Designing A Page to Tell Your Story

My two-page layout this month is a good example of what I like to do when scrapbooking -- tell the story of a family event. To begin, I think about the event and consider how I can use the pictures to tell the story. Once I have an idea of this, I design a page around the pictures and the story.

This page was to tell the story of a trip my niece and I took to San Francisco. What I recalled was that we did all the typical touristy things. I decided that pictures would be better to convey this activity than journaling, but I was challenged by how to fit so many pictures in two pages. Also, since this was before the days of digital pictures, I was stuck with 3” x 5” pictures. By cropping some pictures, I managed to include pictures depicting the skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge, our hotel, the sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf, Hard Rock Café, Buena Vista Café, Candlestick Park, Ghirardelli square, a total of 12 pictures.

To avoid a cluttered appearance with so many pictures, there had to be an order. I achieved this by dividing the two pages into three horizontal sections that went across both pages, using thin strips of the “Joy” Woodgrain paper to divide the sections. The top section contains only the title. The middle section consists of a row of pictures between the two strips of woodgrain paper that divide the middle section from the top and bottom. These strips also create a frame for these pictures. Some of the pictures are cropped so that six pictures can fit in the 3” x 24” space. The center picture on each side was put in a fun polka dot frame (cut with a Sizzix die). I used the bottom and largest section to have larger pictures and in most cases those with people, which of course are more important.

I used small tags cut with Sizzix dies to label the pictures and the beautiful Stella & Rose brads to hold them to the page. Because there was so much in these two pages, I printed the jounaling directly on the background cardstock and did not in any way frame it. Even with journaling you can’t fit everything. One thing I remembered about the trip was every time we went by a sign directing you to San Jose, I would start singing “do you know the way to San Jose?” and since I can’t sing I would be asked to stop. To scrap this little memory with hardly any space, I just cut the San Jose sign out of picture. I wrote on the tag near it “Do you know the way . . .” and drew some musical notes. The pages were decorated with selectively placed Mabel “Joy” labeled Stickers, Mabel “Love” Decorative Brads and a Mabel “Play” button. I love the way you can mix and match this stuff to create the look that you like.