The life and death of creative ideas

I have a notebook with pockets that I bought at Target where I keep track of my creative ideas. I like the pockets so I can keep memorabilia or master lists I might need; I can also keep photos in them to plan pages if I'm going somewhere (like taekwondo to watch the boys). I post some sticky notes on the inside cover and list page ideas when I get them, either spontaneously or when I'm browsing photos on PSE, deciding what to print. 

I did that with the following page:

I was poking around an iPhone app I use when jogging, MapMyRun, and discovered I could find out how far I'd run this past summer. When I added it all up, I was surprised to find I'd run 131.27 miles. (Somewhere on the trails by my house I'd left 12 pounds behind.) I needed to make a page about this accomplishment, so I printed an iPhone photo from a 5K my family ran in August (I didn't want to take a photo special) and made the following.

I had these big numbers in a Studio Calico kit and decided to use them for this page, along with the map and number paper. (Note: I rounded down because the big numbers only came with one digit. Guess I should have run another mile!) Here's some details:

 

I used this page on the Thinking Through Design lesson on adding dimension to pages. You can see how many accents I popped with Dimensional stickers. Even the photo!

Back to the creative journal: When I finish pages I've logged in my journal, I cross them off the list. But some ideas stay on that list for a long time. A loooong time...

What happens with those ideas? Sometimes I just let them go. I had been excited to do them once, but not anymore. I might even have printed photos for them, but I think it's OK to let creative ideas die. They die a good death. It's OK.

Other times I leave them on there and the page eventually gets made. Here's one of them:

 

 

 

I went to CHA Winter and Summer in 2011 representing Ella Publishing and had printed photos, intending to make a page about each event. I never did, though I made minis of both. That will usually make me abandon the idea, but this one kept nagging at me. I wanted to make the page! So I pulled out some Jillibean Soup papers I'd pulled when I intended to apply for the design team( I never did--regrets! Ah well, next year) and got to work.

Here's some details:

Please know I corrected that errant gem!

The Studio Calico word bubbles I backed in pink paper.

I liked using the photo for part of the title and the calendar for the journaling. By the way, those were mistable Thickers. I bent them prying them off my cardboard box I mist in. Next time I'll put them on wax paper in the box. Hopefully they'll bend less.

So here's my question to you: how do you keep track of ideas? How do you plan? And how about letting creative ideas die--do you? Or do they get life support? :-)

Hobbit riddles, scrapbooking, and My Precious

My husband has been reading The Hobbit to my boys. They love it, and Derick does terrific voices as he reads.

When we were in Maine last summer, my son Rowan said something that reminded me of a riddle from the book--you know, then scene where he encounters Gollum underground and they have a riddle battle over whether Gollum gets to eat Bilbo or escort him out of the cave. I laughed at what Rowan had said and asked him the winning riddle in response:

"What is in my pocket?"

The answer, in case you haven't read the book, is the Ring, AKA Gollum's Precious, which he doesn't know he lost and Bilbo found. The scene is quite dramatic.

Rowan, however, hadn't gotten to that part of the story, so when I posed my riddle, he said triumphantly, "Your iPhone!" We laughed and shared the reason why with him.

Ever since, when he sees me messing with my phone, he hisses at me, a la Gollum, "My Precious!" What a card.

I had to memorialize the story, so I made this page:

I used Studio Calico's September kit. I like how basic the product and design are, which highlights the story.

I used a lot of circles, since the story deals with them--the Ring. The striped green circle was a leftover piece from my Write Click Scrapbook page for next month's gallery. It was so pretty, I didn't want to throw it away. I'm glad I got a use out of it on this page.

Sometimes the perfect embellishments are the most literal. When I saw the kit had a pocket in it, I knew I had to use it on this page.

On a side note, I love this picture of me, weird though it is. You can see how I regained my waist after I lost 12 pounds running this summer. I made a page commemorating the running. I'll share the page after it goes up next week on Thinking Through Design.

The 12 final days of summer: page 1

These last few weeks I've been busy with the family. We picked up my mom at the airport, here for a two week visit, went to the beach and the pool, shopped for school, and trained for a 5K, which we'll run as a family this weekend. I also finished a book, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, which was probably my favorite read of the summer.

So now we are left with 12 days until summer is done and school returns. Since I've been stockpiling layouts that I haven't posted, I thought I'd post one a day until summer's end.

Here's the first layout I made but didn't post:

Note: that iris photo on the lower left might be my best flower photo I took this year. I take a lot of pictures in my garden.

I made this as a "Things" page for the Big Picture Classes class Twelve. I don't like scrapping purple in the slightest, but dang, I love purple in my garden.

