FYV Lesson 7 Taking It To The Next Level 5 Aug 2013

FYV Lesson 7: Taking It To The Next Level                                               

Taking our stories to the next level means moving a little bit outside our comfort zone. For Lesson Seven there are two options. Go with whichever one speaks to you more and make it your own. If there are things that you’d like to go back and improve on from previous lessons, this is a perfect opportunity.

Prompt A: Go back to your lesson six project, where we combined storytelling style and design style.

How can you take this project to the next level? Think of your week six project as a 'first draft' and here you are coming to edit and revise for a 'final draft'.

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I chose Prompt A. Although I am happy with my story, I felt I could do better with telling the story through pictures. So – on to a new and improved scrapbook page!

I went to Debbiehodge.com for some expert scrapbook tips.

    1. Have an intention.

My intention is to design a scrapbook page that will compliment my story about Bug and the peanuts.

    2. Take inventory of your givens.

· Enough photos to tell the story.  I dropped one of the original four and kept the three that were pertinent to the story.

· Title.  I changed the title from “Bug and the Peanuts” to “Eating Goober Peas” to give the story a little more ‘oomph’ and interest.

· Journaling.  I need sufficient journaling to tell the story since the photos alone don’t.

    3.  Allocate space. 

Because this is such a small page, my space is limited. I enlarged the photo of Bug and made the other two smaller and closer in size.  This still gives sufficient white space while the focus is on the photos.

   4.  Shape figure and ground

This is a basic block form with two of the photos bumped out into the margin for interest.  I used a ‘shelf’ of blue denim scrapbook paper and a red vintage dot paper to anchor the photos. Across the top I used a band of red plaid – think farmer flannel shirt. The background is a neutral yellowish tan.

   5.   Add finish work. 

This is the challenging part. I don’t like scrapbook pages with lots of embellishments; I go for simple, so I didn’t want a lot of ‘stuff.’  I used red for the title and a vellum for the journaling instead of stark white. I tucked another patterned paper to fill in spaces between photos. As a final touch, I added three cut-outs of peanuts around the page.

All in all, I feel this is a much better presentation than my previous attempt. It has more color, more interest and shows off the photos to much better advantage. I am pleased with the way it turned out and feel it compliments the story nicely.  I am learning!