t have the real paper version, which means I’ve never been able to use it in a Paperclipping tutorial. That’s why the layout has been in hiding all this time until I found this digital photo last week.
I’m glad I have a picture of my page. Three years later I still love it. The product combination is unexpected. The color palette is not very common. Both of those characteristics are me. The only thing that is atypical of me is that line that cuts the page in half. I never do that — I always place my lines off-center.
But I even love the centered line on this page. It allowed for a full half-sun halo around Trinity’s head. It draws the eye right to her sweet little face. And it acts as the solid anchor piece to all of the other elements, which either lie at slight angles, move in arcs, or jut out from the side. I love this page.
I also love the details, which again, are all very me…
- My technique of cutting away just a part of an image and placing a foam-dot adhesive underneath so that it grows out of the background, as you see with the large flower that overlaps the photo — Paperclipping Members can learn this technique in Paperclipping tutorial 145 – Two Stamping Techniques.
- Layering a blue-green flower underneath the cutout of the flower in the circular piece of paper so that it peeks through.
- Clocks that symbolize age and time and how we learn about the world through experience as time passes along (see the story in the journaling below).
- Detailed images I cut from patterned paper. I love detailed cuttings like these. I also love to make them glossy like I did with the flowers above. Members can also watch Paperclipping 52 for another embellishment technique episode on making firm but flexible, glossy 3D embellishments from patterned paper scraps and rub-on’s — Create Your Own Embellishments.
- One of the things that makes me happiest is to mix patterned papers you would never expect to go together, especially when they come from my scraps. I love it while I’m doing it, and I love to see it on an old layout that I find, even three years later, like this one. That little glimpse of those layered scraps in the picture above makes me swoon. If you’re a Paperclipping Member, you can review the principles for mixing patterns by watching Paperclipping 59 – Mixing Patterned Paper.
- Of course, there is metal, which I softened by layering a romantic paper flower underneath. I used this flower duo to “pin” the photo down. It’s an anchoring technique. I also anchored the photo with the title, as well as with the purple line at the center of the page (see top photo). These are just three of the anchoring techniques I shared in the design-heavy tutorial, Paperclipping 5 – Anchoring Elements to the Page.
Journaling reads:
Trinity — You thought there were swimming pools on the tops of those 70′s-80′s vans with the ladders going up the back. Why else would a ladder be there?
Well guess what? I used to believe Jesus lived in the moon, sat at a desk, and wrote with a feather pen!
I’ve never figured where I got my Jesus-belief. But I did discover the source of your pool-van fantasy. I was reading the Richard Scarry “Gold Bug” book and found a drawing of one of these vans with a pool on top.
How were you supposed to know it’s not real?
Have You Looked Back at Old Layouts Recently?
This was just a chance discovery for me — finding this layout picture after all this time. It’s awesome to see the specific things I still love doing three years later.
If you’ve been scrapbooking for a while, try looking back at layouts you made three years ago. Three years is close enough that products and techniques are still pretty fresh, but also old enough for lots of growth to have happened since. What things do you find that you still love to do now as much as you did back then? What well-loved techniques have you forgotten about?
If you’re not yet a Paperclipping Member and you’re curious about the techniques and design tutorials I mentioned for this layout, you can click here to learn about the 164 videos you’ll get immediately when you sign up, plus two more every single month!
Tags: Design, Embellishments, scrapbook
