Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Click: Symmetry

It's Jennifer Larson again, sharing a recent discovery I made while taking pictures.

When it comes to symmetry versus asymmetry, I generally prefer asymmetry in my photographs. I think this is because I like including the scenery, which is easier when the subject is off center. I also like scrapbooking on the white space of photos, so asymmetry is an easier way to do that.

Last month, however, two photos I took reminded me of the power of symmetry. The first shot I took at my church. A tree in the garden was beautifully vibrant, so I set my mother and sons in front of the tree and took a few shots (all photos taken with my iPhone 6). Here's my favorite:

Not much of the color is visible, but centering the subjects against the tree trunk created a great sense of stability. It seems particularly symbolic: the powerful tree behind them elicits the power of our roots. That might be the English teacher in me overanalyzing, though. Heh.

Here's my next shot where I explored symmetry:

My son turned 12 last month. The weather was nice, so I asked him to go on our deck to take a picture. I normally offset him on the deck to capture more of the trees in the yard, but this time I set him in the corner for the shot. He put his arms on the railing, which made him seem even more centered. This is a particularly moving effect for his 12th birthday, seeing as he is growing out of little boy and into young man. Centered indeed.

Thank you for reading a little bit about my epiphany into the power of a symmetrical shot! I hope that gives you ideas when you photograph.

Write: Listen Around

Last week, I bumped into a friend at the mall. We wandered around the housewares section of Macy’s department store (I have a thing for pretty dishes, and even though I don’t really need anything I still love looking), talking and laughing. We came upon a bed that was made up with this bedding:

 

I swooned! It’s seriously lovely. “I want this bedding,” I told my friend, “except I want to make it.” We sat right down on that bed, in the middle of Macy’s, and I admired the textures and the colors (silver, gold, yellow, and grey: I would’ve never thought to put those colors together) and plotted out how I would make it. Then I laughed because really: I have literally three quilts right now, in various stages of development, and two that I am accumulating fabric for. I really don’t need to start working on another quilt before I finish the ones I started.

So our conversation turned to the act of creativity itself. I love that first flush of excitement, when you stumble upon or dream about or work to discover a new idea, when you’re tingly with anticipation. I love the process of making, be it an essay or a poem or a quilt or a scrapbook page.

The conversation was fresh on my mind later that day, when I sat down to scrapbook. I started writing the journaling for a photo from last year’s Thanksgiving meal, which I cooked all by myself. And I found myself mixing the essence of my conversation with my friend into the journaling, because really: cooking is another form of creativity. It is making in a fast and short form, in a very temporary medium, but it still (sometimes!) has that same creative rush.

(I think you can also guess at the design inspiration at work here!)

In the journaling, I wrote about how some of the items I made help me feel connected to the people I missed so much at that the meal, with the goal of saying “food connects us to generations” without actually saying it.

I love how it turned out. I love that when I look at this layout, I’ll remember how that Thanksgiving felt—how I was exhausted and energized all at once, sorrowful with missing people but joyful with the family I have created. And I’ll also remember how it felt to make the layout itself, which will also lead me back to my morning at the mall with my friend.

All those layers of memory, caught because of a beautiful bedding set and a conversation!

It inspired me to think about the dialogue I hear around me, and how it might be the spark for the stories I want to tell. As we’re thinking about “looking around” this month, I’ve found myself also considering “listening around.” How might my everyday conversations help me be a better writer or tell my stories in a better way? How might yours?

Happy writing!

Sunday Photo + Words

Sketchbook Saturday

Welcome to Sketchbook Saturday Volume 11 Issue 2. My my. That sounds so official!

Are you covered in snow? Or enjoying the cooler temperatures?. We are traveling this weekend and our two hour drive took us out of dry sidewalks and into a foot of snow! The kids and the doggie are in heaven!

 

With a bit of quiet time, I thought I might sneak a layout in. I loved Diane's layout and how decorative it is. So I thought I make make myself one! Here is a reminder of her November gallery layout.

