Yesterday I went off prompt. Between being busy and having kids home and in my hair, there was not going to be any deep and meaningful stories told. Instead I finished up a happy and fun page:

This page began with the idea of celebrating my friend, so I kept to birthday themed paper, and happy colors. No glitter, because she doesn’t like glitter at all, but a little shine seemed appropriate.

This was a quick page for me today, with the pre-made banners, and the super simple design.

What do you do to scrap faster? Do you feel you need to come up with ways to scrap faster, or do you want to take your time and linger over your pages?

Yesterday’s prompt was to use a book title as a starting point. Specifically, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst

I was having a bit of trouble with coming up with a subject for the page, so went out and ran errands. While walking through a parking lot, this thought randomly appeared: Russell Wilson and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Call.

Yep. I definitely had a story to tell about that, being a Seattle Seahawks fan since the team was created in the 70s.

Rather than looking for football themed paper, I pulled out general papers in colors and patterns that reminded me of football, and the colors of the Seahawks uniforms. To make it more sports-y, I added a few stickers I’ve had since 2010, and stamped the title with a roller letter stamp. And yes, Russell Wilson’s name is misspelled in the photo. I didn’t catch that till I took the photo. I’ve since added an L.

What do you think of all these photo-less pages? Would you ever make a scrapbook page without photos?

Thursday’s prompt was to start with color; red, black, white, and pink to be specific. With that in mind I started thumbing thru some recently printed pictures, and came across this one:

This is one of my favorite photos of my eldest. I could scrap tons of pages with this photo. I think I’ve already used it at least once. There’s no reason I can’t use it again, so I did.

When I saw this picture, the first thing that popped into my head was “Sharp Dressed Man” but I’ve already used this photo for that story. However, I hadn’t talked at all yet about my son’s attempt to grow a mustache, and this may be one of the first pictures where the dusting of hair on his lip is starting to show. I knew I had mustache paper in red and black, so that was the story I chose.

Rather than use a full page of mustaches, I had my son choose the ones he thought were the best, and then cut them out of the paper to use as embellishments. The black and white grid paper made it easy to journal in straight lines.

When I was done, it felt like it needed a bit more embellishment, so after a bit of thought, I used the brackets from the alphabet sticker set and turned them on their side so they resembled mustaches.

Ta-da! How’s that for a quick and simple page? And how often do you actually get to use mustache paper for stories ABOUT mustaches? So fun when that happens!

Today’s prompt was based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. It’s a great kids story that builds up a sequence throughout the book.

The most famous building sequence that I can think of, that has meaning to me? The Twelve Days of Christmas as performed by Straight No Chaser.

Sorry for the Christmas in February link, but this song just makes me happy!

So for today’s page I went with this:

One piece of patterned paper, a few alphabet stickers, one themed sticker, and a whole bunch of writing. Memory recorded. Now to ask my more digitally inclined friends about how to add sound or video to this page. Because that would just make this perfect, don’t you think?

Is scrapbooking seeming any simpler to you with these examples, or am I making this more complicated than you’re comfortable with?

Have you made any pages yet? You can do it!

PS I am going to skip posting tomorrow, and start posting pages the day after I make them. This staying up late is exhausting me!

Today’s prompt was to use different size fonts, as inspired by children’s book design. Since there wasn’t a topic suggested, I went with a topic I’d thought about based on one of the earlier prompts: the books that made me a reader.

Between knowing this month’s Layout a Day challenge was about children’s books, and the fundraiser for the library in my childhood hometown, this story has been at the top of my head for weeks. Perhaps even months, since I also got the Oz themed paper from Graphic 45 with this story in mind.

The title consists of letters from three different sticker sets. They’re anchored on the washi border strips and outlined with black pen to help them be a little less overwhelmed by the patterns.

For those of you wondering which ideas for making this page can be found in The Beginner’s Guide to Scrapbooking, how about the design, a basic horizontal layout, with a bit of tilt to add some fun. Also, the stickers along the left hand side of the photo are not Oz related, or book related, or even childhood related. They’re from a set about collections and antiquing. That shows the idea of adapting specific themes to other topics.

PS If anyone wants to donate the library fundraiser (they need a new microfilm reader) you can find that here.