Everything! A face can tell a story better than anything that can be written, scrapbooked, or embellished. Ever since my boys were small, I have been taking pictures of everything they do to chronicle in their scrapbooks. …and I do mean everything. Getting those pictures on pages has proven more difficult as our family has grown in numbers and I’m here to tell you that I’m way far behind! Yes, it happens to all of us. Out of all the pictures I’ve taken and all of the pages I’ve completed, my favorites are those where a face tells the story.
Sometimes, as scrapbookers are prone to do, we want to preserve an event or milestone by using all of the pictures we took of that event. We might even create an entire album around a single event just to use all of our pictures. Been there, done that, but as I’ve matured in my scrapbooking, I look for the best photos that truly convey the emotions and activities of the day. If I didn’t, I would be even further behind because scrapbooking, even digitally, takes time.
To illustrate, I want to share some of my own digital pages with you.
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For this page, I utilized a quick page called "Chin Up" (Anna Aspnes - www.fotoscrapix.com). While there were other pictures taken that day, I really felt that this one captured the moment. Poor little guy!
Sometimes, there's no need to embellish at all. If you have a picture that you just love, why not make it the focal point of your page...the only focal point. This was page two of a two page spread. The other page showed a few pictures of our sons playing in freshly raked leaves but I just loved how this one turned out and didn't want to do anything to distract from that sweet little face.
And that same little sweet face likes to play in mud puddles. Again, this was part of a multi-page spread.
Soon enough, he's going to be grown and he's going to lose that baby face. I want to hold on to the memory of it for years to come. No embellishments were used because I didn't want to distract from the photo itself.
Again, I used a quick page for this because let's face it, with three little boys, and one full-time working mommy, I need to save time whenever possible. This particular page is from the Keep on Movin' set by Denise Liemert. We had spent the day at one of those blow up amusement places and I loved the bright colors and happy vibe of this quick page. There were other pages filled with photos of my kids having a great time but I really have an appreciation for the simplicity of having one picture on a layout.
One of the things I've seen happen with my scrapbooking brethren is that they only want to capture the happy feel-good moments. For example, this less-than-happy photo may have ended up on my hard drive forever except that I moved away from "Polyanna" scrapbooking a long time ago. Childhood is such a fleeting thing that I find myself wanting to preserve it all - the good, the bad, and yes... the ugly.
Scrapbooking is truly about telling the stories of our lives. My challenge to you is simple. When you have decided on a page or a series of pages you wish to complete, look at each picture and ask yourself what story it tells. If it doesn't add to the story you are telling, file it away. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not using every single picture you take.
A trick I like to do if I have a lot of photos is to use the very best ones, even if that's only a handful of what was taken, and put the rest on a photo CD. I just create a space in my design, adhere a CD sleeve (Creative Memories) on the page, and insert the CD. All of the photos are still preserved but I'm using only the very best ones for my layout. This is a huge time saver!
Thanks so much for visiting my blog and happy scrapping!
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