Letting Your Story Lead

Step by Step paper crafting tutorials

Hello!

Paige here with my first blog post as a new member of the Scrapbook Nerd design team. I am thrilled to be sharing some projects with you this week from the gorgeous, playful Crate Paper ‘Wonder’ collection.

In the scrapbooking layout I am sharing today, I explore what it means to let your story lead.

There are many times when I begin thinking about my layout by looking at my photos. The photo may tell most of the story, and I choose my design, products and journalling simply to complement the photo(s). Sometimes I am inspired by a particular product and I build my layout around that.

There are however, other times when the story I want to tell is much more about the actual story and much of it is not captured in pictures. In these cases, I let the story lead.

What does that mean, to let the story lead? Well, usually for me in involves a few things:

1. I typically give more thought to how I wish to tell the story.
   While the photos of this LO show my son on his Grade 6 overnight trip, the main parts of this story were in the weeks leading up to the trip. My son suffers from anxiety, and he was incredibly anxious at the thought of being away from us for three days, about eating different foods, and about what he would do if he was to have a nightmare.

2)  Journalling: My more important stories usually contain a larger amount of journalling. I spend more time writing out my journalling in rough format. I ask myself some of the following questions:
– What do I want my audience to know about this story? (if some of the details of the story are very personal, I will do hidden journalling on a tag slipped behind paper, or into a envelope).
– What is the most important message I want to convey? If my layout is about and for someone I love, I ask myself what I want them to feel and remember about this story.
In this LO’s journalling I wanted to remind my son, not just that he was anxious before the trip, but also how he overcame this struggle and ended up enjoying the adventure. I wanted to remind him that he was strong and resilient
.

3) Title: often with an important or heartfelt story, I make the title more pronounced, and allow it to give more information about the story.
I knew as soon as I saw the gorgeous ‘Brave’ chipboard title from Wonder, that this would be the title of my LO. And then I decided that I wanted my son to know how I and others view him at this point in time. I used Amy Tangerine stitching stencils to make a line of words describing my son.

4) Papers and Embellishments: while I usually spend a lot of time poring over papers and creating embellishment clusters, when the story leads, these things take more of a supportive, rather than starring role.
As you can see, I kept the layering of papers, and the embellishments to a minimum, so the focus of the page is on the title and the journalling.

Thanks for looking, and I hope you enjoy telling your own stories through photos and words!

Crate Paper – Wonder – 12×12 Paper Pad	Crate Paper – Wonder – Cardstock sticker sheet 6″x12″ 2/pk	Crate Paper – Wonder – Chipboard Stickers	Crate Paper – Wonder – Die Cut Phrases	Crate Paper – Craft Market – Standouts 8/pk	Maggie Holmes – Flea Market – Decorative flowers
Maggie Holmes – Flea Market – Fabric bows

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