Big Idea Festival

One of my favorite web places, Big Picture Classes, is hosting its free Big Idea Festival this week and next. The class has daily layout inspiration and some free downloads. I did this last year August and loved it, so I signed up again. The idea this year is a word a day; at the end, you should have a complete 6x6 album of words connected to your life. Love it.

I didn't want to use the templates, so I made 12x12 layouts. They won't get their own albums, but they will be put inside my already existing albums--my album or the family album, probably. Here's my first five words:


I used a photo I took using my iphone and the Hipstamatic app. The blues and greens were so intense, the photo worked perfectly with the Studio Calico Boardwalk kit. I misted lightly in yellow and green, then unscrewed the lid and blopped color down on the page too. I used the kit's zig zag stamp; I used it on a piece of patterned paper and embossed it, using it along with other patterned paper strips. After I made the LO, I punched circles, adhered, then stitched them onto the page.


The word "wonder" was hard for me. It became easier when I used it as a verb, which you can see in the journaling. The title came from the amount of time I've been with my husband. We started dating in 1996.

I dug into stash for this page. I misted the old October afternoon patterned paper with Studio Calico clover mist to make it more monochromatic. I also punched the circle border to make my own sort-of scallop border. I went a little mist crazy on this layout--the flowers were a little bright, so I misted them with SC Pony to mute them a tad.

Just for giggles, check out the photo on the left--that's Derick and I in 1996. I had rescued this photo from a frame--it was a tad damaged, which is why I trimmed it into a circle. The other photos are extras from other pages I made; these photos were rejected sizes.


Day Three's word, Less, is a lot like my One Little Word, Reduce. I used this page to focus on attitude. I used Studio Calico's July kit, Mind the Gap, which is still available too.

I had a photo on here with me and the boys, but I wanted to have just a picture of me for this one, so I took it off and replaced it with this photo from my birthday. I had printed it in both color and black and white because I wasn't sure which I wanted. I'm glad I got some use out of this!

This page was fun to make. This was the photo I had planned on using for LESS yesterday, which is why I used a photo turn for both, to cover the hole in yesterday's LO and to cover the adhesive on this one, LOL! Another secret: I misted this paper, planning to use it on yesterday's LO, but it didn't look right, so I used it for today instead. Both pages used SC's Mind the Gap kit.

(In case you haven't noticed, I used the same pattern for three of these LOs. It might be uncreative of me, but I like the way it works for a one-photo page, and I think I used other techniques to make the pages look a little different from each other.)


Yesterday's word was Enjoy. I think the idea was to do a page about what I enjoy to do, but this photo has been staring me in the face all week. I LOVE it, so I decided to use it. They are wearing shirts my Club CK peep Alison M sent them, and they are acting goofy because I did what I learned to do from Write Click Scrapbook to get natural smiles out of my guys: I told them to get squishy. Telling them that always creates a hoot of a photo.

When I look at the photo, the journaling came to mind, so I used this for the page. I used Studio Calico's June kit Paper Moon for the page, which isn't available anymore, but the page is made largely with October Afternoon Rocket Age, which you can get.

One note about this paper: It has little punch out holes which were a pain to deal with as I punched holes to stitch. #%&!

I painted behind the journaling/title to make the letter stickers stand out better.

So those are my pages so far for the Big Idea Festival. I now have to mull over today's word, Nest. It's a tough one.