 

The sketch doesn't do it justice, but does have the basics there. Hopefully it will be a great starting point for you.

 

Here is mine.

Usually when I create a layout based off a sketch, I find myself referring back to the original layout for cues on placement, color, topic, all sorts of things. This time I put the original away and just worked from the photo and the product. I sort of liked the freedom. I hope it made a layout that is more true to myself than sometimes.

I hope you have a lovely weekend! I appreciate your stopping by and can't wait to see what you do with Diane's awesome layout!

Twelve Hours

Hi! It's Sue Althouse here today, with an idea for looking around and creating a layout based on your surroundings. This particular idea is not original with me, but came from an online prompt I followed several years ago. It's quite simple, really:

1. choose a day, any day

2. take one picture every hour, for 12 hours

3. make a layout

 

This was a typical fall day for me two years ago. I'm ready to follow this prompt again since we've moved and my routine now looks very different. But I love looking back and remembering. Design Note: the photo strip format works beautifully for a page like this one. My photos are 2x2 and mounted on white cardstock. I have a strip for morning, afternoon and evening. An easy and meaningful page!

 

I even persuaded my husband to get in on the act. He willingly took his camera to work on the same day and gave me these twelve photos. Our layouts sit across from one another in an album. Same design, but a more masculine flavor to this page. To say they are favorites would be a huge understatement.

 

There you have it. How much fun would a project like this be for you and your family? Even after only two years, it is easy to forget a daily life that seemed very routine at the time. So I encourage you to look around, take some photos and make a 12-hour layout!

Scrapbook: Getting back into the groove

Hello! It's Jennifer Larson. As an English teacher, I go through periods where I do nothing but grade. When I finish, I look at my scrapbooking supplies and feel uninspired to create. Too tired, no ideas, no time--sound familiar? I think we all go through slumps like this. So how do we get back to creating? Here's what I did this week when I had a break in my grading:

1. I started with a photo I loved. No story, just a photo that made me smile.

2. I used only supplies that were within arms' reach. Seriously, I pulled from kits and tools that were nearby. I didn't move from my chair. After a day of the most back-breaking shoveling of my life, it was nice.

3. I just layered some papers for the design. This is an easy design: pull papers that you like and seem to go together, then trim them in alternating rectangles and squares and layer them. No thinking required!

 

4. I went there for the title. We were in a corn field, it was going to be a page about my son's sense of humor, so yes, I used the obvious pun for the title. I used the word corny. I'm OK with that.

5. I put the embellishments in the obvious locations. That would be a visual triangle near the title, the photo, and the journaling. That's OK.

6. I played. I had some sequins near me. I'm not really a glittery-sequin gal, but since they were there, and the background paper had some splotches on it, I added some for fun. And it was fun! 

7. I journaled the way I always do with the details I could remember. I could barely remember anything about this story, just generals about my son making me laugh in the corn maze. I used what I had and tried to describe what I could remember. And I used journaling strips, which I pretty much always do. No regrets.

So that is how I got back into the groove! I didn't do anything big or set high expectations for myself. I went for easy and ended up with a page that made me laugh out loud, I was so happy to have made it. If you've been in a rut or lacking creative inspirations, remember my favorite tweet:

And have fun!

Inspired by your photo

 

 

 

I am loving this month´s theme! I am inspired by stuff around me all the time, so I thought I´d show you my latest layout that was inspired by by my photo. I don´t usually pay more attention to the colors in my photo than that I might match one of the colors in my layout to it. But this time I loved how autumnly it all felt in the photo and since I love fall, I wanted to really use that as a jumping off point for the whole page. 

I usually use white cardstock for my backgrounds, but felt like the kraft one better suited that fall feel and matched the red color scheme. I went through my scraps and picked out a few muted red patterned papers and traced a few leaf shapes to go with my fall theme. I also picked out a sticker list where I filled out some stuff about me right now that went with the colors also. 

