Telling a story

As I stated in my very post, one of my recent projects is creating a marriage album for my husband using Plant Your Story and Live Your Stories collaborative Grow with Love: Marriage Edition series of prompts. It would have been truly amazing to have participated in that class when it was given (in 2010 I believe). Grabbing a class the next time one comes around is on my to-do list most certainly.

A few things I've realized in doing this:

I journal on layout better with a thoughtful prompt. I need more than a piece of word art, I need a whole paragraph to get my mind working. Those that can take a single word and come up with an interesting story have my admiration because I simply get stuck. I need someone to give me their lengthy perspective in order to do the same. I need another's narrative to quell the noise in my environment and in my own head. I need to be engaged in order to put words on paper. I thank the stars for people like Sara Gleason and her collaborator, Crystal, for setting up these guides for people like me.

I can put a layout together quickly if I don't have to write anything, but after discovering the world of journaling, those layouts seem flat to me. I get the art for art's sake whole-heartedly, but this series has changed the way I approach a layout. I want whomever happens to flip through one of my albums to understand why a particular photo or memory was important to record. When I look at other people's layouts, I'm always happy to see journaling. For instance, when scrapping a photo of a child, I instinctively (as mom especially) know why you'd scrap a photo of your child. Unless there is journaling, I have to wonder why you picked that photo, at that moment to scrap. Was it just parental pride (the same that inspires you to carry a wallet sized photo in you wallet)? Was it because you took a really great photo? Was it because your kid is doing something cute in the picture? What is it that sets the photo(s) in question apart from the thousands of other photos you have?

I realize that this a personal choice/feeling/approach and that not everyone feels the need to tell stories. I'm not at all saying that your doing it wrong if you don't journal. For me, there is a drive to tell the story. It's part of who I am. The other side of my love of stories is that I want to know yours. I see a layout without journaling and try to imagine the story behind it. Granted, there are some really great layouts where the story is so very easy to get just through the art itself. Those are probably the best of the best because telling a story without words is just plain... WOW. It's art in its purest form. As for me, I don't want my kid to wonder... plus he's autistic, so inferring the story through pictures isn't so easy for him.

The last thing I've discovered is that Sara Gleason AKA Zinnias and Swallowtails is probably my favorite digi designer at the moment. All her kits speak to me... The colors, the elements, the word art, her style... it all says "Carrie, you NEED to scrap with this". I'm not normally a one kit scrapper, but when it comes to her works I find myself being a one kit scrapper. For whatever reason, her kits provide me with everything I need for a layout I'm working on.

As I said in my last post, your emotions at the time you are scrapping have a way of showing themselves on the layout you are working on... well, when I scrapped this layout you are about to see, it was a good day. I was listening to OWN's Master Class while scrapping the majority of this page. The show was featuring Morgan Freeman (the-ever-since-I-was-a-child-people-have-enjoyed-the-sound-of-my-voice-guy). I was oddly relaxed and inspired by him. Morgan Freeman is good for scrapping! He's also a compelling story teller:

Credits: Sara Gleason Olive Tree, Fonts Hobbes, Cinnamoncake