Sunday, June 26, 2011

Process of a LO - It's my party

It's my blog and I'll do what I want to...
OK, there is supposed to be an evolution in blogging where we go from showing off our layouts, photos and family pics to discussing more of the processes behind the layouts and photos and discussing thoughts on the family activities.
Sometimes though, unless one is doing this as apart of professional activities, there just isn't time. To me, that is why folk love twitter and FB or why sometimes not a lot of discussion happens on a blog. How can we fit it in? I  have long appreciated all kinds of blogs. Lately, I am in the mood to discuss my process. Sometimes, I'll have other topics in mind and on lazy sharing days it will just be photos. No apologies.
This LO started as a kit from a crop goody bag from Green Tangerines in Rocklin (small illustration to right above my DPLO). A nice LO and I could have scrap-lifted it and that would have been good. I decided to try my hand at using it; but, adding my style to it - not that I did not use bits of learning I've gleaned from classes. (yes, an intentional double negative!)
First off, I love horizon lines and asymmetry in my compositions. I learned that from a class I took with Claudine Hellmuth at Big Picture Classes on-line. I probably should have tried copying this original exactly as I rarely put photos below that line. I'm not comfortable with it; but, it would have been a good stretch.
Allison Davis likes to use low horizon lines on her pages and puts her photos above them but she tends to use horizontal and vertical lines to dictate her placement. I decided on an approach that Noell Hyman uses a lot - a crescendo/decrescendo effect. Now, Allison Davis uses different shapes behind her photos on two page cardstock LO's. Since I use "Dot", the nickname my kids have for their daughter, in some LO's, like this one, I thought a big circle would look good. It also works with the quote I found to use for my journaling on the page. The orange paper from the kit from MME has a subtle dot. I found a strip of dotted blue paper in my stash and thinking of Alison Davis again decided to augment my background with it. It also works with the theme of the page.
The white flowers seemed too stark with the cream Thickers and the cream in the die cut so I delved into my assortment of glazes and sprays from Lumenaire and Tattered Angels and colored the tips of the petals. I added small turquoise half pearls to the centers to continue the color scheme.
The LO is asymmetrical but balanced with more background accents and flowers and the journalling on one side to balance the weight of the photos on the opposite side. The photos are also grouped by mood. The ones on the left side, as the LO faces you, are her playful loving self, the others in the photo are Mom, Dad and boyfriend. On the right are photos of her fun but more responsible side, her HS graduation and as an employee at In N Out Burger. I have a lot of photos of her as a ballerina but did not feel those were important to this LO.
I used the asterisk as a hyphen to pick up the spokes in the wheel- like circles in the horizon strip paper. I love the dotted fringe from the kit; but, since I'm a nut about texture, I added the light teal ribbon to my horizon line. It's not circular but has a rhythm like punctuation. Of course, needing texture, I explored my stash and added some chipboard shapes that had dot-like shiny turquoise accents. I, also, added 'dots' of buttons.
I had a photo with colors that did not work with my page. Like the kit photos, I chose to make it neutral. A high contrast sepia seemed to work better than black in this case.
I also chose to add some inking. It may have been 'better' to have a clean LO but I like the way inking contains my pages and accents the journal strips.
I like the page and feels it is all my style despite the fact that it came from a kit and I used the influence of all those teachers. I took another class at BPC from Karen Grunberg called Finding Your Way. I hope she'd agree that I did accomplish that with this DPLO (double page layout for the non-scrappers in the crowd).

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