Tuesday 19 May 2009

Little Shop of Sketches Layout 36 - April 2009.



If you remember we had a long weekend away in Johannesburg on Hockey Tour with Jack & awaiting the overdue birth of our new neice Lyra. We missed the birth as the labour was so drawn out & as a result I was rushed with this submission. Hence it is not one of my favourites! Still, it is another 6 photos scrapped that needed to be...


If you want to take a look at the original sketch you can see it here.

The yellow print is American Crafts Chronicle 34748 & the deep navy/purple is the reverse side of it. At the top & the bottom I inverted the paper & tore the edge & inked (the top only) with lime green. The backing paper is My Mind's Eye Confetti - Celebrate Brothers Dots (reverse side).

The journalling is by hand & reads "Michaelhouse Hockey Fest." "Jack - You always put yourself out there and you always put your team first."

I clustered a group of embellishments in the bottom right-hand corner to balance with the title on the top-left. I used an old brad as it was navy/white & large with white rings printed on it to represent movement & the ball. I used an old sticker from my stash that reads "PERSONAL GAIN ALWAYS COMES AT PERSONAL EXPENSE" - I've been waiting for the perfect page to use it on & this was it. I grounded it on an offcut sticker strip & layered the numerical date stickers over the top of it - creating an interesting little cluster in the corner.



Above is a collage of some of the elements - I see now that I forgot to straighten the bottom right photo - just in case you thought my writing was crooked - it wasn't!

I used American Crafts leatherette Thickers for the title & date & some trusty Tres Jolie sticker strips for below the photos. I intentionally chose the word "family" because Jack's Team mates get to see more of him than we do & the title because he IS 100% a Team Player. He shouts instructions to all his compatriots always - even though he is not the captain - and they listen to him! I used an Around the Block metal corner (olive green) on the top centre photo to draw attention to the title "team player" as it also serves as an arrow pointing to it!

I bumped up a photo (the little one above the focal photo) that I cropped right down, of Kyle - the goalie - as he was a very significant member of last year's team & needed to be included.
I also bumped up the bottom photo. Two of the six photos don't include Jack at all but I specifically took some shots of his good friends & team mates so that all 11 team members are included in this layout. That way he will always be able to remember who was in his team that year.

Don't forget to include friends & team/classmates in your kids' photos. I went through a phase of cropping close to my subject, thus eliminating most of the background &/or other subjects/people/elements. While it definitely improved my compositional skills & made my photos look more "professional" - after 6 months of Ali Edwards as a daily influence in my life, via her blog, I am trying to zoom & crop less to give my photos a context. There's a fine line between cropping out the distracting elements & cropping the life out of them!


4 comments:

Jacqui said...

Thanks for advising to keep friends in the school type photo's - I do this & I sometimes think it could be silly as "friends come & friends go" so fast during the school years.

Lynette Jacobs said...

Great layout Helen...the only reason why you don't like it, is because you rushed it. I love the action shots.

Vicki said...

Have to agree with you on the cropping. Have recently scrapped some older photos where the backgrounds are really dodgy but have left them as it showed things we had otherwise forgotten like how much the garden had grown, colour schemes in the house etc.

Desire Fourie said...

Lovely layout Helen. I still believe Michaelhouse is one of the most grandious colleges. Hugs from Desire