It is so easy to be inspired and influenced by the world around us!

 

Lisa B

Look Around for Signs of Life

Hi everyone! It's Aliza here today. I often say (to myself mostly) that when I grow up, I want to be Jane Goodall. Which is my silly way of saying that I admire her greatly. I admire her love, passion and her commitment to this planet and its creatures. Lucky for me, she is also a prolific author. Her most recent book, Seeds of Hope was all about the world of plants, which inspired the photos that I share with you today.

The idea is simple; Even in a most man-made environment, life will find a way to take root and grow. Sometimes, it is put there by humans, but often it is through the sheer power of biology that life keeps going and going. As I have mentioned many (possibly a million, or so) times, I live in the city, so this idea changed the way I look at my suroundings. I started to appreciate all the places where life continues amidst the metal and the concrete and the boarded up windows:

 

And every once in a while, a photo like this makes its way onto a layout, or in this case, into a mini album:

Perhaps sometime soon, you might like to take a walk with your camera, and take a look around for some signs of life doing its thing; you know, living. 

 

 

One Layout Grows out of Another

Marnie’s posts last week made me start thinking about where my scrapbooking ideas come from. I like that she was purposefully looking for inspiration, and it made me stop and ponder: no, really, where do my ideas come from? Sometimes I do search purposefully for inspiration; sometimes it comes more organically. Sometimes I have to really hunt for my creative spark, and others it’s flaring with excitement.

With those thoughts in my head, I spent an evening (one of those late, I-can’t-sleep-because-my-teenagers-aren’t-home-yet nights) looking through a scrapbook. I was trying to trace my steps—what inspired that design choice or this embellishment?—but what I found myself thinking about were the stories I’d written, and the ones I hadn’t. Where did the impulse come from, to write about the things I chose? How did I arrive at the approach I took for each story?

Then I came upon this layout:

 

It’s one I did for my last Big Picture class. The title comes from a poem called “Easter Sunday, 1955” and it was published in the April 3, 1995  New Yorker. The poem is about a person remembering her grandmother on an Easter Sunday, and herself as a child, and then looking at her own daughter and realizing, all at once, how time passes and how life just…goes. (It’s actually a fairy concise statement about why we scrapbook, aside from not being about scrapbooking. You can read it on my blog but I’m not 100% certain it’s not against copyright law…click at your own risk!)

Seeing that title made me remember the poem itself, and then the grandmother in the poem, who died of cancer. And a line from the poem: "No one had died yet." It made me think of my mother-in-law, Beth, and of a photo I’d seen pop up recently on the little digital frame app I have on my PC. Not a great photo, technically, but one that struck me with a combination of missing her and wishing her relationship with my kids could’ve lasted longer.

I went in search of the photo, and then (before I even processed it) I wrote the journaling for this layout:

 

(Then I went to bed because at long last, the teenagers were home!)

At first, when I started writing, I thought I’d make reference to that poem, but my thoughts ended up going a slightly different direction. Still, it influenced the layout enough that I wrote it out and stuck it on the back. (I tend to put a lot of extra stuff on the backs of my layouts.) With the poem’s sentiment in my thoughts, my words came out quickly and with no hesitation. In fact, the entire layout came together quickly.

Looking at them, you’d never know that one sparked the other—photos, design, color, topic, even the fonts are different. But there is something about the tone of both pieces of journaling that is similar.

What do you write about? How do you write it? I think those are the essential questions that guide our journaling choices. My quest for the source of my spark took me on an entirely different journey than I had expected, but that’s OK. I like that it reminded me that ideas are everywhere, and that one can quite often (or maybe usually) grow right out of another one. Following the spark of an idea to its final point is one of the best things about the creative process!

Can you trace the origin of your stories? Does knowing where the idea came from help you find other ideas?

Happy writing!

Sunday Photos + Words