Welcome to a new week here on my blog. This is the last week of school for my younger two children (my eldest finished last Thursday) so I am sure it will be busy with end of year assemblies, field trips and other fun activities at the school. I’ve been working on my thank you cards for the teachers – be sure to come back on Wednesday to see those.
Today though I am sharing another layout for my Harry Potter album. This one follows on the heels of Saturday’s layout and completes the story of the Platform 9 3/4 and Hogwarts Express section of the tour. Here’s the process video.
As you saw, it took a lot of moving things around and eventually ripping an entire section apart to get this layout where I wanted it. Sometimes you just need to do that!
Typically, I’m a stick it down and move on type scrapper, and that serves me well. It allows me to finish layouts quickly and get moving with other projects or tasks that I need to do. Trying to keep things from getting too cluttered on this layout led to a lot of indecision that slowed down my process. But taking a break where I did, forced me to rethink that journaling section and ultimately led to the choice to rip it apart the next morning. Incorporating the piece of wood grain paper with the stamp on it did two things – opened up that area to allow me to fit my journaling in, and also brought in the stamping that I’ve used on other layouts in these albums.
When creating an album about one story – whether it be a day, a week or longer – it is helpful to repeat elements. Use the same colour card stock background on every layout for instance. Or use a specific colour palette. Or, have repeating elements and motifs show up throughout. That’s my favourite method. That allows more creative license while still keeping the album cohesive as a whole. Each layout can have different colours, patterns, design, and embellishments, but because certain things show up again and again, your reader is able to process that this is one complete story. No matter how different each individual page is. That’s also why I have kept my paper scraps from this album in one place. Repeating papers on more than one layout is part of my way of showing that this is all one story.
Oh, and PS – that stamp is from Kelly Purkey and is called Potterhead but has been discontinued. Sorry!
You may be wondering what happened to my resolve to be slightly more minimal. Well, I’m working on it! For this album though, colour and pattern run rampant and I think doing an about face at this point doesn’t make sense. For this album. For other albums though I am trying to pare it back. I will say that – despite the issues it gave me – using a piece of white card stock to back all the photos instead of my usual patterned paper, was a step in the right direction.
Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful week. If you are also in the throes of end of school year crazies then I wish you well!
Cheers!
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