Tuesday 24 February 2009

My Journaling Junkie Design Team Challenge 51.


Our task was to:-

Make a LO describing your scrapping habit and use your favourite scrap stash items.
This challenge closes on the 28th of February 2009 midnight GMT- you can email me your submissions eyeore(at)telkomsa(dot)net or leave a comment with the link to your URL. Thanks.

February Prize
February  Prize
a guest dt spot for both March challenges.


As you can see there are still a few days left for you to all join in & win the prize of a Guest Designer Spot on Stefanie's inspiring blog.

This is my take on the subject. My favourite supplies are 1) Bazzill Cardstock. 2) Alpha Stickers 3) Ribbon 4) Jelly (epoxy) stickers 5) Bling Gems...so I decided to somehow incorporate all these items onto my layout.

Title :- Life thru' a Lens.



Journalling:-

I live my life thru' my camera lens. I stalk my kids & pounce when least expected. You can find me peering thru' the kitchen window when they are in the pool & arriving with the ladder to capture an aerial view of their latest Lego creation. I have lots of ammunition for when they are older - potty-training & skinny dipping could come back to haunt them at their 21sts! At times they complain that they are living their lives on Reality TV - that's when I pack away my camera for a few days & give everyone some down time...Teenagers make reluctant subjects but Facebook has solved that. Suddenly it's cool to be photographed again - the more impromptu the better - just the way I like it - hee hee hee...

The black edge around the pale green cardstock is not part of the layout (it's my front door mat!)

I've had this photo for at least 6 months. It's for my BOM (Book of Me) that sadly gets added to very infrequently...

Rather than taking & printing more photos I thought this would fit the bill perfectly.

The pale green cardstock is Bazzill. The black is shimmer cardstock, with quite a pronounced silver glitter fleck. The brown is Bazzill Swiss Dot, inked with olive-green around the edges. I laid a polka-dot ribbon on the join between the green & black cardstock. This set the stage for a colourful layout as it is a multi-coloured polka-dot. Underneath the photo I ran a piece of DCWV self-adhesive ribbon, before adding the journalling block on top. I printed my journalling out on photographic paper, after typing it in Word on the pc.

To do this you need to start with a Text-Box (see task-bar along the top). Click on Create Text Box & a tiny box will appear on the screen. Make sure you get this the right size by adjusting the measurements for length & width on the right-hand side of the task bar, or directly on the text box by pulling it to size with the arrows that appear when you hover the mouse over the lines. Before printing, decide if you want to see the border-lines or not. If you do, you can choose their width & if you don't you need to click on the No border box that appears as a drop-down from the task bar.

If you type your journalling in your pc's default text first, you can then scroll down your type options to choose which font you want, watching your typed text change as you go, therefore you are able to see exactly what it will look like in your chosen font. To get the lettering white - type in black first, then choose your "fill" colour on the task-bar & fill your background in with the colour of your choice, then highlight & change the text to white.

I bumped up my journalling block on a piece of foam-core.

Next I got my title into place. I had already decided that I wanted a Shimelle Laine type of title, whereby I use alpha stickers from various packs for a jumbled, eclectic effect. I hauled out my box of alphas & chose from 6 separate packs. I added a * from one of the packs, to draw attention to the "through" in the tiny letter stickers. All alpha stickers are from Making Memories. Now I could start having fun embellishing. It was all looking a bit bland & lost, despite the funky title. Looking at the camera lens & title, I decided to contain the subject (the photo of myself) with a circle of bling gems. I had these amber ones in my stash & used a plate as a template. To draw attention to the title, I interspersed the bling gems at the top with a few of my Love Elsie circle epoxy stickers.

I was now loving the look of my layout & decided to go a bit moggy with some more Love Elsie epoxy stickers from my new pack. The speech bubble says "If it can be imagined it can be" - which I thought was very apt. I balanced it out with the colour-graduated flower ribbon on the bottom left corner of my photo. (I adhered this BEFORE adding the bling gems as it is underneath them). Also from the same Love Elsie pack, I used a red corner on the top left, aswell as the "Artist" badge & the "(Love) to Scrap" sticker plate.

The tiny stickers on the left of the layout say "2008". I try to always include the date (or at least the year) on all my layouts.

This layout was definitely one of my quicker ones, but I thought it was very effective & said it all.

Funny, because of my Design Team position now over at Little Shop of Sketches I have (for the first time ever) started "seeing" all my layouts in sketch form, ie:- I can look at them when completed & see the basic cardstock/photo shapes/positions very clearly. I've never had the inclination to work with sketches before, but, as my love of photography grows (along with my pile of photos) I can see myself turning to sketches more & more as I snatch chunks of time here & there out of my busy schedule, in order to take the thinking out of some of my layouts.

If you are able to do the same you will see that the "sketch" for this is very simple & easy to replicate & I would be more than happy to share it with you. Just click on my layout, Save as * (your choice here!) to your Desktop or your "My Documents" & feel free to scrap-lift my "sketch" when you have the time ;-)



9 comments:

Jessica said...

You know, I might just get around to that ... but your layout looks great!

Shayne said...

Great LO - I love Love Elsie's epoxy stickers - they're my fav!

And btw - you've been tagged!

PS - I was born in Zim - how's that for co-incidence!

Jenny said...

I love using sketches! ANd I'm a collector of sketch books ... the ones written by other people

Mel said...

Great Lo - I love the photo. Sadly my BOM is also rather neglected.

Cindy said...

nice work helen. i know what you mean about the 'book of me' it is very hard to take photos of yourself, even if you want to.

Sophia said...

Great LO, love the design of it. On another note, did you get to order the Cocoa Daisy kit or not...?

Desire Fourie said...

Gorgeous layout once again Helen. Love all the bling in a circle putting focus on the photo. Thanks also for sharing the tutorial on your text box. Hugs from Desire

topkatnz said...

Great work Helen ... good clear instructions too. Funny about you stalking your kids with an extension ladder for aerial photography ... heehee ...

Michelle Ramsay said...

Stunning layout and thanks for the journalling tip.