Hello lovies!! Tracie Claiborne here to talk about my very favorite subject of all time: scraplifting! Scraplifting is the bomb dot com y'all. Do you agree? Some people think scraplifting makes them look uncreative. They think only beginners should scraplift. That's just silly. Scraplifting is for everyone if it's something you think is fun. I'm on a mission to make scraplifting cool.
Inspiration is all around us: on this blog, on the blogs of manufacturers, our favorite designers, on Pinterest, in magazines and idea books. We save layouts and sketches and we love it when a layout inspires us, right? So why don't we use that inspiration? We should! When we're just making pages for our own enjoyment, we should scraplift to our heart's content. We don't have to reinvent the wheel every time we make a page. That just makes life harder and this hobby should be F-U-N.
This week, we are scraplifting ourselves and that is something I love to do. My favorite part of scrapbooking is looking through all my completed albums. I love the feeling of accomplishment I get when I turn the pages of each book. If I ever feel my creative mojo has left me, I look at my scrapbooks and go, "Girl....you can totally do this. You rock scrapbooking. Look at all these pages you've made!" As I'm browsing my layouts, I always notice certain designs that are my favorites. Those are the ones I turn to again and again: clean and classic layouts that work for any theme or story and stand the test of time. Those layouts are perfect for scraplifting myself.
To choose a layout to lift for this post, I looked through my albums for a design that fit the above criteria and found this layout I created around 2005. It's a Mother's Day page and I thought it would be fun to show you how to convert it to a Halloween layout.
Even though the layout is 10 years old, I think the design stands the test of time. I'm sad to see that I didn't include any journaling. Thankfully, I've grown in my storytelling abilities since then and never make a page without journaling.
I looked through all my Halloween pictures for a set of two to scrap and found that I only had two photos printed from a Girl Scout Halloween party my daughter attended a couple years ago. Perfecto! I pulled out my stash of Halloween products and found some KI Memories paper I have had for years that I still love. I added my story to the page, some cute little K&Company monsters, some glittery Doodlebug sticker letters, said abracadabra-doo and poof, here's my layout. I love how it turned out!
It made me happy to be able to use some of my older products and still make a layout that looks fresh. Plus, starting with a layout to scraplift made the whole process quick and fun. That's what I'm aiming for in my scrapbooking - enjoyment!
Here are the two layouts side by side so you can compare:
You can see that I scraplifted the placement of the photos and the general feel of the layout but I changed it up to suit my current style and fit in a larger title and journaling. I hope this helps you see how you can customize a layout you are scraplifting. I really just used the bones of the layout as a starting point.
Speaking of bones....I hope you have a creepy, spooky, sugar filled Halloween and take loads of delightful pictures to put on a page. Then I double dog dare you to scraplift yourself and have a blast doing so. If you'd like to scraplift me, I give you permission to do so! If you do, I'd love to see your layout! Please post a link to it in the comments below.
Happy Halloween my friends and happy scraplifting!
