Too busy scrapping for blogging...

Once again, I have entered into the fun of LOAD - one layout a day for the whole month. Yes, I am crazy! But yes, it is a lot of fun!

Lain is taking us Back To Basics with daily prompts covering different aspects of, well, the basics.

Week 1 was all about design basics starting off with an interview with Debbie Hodge of Get It Scrapped - really interesting to hear her talking about her process and thoughts when creating.

1st February

This first prompt was a really scary one. Make a layout using JUST the basics. Cardstock, paper, alpha, pen and photo. 

None of my usual embellishments? No creating embellishments from paper or whatever is lying around? No clusters? I nearly gave up there and then. But I flipped through my photos and found this sweet one of Maddie and thought it was a nice stand alone picture and the layout was born.

It was hard not to do more. Not to cheat! And I did a bit by using two alphas and lots of the different patterns of the papers but I kept to the spirit of the prompt and was satisfied for the first of the month - it always takes time to warm up.

The journalling talks about Maddie not being able to even sit up without falling over all these years and now she has found her niche as a natural talent at gymnastics - all that tumbling and flipping has found its place!

Using a Page Maps sketch

 2nd February

Contrast. Create a page using some sort of contrast - size, placement, number, colour etc.

I took these photos of the Cadbury factory a few years ago now, when I was back home with the car and decided to do a memory safari through the city. The journalling talks about my lifetime love of Cadbury's chocolate and the connection I have with the company due to its location just up the road from where I lived for many years.

I created contrast by using the large photo paired up with the smaller photos. The larger photo is also more attention grabbing because of the colour and the stark, white lettering.

3rd February

Emphasis. Draw emphasis to some element of your page.

I have so many gorgeous photos of the children that I need to do a lot of non-specific pages to get them used up, so this was ideal for me to do a "What I love about this photo..." layout. I think this is my third in this newly developed series of pages (just doing them when a photo really grabs my attention like this one). I just wrote up a few lines about what a lovely, kind, thoughtful girl Maddie is. 

I emphasised the photo by only using the one and by matting it with a strong red to draw in the colour of her dress. I used some very precious papers (Emma's Shoppe - Crate Paper) that Libby had sent me as a surprise before Easter. Such a wonderful paper range. Loved it although now I am a bit sad that I have so little of it left.

 4th February

White space. Create a page with "white space" which in my book is usually everything that you can find UNDER my papers and embellishments! Another toughy for me but I was up for the challenge because I had done this design last year and loved it. I am scraplifting myself all the time at the moment - makes it so easy.

A rather old photo of baby brother Ted. And using up some even older product from BG (Stella Ruby) which was a bit scary as I opened a never-before-opened collection pack and then only used five 1" strips of paper. Obviously, I need to work on using up more of it.

5th February

Visual triangle

I lifted myself again for this simple double spread and forgot all about the visual triangle until I had finished it only to realise that I had done it anyway. Must be an automatic thing for me - the triangle or the diagonal.

I have so many photos of my time in Tuscany (Siena is featured here) that this style of double layout is ideal to use up quite a few at once. I used BG Periphery which I had originally got for these photos so I was happy to get some used up here. Only nearly 4 years after the trip.

Close up of left hand side

Close up of right hand side. I think I will be adding something there in the middle of the right hand edge - it looks a bit blank and empty. It might have to wait until the end of LOAD though.

6th February

Alignment/common margins

Something that is almost impossible for me as a rule across the page but I try to do it for photo mats and block positioning which is what I did here. 

I wanted to use some bright papers and designs for these photos of adorable Isabella just to lift the whole thing and halfway through, decided I didn't even like these BG Sugar Rush papers. But I decided to continue through to the end and it ended up better than I thought it would. I particularly like the lace paper background over the white cardstock which seems to pop.

Just a silly layout featuring the Belly!

7th February

Scraplift - get inspiration from the layouts of others. Galleries, books, magazines, self, whatever.

Being part of the Flickr group means that I get to mark all of my favourites so that I can find them again later and look through them for inspiration. This layout is based on one of my favourite scrappers, TheLinarStudio, although her style is completely and utterly different to mine. She goes large with a lot of her photos and her layouts are stylishly minimalist. Something I can't manage but which is still very inspirational for me.

I took her basic design and made it a Lisa layout by adding some bits and pieces. It was a great way to use this A4 sized photo of Ted in his Oliver production a few years ago and I journalled about how proud we were of his performance.

Love, love, love BG Boxer. Such a wonderful set of patterns and papers.

A good first week all in all, although I am finding it hard to get into the rhythm of the daily scrapping.

My May counterfeit kit has yet to be made up, never mind make an appearance and it might be forgotten now until next month. But I am really happy to be using up stash and even opening up old, untouched collections.

Now I just need to even up the subjects of my layouts - Cameron, Joe, Amber, us...