| Layout Challenge: Our Artifacts |
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A Quick and Easy Page Idea from Angie Pedersen, author of The Book of US: A Guide to Scrapbooking About Relationships |
Archaeologists use bits of everyday items to tell them about how ancient people lived their lives. Documenting similar items from your life can give clues about your habits and schedule in much the same way. It also helps document the life you've created with others, the people in your "us", because you spend that time together.
The Challenge: Angie's example below - "Dude, What's in Your Car" tells about her life and family. The layout you create will use photos and journaling about "artifacts" in your life to tell about you and your relationships. Use one or more of the following ideas to create a layout that helps document the lifestyle of your “us.”
Topic Ideas:
- What’s In Our Car?
- What’s in Our Junk Drawer?
- What’s in Our Closet?
- What’s under Our Couch Cushions?
- What’s in Our Pantry/Cupboards?
A few points to remember as you work on your layout idea are:
- Don’t censor your list or photo. Paint the picture of your life “as is”. If your car is a “home away from home”, take photos to reflect that. What you keep within easy reach while driving is telling.
- Include a wide shot of the whole interior (whether a car, a room, a closet, your purse, a drawer, etc).
- Also include close-ups of individual “telling” items.
Photo/list ideas for a "What's In Your Car" layout:
- Food packaging/wrappers
- Sippy cups
- Maps
- Music selection
- Toys
- Work papers
- School books
- Emergency preparedness items
The Journaling: Document why these things are telling. What do these “artifacts” say about the life of your “Us”?
Angie's Example: "Dude, What's In Your Car?"
I've done an example layout here to get your creative juice rolling. The photo is matted on a folded piece of cardstock, to allow for hidden journaling. If you don’t want to use a photo, you could also use a themed die-cut, cut on the fold so it opens up like a card. The cardstock in the sample layout is from The Paper Loft.
Find more ideas for scrapbooking about families in Chapter 6: Our Family in The Book of US by Angie Pedersen.
Read Rebecca's interview with Angie to find more great tips about creating books of US by clicking here.
Free Graphics: To save these titles on your computer, simply right click on the title and select "Save Image As." You will then save the graphic on your computer. Once you open it in your favorite word processing or photo editing software, you can make the titles any size you wish and print them out to use on your layout. In Angie's example, she printed the title on a sheet of transparency film so that the paper shows through behind the words.