You'll also see this page on Thinking Through Design on a post about mixing fonts. I did that technique, a favorite of mine, with the title:

Lots of layering with the title. I experimented until I got the look I wanted. Dimensional stickers from Stampin' Up! are my friend. :-)

I used my Studio Calico August kit Summer of 69 for this page, apropos for an end of summer page.

That little flourish I stitched down was a part of a bigger die cut; I trimmed it off and used it alone, keeping the other part for later.

What's your favorite color? Mine is yellow, though I honestly wear purple more than yellow, LOL! What's your least favorite color? And do you scrap with them regardless of how you feel about them?

Scrapbooking on the photos

I love white space, particularly on my photos. When I use photos on my page with some empty space, I tend to overlap that space with title/journaling/embellishments, not to fill the page, but to ground the photo. Here's an example:

I did this page for Thinking Through Design, using Studio Calico's City of Lights kit. I love the photo; it just seems so poignant. When we had the whole beach to ourselves, the whole summer in front of us, my son, knelt at the edge of the water and started building in the dirt. It was just so him.

I try to take photos that are asymmetrical--my pages tend towards asymmetry in general, but with asymmetrical photos, that leaves white space to play with. Here I added the title and journaling to the right, which drew attention to my son.

Another example of white space (and my love for asymmetry!):

This page I made for my parents using some leftover photos from last summer and my boys at Mears Park in St. Paul. I used Simple Stories' new collection Summer Fresh, which is a perfect collection for boys. I sprayed with Studio Calico mist (custard?) then lay the photos on top of the messiest part of the mist, which left just a nice splash of color beside it. Even though the photos didn't have a lot of white space, I did a lot of overlapping with stickers to ground the photos a bit. Finally, I added the title to the white and a little bit of stickers to the left to form a visual triangle, leaving the rest of the page open to draw more attention to the photos and title.

And for some news...

This last page was my submission to the Write Click Scrapbook's talent search, and I am proud to say that I was one of two people selected as a winner! I have loved this site from the beginning, and I can't wait to work with such talented people.

And more news:

Please go to Scrap Street Magazine and enjoy this online publication--and my layout Summer Bucket List 2012 is on the cover of July! Sweet. We've already done 4 of the things on the list, which is great, and I also have made a mini to keep track of what we accomplish off the list. I'll share that next week.
Enjoy the weekend, and may your weather be cooler and less humid than mine. :-) Get out and take some pictures, and leave some white space in them.

Woven into the Robe of God

My last post on stitching was one I'd been thinking about recently. My first assignment for Thinking Through Design was hand stitching. I decided to go to town with this layout, and come up with a page idea based on stitching. Here was my process:

1. When I thought of stitching as the central focus for my page, I thought about a line from an essay by E.M. Forster called "My Wood." It's a text that meditates on the effect of property on people who own it. I'm making it sound more serious than it is. Here are his basic observations:

• "It makes me feel heavy."
• "It makes me feel it [the property] ought to be larger."
• "Property makes its owner feel that he ought to do something to it."
• "The blackberries" (I'll let you read the essay to see what he meant by the last point! It is so funny.)

A line from the first point he made says he wishes that he could be like the "slim camel passing through the eye of the needle and being woven into the robe of God." I LOVE that line. It made me think of my boys and how they're going through a Stuff phase (hopefully a short one). I wish for them to be less preoccupied with Stuff and more preoccupied with Being and Doing. And so the spark for this page began.

2. I imagined a couple photos of my boys at Lego Club (when they are completely surrounded by Stuff) on top of some stitched lines weaving across the page like a robe. I also imagined the title in those waves.

I hand drew the lines, punched holes, then stitched. When I finished, it looked sort of dull, so I hand cut the waves out, thinking to put it on patterned paper.

I tried, and it looked hideous.

So I left it on my lap desk for a few days to think it through!

3. I decided to stick it back on some white cardstock. This time, I misted it first, which I liked a lot. I got out my watercolor crayons and my blender pen, which my dog Lola ate later that week, and made a little bit of golden robe on the left. Then I started playing with punches and other stitches to link them together.

My final step was journaling and adding those wonderful lines by E.M. Forster. Here's the final page:

I really like the end result. Not a typical page for me, but tons of fun to make.

Be sure to go to Thinking Through Design and check out the other awesomely stitched pages!

A new source for inspiration

I'm very happy to share with you that I will be a part of a new inspiration blog called Thinking Through Design. You can see my introduction on this post, and you can see the wonderful first post here. I hope you can visit it often; we will have a rotating cycle of inspiration. This week you'll get ideas about starting your page with color inspiration. 

Thanks for letting me share this wonderful place filled with wonderful, supportive scrappers!