Top 10 Layouts (2010 in Review pt 7)

You will be pleased (!) to know that this is the very LAST post of my Best of 2010 series and, along with my look back to my top 10 photos, definitely my favourite.

This month marks our (Liberty and me) 5th scrapbooking anniversary and I think it's fair to say that we have both come a LONG way in those 5 years. My first pages are a lot of fun to look back on but not exactly the "best" as far as design principles or style. I'm hoping that you all have the same experience and know what I mean! It's not that I don't love the pages I made back in 2006, it's just that I LOVE the pages I made in 2010 - or at least most of them!

What is funny though is that even then, I wasn't worried about chronology, scrapping every photo, or only making things pretty. One of my first ever pages was this one that I made based on a BG sketch. I remember R being surprised that this was my subject - a couple of trees and some snow. Why wasn't I doing our holidays, the things we did, the places we went? And he didn't really understand when I told him that I wanted to capture the little things. The things that touched me. The everyday things that matter - to me.

I think you can't really read the journalling (already so important to me) but it talks about the view from our window and how happy I was that I had taken these photo at this time because at the time of writing, the beautiful, stunning, magnificent horse-chestnut trees were not there, having been cut down in the new year. 

And not a lot has changed in the years since then! Late in 2006 I discovered Big Picture Scrapbooking and Simple Scrapbooks and then never looked back. I was home! Pictures, stories, memories and pretty papers. Bliss! Along the way, Liberty opened up Bellaboo and I had a lot of fun helping her whenever she asked. Through this, we both got published and became regular contributors to The Scapbook Magazine which is such a thrill when I see our layouts in print!  

But if we fast forward to 2010, this was my most productive year yet. Thanks to a boost to the number of pages completed due to three months of LOAD, and then finding the style that I had been looking for in myself for so long (à la Nic H!), I can honestly say that I love more layouts from 2010 than I don't love. I discovered that I love distressing, I love clustering, white space is really hard for me, I love to write journalling, I often love to use more than one photo and I love the community I have found through blogging and through LOAD. I enjoy using sketches, challenges, prompts or others' layouts as inspiration. I love the work I do for The Scrapbook Magazine. I love it when I get to go to the Bromsgrove Crop organised by Liberty. It's just that I love this hobby of ours. Isn't it wonderful?

Back to 2010...

My total output was this....

... with the layouts on the left being those made in classes or just for me or for The Scrapbook Magazine, and those on the right being my LOAD February, May and October layouts. These piles of finished layouts make me feel GOOD! Look at all that dimension, all those products used up, all those stories told, all those photos stuck down and all that creative time! I haven't counted them but there must be 150 here as I know the pile on the right is 90. How to choose just 10?

Actually, this was quite easy. I just thought about the ones that stand out in my mind or ones that I love and haven't highlighted in the multi-photo layout posts from the last few weeks.

They may not really be the TOP 10, but they are all special - to me.

Does this sound vain or arrogant? I hope not. After all, "Do what you love and love what you do", right?

So, my Top 10 Layouts of 2010 (in no particular order)

1. This design was inspired by one I saw on the Studio Calico site by Maggie Holmes. I think I lifted the title too.  I have probably scrapped this photo a dozen times. Yes, I do that - a lot! But each time, the photo says something different to me and the title sent my mind off in a different direction too. This was one of my favourite kits from Scrapagogo last year, and of course, one of my favourite Yukon photos.

2. Yes, a featured photo (from my previous "best of" posts) and a featured layout. Me trying the simple approach with a bit of white space just to prove I can. I wanted to capture how wonderful it was for me to have my photo selected as one of the highlighted photos by The Pioneer Woman for one of her photo challenges. Photography is something I have been working on over the year, and this proved to me I was on the right track of what I wanted to produce.

3. A layout inspired by the Nic H BPC class that we did in the late spring/early summer and then completed during LOAD to the prompt "choose stuff you love" or something like that if I remember correctly. Love the photos, love the design, love the papers. An unusual layout for me as it has no journalling, but my clustering was growing!

4. A layout completed for LOAD in May - at the airport on the way to the UK. I knew I wouldn't have any other time so I packed a small box with some scraps, two sheets of cardstock, some photos, two packs of letters and a few embellishments and then sat in the airport bar and created this - of course without scissors or craft knife! I can't tell you how many funny looks I got - especially when I stood up and took a photo of it in order to upload it to the Flickr gallery. It made Flickr Explore on that day (I think because of the bokeh), but has since dropped out. That doesn't matter as it just proves that you can scrapbook anywhere if you want!

5. A very silly one that I completed for The Scrapbook Magazine. I was given the assignment to use the colours of the German flag, use the topic of "my hero" and to incorporate paper punches. Liberty gets credit for giving me the idea of using Jacob (swoon, swoon) as the subject and I was really pleased with how it came out. See, I can make relatively flat layouts when I try!

6. Another October LOAD layout responding to the daily prompt of a layout without a photo. I think I had probably seen this idea somewhere and it was in my sub-conscience but at the time I was thinking about it, this idea just jumped into my brain out of nowhere and I knew I wanted to do this. I sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote - a stream of babble! When I read it now, I know that there needs to be a second one to this as there are so many things I missed out - not least how important family and friends are to me. I don't think I say this enough to those who matter to me.

7. 12 photos to celebrate 12 years since the day we met, inspired by my 12 on 12 series. It was lovely for me to look back over those years, find a photo for each year and see how happy we have been/are, how young we once were, how much thinner we were back then and to see just a few of all the cool places we have been. I just wanted to capture some thoughts on the day and love how it turned out.

8. Yet another one of my "how many wonderful Yukon photos can I fit onto one page?" layouts. The design was inspired by one I had done in a Nichol Magouirk class and used another one of my favourite kits from Scrapagogo. Just my kind of colours and textures. I loved the fact that I got to use one of my real Canadian maple leaves even though it is very fragile and probably won't hold out all that long.

9. One of the additional layout designs from the Nic H class Dimensional Details. This was definitely the best class I have ever done and while I am still improving on the the whole clustering, distressing, layering thing, this is where the theory and practice came together. I love the colours I have used here - soft and pretty and perfect for those glittered cupcakes.

10. A simple one to finish off just to prove that I can do flat and straight lines if I want. This often happens when I have a lot of journalling to write as was the case here. Just highlighting a wonderful weekend catching up with some friends we met at university.