Little Toot: Gallery Fave!!

I am pleased and so honoured to say that this layout was chosen as one of the Gallery Faves on the Color Combos Galore Site  yesterday!!  Yay!!

Oceanside 1946

Here are the colours we had to use:

I have hundreds of beach photos - mostly because looking for the perfect beach is a hobby of mine!  But not one of my beach photos was right for this project.

I ended up choosing the photograph that you see here of my mother, taken in 1946.  (or did it choose me?)

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.-- Virginia Woolf

Sometimes scrapbooking is about more than preserving a moment.  I find that with my interest in vintage photos, scrapbooking can be a way of unravelling mysteries and making important discoveries about one's own life.  Here's the little story about my discovery.

Elements Selected and Arranged...Themselves?

We were required to use vellum and translucent elements. After that, the elements more or less selected and arranged themselves. (It's happened to me before, too - it's a little eerie!)  For some reason there just had to be a handwriting design in the background, some letter/post card embellishments, as well as a clear glass bottle.

As I was arranging all the elements, I decided to cut into the paper.  This is something I rarely do. On the occasions where I do cut,  I usually trace the lines first, think about it a lot, and cut slowly. 

This time, the cuts were made really fast - no lines, no dithering.  Cut 1.   Cut 2 -zip, zip.

Okay. Sea shell, bottle, letters.  Message in a Bottle, anyone?  And then it just came to me - floating up like a message in a bottle:

Even though she never talked about it, my mother really loved the beach.  She loved it as much in her day as I do in my time.  Doing this layout helped me realize it.  And  all of a sudden, my eternal quest for the perfect beach started to make more sense to me!  It's been passed on to me from my mother - like an invisible inheritance.

See what I mean? I so love the papers, embellishments and techniques of scrapbooking,  But I think that on some other level, it's really about understanding our present by understanding our past: 

Go back. Go back in time. Everyone's life is a chain of memories. In each chain there are shining links, happenings where this element of wonder...was very strong. Why don't you reach out and relive some of those memories? If you work at it, remembering the wonder can revive your ability to live life as it should be lived.-- Arthur Gordon

The new challenge is up at Color Combos Galore, effective last night.  The talent and creativity on this site is amazing. I never end up creating the project I had planned! If you're looking to boost your creativity, head on over and take a look.


Thanks for stopping by, and have a lovely weekend!