Our Crew 2011

Recently I saw a post by Katie the Scrapbook Lady about Wendy Zine's latest set of actions. One of her actions would crop your photo into three or four sections, put borders on them, and put them in a collage. I did buy the set of actions, but couldn't figure out how to get that particular one to work ( the fault is entirely mine, as I am still somewhat action-challenged.)

Not to be discouraged, I just sat down and figured out how to do the same thing. It took a little longer than the action would have, but I am happy with the end result. And I have decided this is a great way to treat large group photos. It really adds a bit of umphh.

Journaling reads:  I never seem to remember, when the kiddos are all home at one time, to gather them together for a group shot. Today Cassie and Erik had just made it in from Atlanta, and Cassie was fixin’ to head out to the airport for her flight to Spain. Before she said her good-byes I made everyone scrunch up for a quick photo shoot. Getting this many kids to all look my way and smile at the same time is challenging. I can only imagine what it will be like in years to come as our crew continues to expand. March 3, 2011

I used a photo I took recently when I had the kids together for a short time, and happened to think, 'Oh. I should get out my camera for a group shot.' I never think to do this when everyone is here. Never. As in I have done a total of two photo shoots of all of them together over the past four years. Bad mother.

 I made three photo spots of roughly the same size with mattes behind them. I sized my photo for the first cut, and clipped it to the photo layer. Then I duplicated the photo to keep the picture size the same and clipped to the next photo layer, moving the picture to show a different part of the photo. I did that one more time for the final photo layer. The I moved and twisted the layers a little to look like they were spread on top of one another and added shadows. And wa-lah! I had the same look as the action, it just took a few more steps.

On this layout I tried to keep it simple. I didn't want to change the photo to black and white, so I kept the color scheme very neutral. I tend to mix and match papers and elements from a bunch of kits and today was no exception. I used these kits for this particular layout:  Happy Snapper by Captivated Visions; Passionfruit collab by Designs by Kat and DeCrow Designs; A Fresh Start by Kristin Cronin-Barrow; and 52 Inspirations kits Week 1, Week 2, Week 9, and Basics by Vicki Stegall and Sue Cummings.

I really like the look of words on a background paper that are not part of the main journaling, so I made my own for this layout. I kept the font color lighter than the main journaling so that it almost fades into the background. This is a close-up of a strip of journaling that just lists the kids ages, repeated over and over to fill up a journaling block.

I can definitely see myself using this technique of cutting apart photos, adding borders, and putting them back together again on other layouts.