Embracing Imperfect Photos

A few busy days, and my good intentions for The Lilypad's MOC4 went out the window. Sigh. I was afraid that was going to happen. I found a layout from the Day 5 challenge that was partially finished. I went ahead and finished it this evening.

First off, the challenge: Embracing Imperfection, aka a photography challenge. The main point of the challenge was to take a less-than-perfect photo and alter it. I took a color photo during Christmas of my mother and one of her great-granddaughters. The photo had terrible lighting and too many colors, so I changed it to black and white. With a brush mask, I took out all the extraneous background so I could focus on the subjects of the photo. Voila! I salvaged a photo that I didn't like as is into something I loved.

Moments Make the Memories by cyranoscrap

CREDITS
Papers: Naturelle (Pink Reptile Designs)
Elements: The Little Things (Little Butterfly Wings); Love the Life You Live (Pink Reptile Designs); Sprinkles V.28 (Valorie Wibbens); Family Almanac (Sara Gleason)
Word Art: This Year (Word Art World)
Fonts: PW01 Script

It bothers me to have half-finished layouts, so I'm trying to make sure I finish them - a small resolution for this year. Let's hope I can keep it. ;)

Listers Gonna List

Day 2 of The Lilypad's MOC4. Today's challenge: Journaling in a list format. 

I don't mind doing journaling in a list format. It reminds me of doing bullet points for PowerPoint presentations, but on subjects that are much more fun!

The rules:

1. All of the journaling on your page must be in the form of a list.
2. You cannot have extra journaling on your page other than your list. You CAN add the date of your photo if you wish.
3. You can use additional word art, word strips as your title work or as elements on the page, however your all of your journaling must be in the form of a list.

Not so bad, right? The hard part for me? Trying to figure out a topic for the list!

There is another challenge called 30 Days of LIsts that I have yet to try, but that I've seen. The list topics are pretty fun, like "Today's Playlist," "What I Like About ____," or "Recipes I Want to Try." These are just a few examples from the website, but I know there are more interesting lists that can be made as well. Anyway, I suppose the easy thing would have been to go get a few ideas from this website. Ha!

What I ended up doing was making a list of my "Favorite Hallmark Christmas Movies." Crazy, I suppose, but when the Hallmark Channel has their Christmas movies going from Thanksgiving through New Year's, I end up forgetting the titles of the ones I really like. So, that's where I focused my efforts. 

Favorite Holiday Movies by cyranoscrap

CREDITS

Evergreen (One Little Bird): Papers, Elements

Chesnut Lane (One Little Bird): Papers, Elements

There’s Something About Merry (One Little Bird): Elements

Advent – Story Seeds (Sara Gleason):  journaling card

Fonts: True North Textures, Very Berry Pro, Underwood Champion

Not a terribly exciting page, but I'm still quite pleased with the result. And, I have a list that I can refer to next holiday season, when all the Hallmark holiday movies come out!

It's 2016!

Happy New Year! I can't believe it's a brand new year already. 2016. On the bright side, it's a chance to start my life anew!

One of the things I hope to do in the near future is to take a shot at The Lilypad's Month of Challenges 4 (aka MOC4). For those not familiar with this challenge, it's an entire month's worth of scrapping - one layout challenge per day. I've only completed the MOC once, but I felt a terrific sense of accomplishment, not to mention I had 31 layouts completed at the end of January. So, I will again attempt (which I've done the last couple of years, but failed to finish) this year. One thing I discovered is that if you fall behind, it can be really hard to catch up.

The first challenge: the Blind Scrap. This is where you are given instructions for your page, but no visual example. You have to create the page based on the instructions and see how closely your page matches with the person who created the challenge. I actually like this challenge because it's fun to try to interpret their instructions and see what you come up with.

The instructions for the Blind Scrap Challenge:

1. Place a solid color paper as your background
2. Place one photo on the left side of the page
3. Place three patterned papers, in any size or shape, to the right of your photo
4. Include at least one flower on your page, placed over the patterned paper
5. Include at least one fastener on your page (a fastener is anything that can fasten a photo or paper down - staple, brad, button, tape, etc.)
6. Include some type of paint or stain brush on your page
7. Include either stitching OR a ribbon, to the right of your photo
8. Include a tag or banner somewhere on the page
9. Your title must consist of one word only, and should be placed above your photo
10. You must include at least two lines of journaling below your photo (you can include more if you want)
11. The date of your photo should be included somewhere on the page

And here's my page:

Five by cyranoscrap

CREDITS:

Color Me Happy (Just Jaimee) – Papers, paint spatter

Storyteller Dec. 2014 (Just Jaimee) - stitches

Alpha (Heather Joyce) – Foam Alphas No. 5

You Are Here (Sahlin Studio) – Washi tape, tag

Personal font – journaling, date

Now, I'll have to wait until the end of the month to see what the challenger's page looked like. Even if I'm not anywhere close, it was still fun to try!