Facing Challenges

Last night was our final presentation. We had may people attend our celebration and view all of our projects. The projects were all wonderful and you could really tell that a great deal of work went into every single one of them.

This project was an opportunity for me to try something new in the world of scrapbooking, a medium I dearly love. It was an opportunity to tell my story in a new and different way. As much as I loved this project I will admit that it wasn't without it's challenges.

I struggled specifically with the size of the layouts. I am not used to using a rectangle base for layouts-8 1/2 by 11 was challenging for me. I like things even and square so I resorted to a lot of sketches and drew on a lot of inspiration from scrapbook designer Kelly Purkey in particular because she often uses that size.

I also underestimated how thick my book would get. I love dimension and texture so I did use a considerable amount of 3D dots for that look. Turns out I really like dimension because my book was very, very full at the end.

The digital scrapbooking pages were something new I tried. I liked that they were quick and easy and after some fiddling in Photoshop they were relatively easy to navigate as well. I don't know that I would use them in my everyday scrapbooking though. I prefer to touch my supplies and hold things in my hand rather than use my computer to manipulate them. That being said, I do think I'll incorporate some of the simple features like text and brushes into my work going forward. I liked the way that looked on the pages.

I also tried the hand stitched pieces as well. They were very time consuming but last night I got so many compliments on them. Everyone thought they were wonderful. I also loved the way they looked so I'll definitely be using up some of that left over floss in future layouts and albums.

Perhaps the hardest part of this project was writing the stories. I had no idea how hard it would be in some cases to open myself up to others. I had to edit and re-edit myself many times to get just the right saying or to express my ideas properly. The stories were sometimes happy and had me in stitches laughing but some of the memories that I called on weren't so great. I'm appreciative for the time to reflect on all of them.

All in all it was a wonderful project though and I now have a wonderful keepsake going forward that I will keep and display for ever.

Krista