Each year, the United States Postal Service processes 158.4 billion pieces of mail. While we scrapbookers do love our happy mail and know all too well the joy of hoarding paper, chances are that we dispose of what is in the mail more often than we get a chance to create with it.
This week's challenge flips that dynamic, by asking you to take a second look at what you've been receiving in the mail lately. Rather than getting rid of it, repurpose it on a layout.
New October Afternoon team member Patricia Roebuck joined me for this challenge, and with her magic scrappy fingers, she turned trash into treasure.
According to Patricia, "I was excited to repurpose this piece of packing material in a recent box I received. It had great texture and was too interesting to throw away.
My first idea was to paint it or stamp with it, but the natural color worked well with the colors from Public Library and Daily Flash Apple Cider and Milk Money. So I cut squares and rectangles to expand the collage of the Public Library Reference Section patterned paper. Then I added stitching, stamping, and punched out pieces of patterned paper around them."
"The main focus is the fussy cut map of the United States from the Daily Flash Milk Money patterned paper, where I also added my photo with a cluster of twine punched and threaded through, stickers, and enamel stickers from Milk Money."
"I used a few things to go with the theme: a stamp shaped punch, clocks, the Daily Flash Homemade stamps, and the Days of the Week washi tape."
If your reaction was anything like mine when I first saw this layout, then you are still trying to get your eyes comfortably back into their sockets.
My take on this challenge started out with a hunt through the stacks of mail on our kitchen table -- and there are many. Within those stacks is a ton (or two) of college mail, which, if you have a child who is in her last year of high school, is a familiar sight. I ripped out a page from a Pacific University brochure featuring the days of the week, and that gave me the idea to create a page about my college-bound daughter, her senior photo session, and her last first week of school.
Joining the college mail are three envelopes that would have otherwise been trash-bound, but here, they are right at home, adding texture, dimension, and variety to the page. Worked into the mix are papers and accents from the Public Library and Milk Money collections.
I annotated the text-based pattern found on the B-side of a sheet of Public Library "Story Time" paper, calling attention to words and phrases that stood out to me and that reminded me of the moment that I was documenting. The last few lines in particular really resonated for me, and they helped me to find a focus for my journaling.
The journaling draws from the photos as well as the other items on the page, and serves as the "core" of the page, pulling everything together. It is the heart of the layout, but I would not have been able to get to the heart without first going through the layers that comprise this page.
So what do you think? Are you up for challenging yourself to look twice at your mail, and to seek the buried treasures within what might otherwise appear to be junk? Patricia and I can assure you that you just might surprise yourself in the process. Be sure to share your creations in the October Afternoon Flickr gallery, and link us up in the comments below as well.
Thanks for joining us today!
-- Jill