by Ethan Johnson
January 21, 2008

The Layout A Day Challenge continues apace at Big Picture Scrapbooking. The objective is to create one layout per day through the month of January. I'm still keeping up with the pace! These are the next 7 layouts (out of 31).

Day Fifteen: Trash Walk

Roughly once a week, I take some grocery bags and a designated pair of tongs and clear litter from my 2.2-mile walking route. I figure it takes as much time and effort to walk past a piece of litter as it does to scoop it up and dispose of it properly. Ideally, people wouldn't litter. I made this layout dark to match my mood when I think about how choked the local creek is with trash.

Day Sixteen: Somebody Come and Play

I missed the official LOAD chat on January 15th, but I learned that one idea that came out of the session was an informal challenge for us to make a layout about our scrapping space. Talk about low-hanging fruit! The best part was shooting photos of it "as is" rather than clean it up. I wanted to capture how it looks while it is getting daily use during this challenge. We'll be back to being able to land a plane on the work table soon enough.

Day Seventeen: She's Gone

Since my scanner messed up the picture with a thick line down the middle, I decided to embrace the error and use it as an excuse to try out "hidden" journaling. The deep, dark secret about this picture is contained under the left panel. It's a pretty G-rated secret, but I wanted to keep the focus on the pretty picture and less so on the story.

Day Eighteen: Destiny

Ever suspect that there are clues in your past that point to your present, and even future? I don't mean this ham-handedly, like "hmmm, I went to law school, now I'm a lawyer! Whoa dude!" No, I mean more subtle stuff. In this example, I decided one day to include typewritten strips in my photo album of vacation pictures to more or less allow others to take a self-guided tour through the album, rather than needing me to re-hash the story about how tall the mountains were, etc. Now that's a fundamental tenet of scrapbooking. Same with the journals I kept in the 1990s. I didn't plan on that activity being a precursor to - hey! - journaling on scrapbook layouts, but there you have it then. Anyway, another slow, underhanded pitch.

Day Nineteen: Cocoon

It's pretty much my downfall, but I love that cocoon feeling on cold nights/mornings. Sure, it makes it even harder for me to crawl out of bed, but I decided to embrace this habit and pose for a layout. Not bad for pretending to be cooped up in bed while racing a 10-second timer, eh?

Day Twenty: 20-Year High School Reunion

Honestly, this is not my favorite piece. However, it got the job done, and crossed the daily requirement off of my to-do list. Someday I'll make another one that is more to my liking.

Day Twenty-One: Rocky Moose

Magic (our oldest dog) gets all of the attention camera-wise, because he is such a natural. The other two dogs are harder to pin down, with Petey being the biggest challenge. I managed to get a fairly decent portrait shot of Rocky, and after some editorial decisions, made a layout about one of the many songs I serenade the dogs with. Someday I plan to make a dog songbook to immortalize these classics. In the meantime, click here to see the larger version of the layout and sing along.

Lessons learned:

• I can do this! Really really!
• LOAD is a challenge, not a contest. Nobody is going to be crowned "scrapbook Idol" or voted off of the island. Is this isn't fun yet challenging, it's probably best to step away for a while.
• Commemorate the little things. They seem minor now (duh), but one day you'll look back on them wistfully and think, "I remember that!"
• Things will go horribly, horribly wrong sometimes. Try to make the best of the situation. Worst case, make a layout about how awful the experience was. Use it as an excuse to be horrendous. Use the "wrong" embellisments, mix and match items and colors that have no business being mixed and matched. Have fun!
• Make art. Don't fret over masterpieces or what isn't good enough. Just enjoy the opportunity to explore your creativity. (Worth repeating.)

Onward to week four! <EM>

(Want more scrapbooking articles? The full list may be found here.)