Hey there, it is Stacey here today! My sketch this week is a variation of my favorite go-to design. I’m a “square” scrapper – I love frames and frames inside of frames and squares piled up on top of each other. Usually, I’ll just add enough “extras” to offset the symmetry and be finished...and then I go make another square layout. It’s a design I go back to again and again because I am just so...comfortable...with it!
Here’s the sketch:
And here's the layout I made from the sketch:
I think there are at least 12 squares on this layout...I kind of lost track while I was counting and started wondering what was really a square and what wasn’t. The photo collage is made with a group of six photos that I printed out on one sheet. When I create a layout with this type of collage on it, I make sure that I arrange the photos so that I won’t cover any facial features or important details. Since the photos are all similar, I don’t mind covering up some of the background or “white space” with the title or journaling.
I had planned on this being a fun, kind of playful layout, but the timing of these photos was tough for me and I could only come up with serious journaling. I ended up needing much more journaling space than I started out planning for, so instead of working a small amount of journaling through one section of the collage around the photos, I devoted an entire block to my thoughts about this particular day. When I do a layout about photos taken this long ago (these are from May 2007), I usually go back and read my blogs from that time period so that I make sure not to miss anything that may have been important at the time. For this layout, I went back to my blogs from April through June of 2007. The main thing going on in my life at that time was my dad’s diagnosis of liver cancer and his death. It’s been a while since I did a “grief” layout, and I wanted to keep this one “real,” so I went ahead and changed the tone a little bit to reflect the reality of those days. I’m happy with how it turned out. To me, it’s not sad, but hopeful.
I hope you’ll play with this a little, if you haven’t already – put your title and/or your journaling right on your photos and see what you think. I kind of like the way Corey’s are peeking out from behind the title here...and there’s still plenty of room for the extra fun details!
I sent my sketch to my sweet new friend, Lexi Bridges, and she created this adorable layout. It definitely shows how versatile the sketch is! I love how she placed the big title halfway through the group of four photo-booth photos!
It’s your turn! We want to see your layouts based on this sketch. Upload your creations to our Flickr gallery here.