March 2, 2017

April Lilli Design Team: You are braver than you believe.


I have put off writing about this layout until the very last minute because I really don't know where to start and what to tell. Maybe if I start this way:

For my April Lilli projects I have been going back to the very first photos that are on my computer (yes, all other digital photos have been lost). They are sorted by year and month and for my March projects I look through March of 2010 to 2013 and mark all photos as favorites that spark some kind of story or resonate with me. From these photos I then choose the ones that go with the color scheme of this month's collection and which stories feel most important to me. Most of the times I end up with 5 stories. This gives me a good start. I can play with five different options and showcase two of them as my monthly design team projects. If I have time, energy and motivation left, I can still work on the others, if I don't, I'll at least have two older stories more in the books. I chose the photo of this mirror selfie because then I took them almost daily.

I had planned to make a page about the many mirror selfies I took during that time to share my outfit of the day on instagram. But when I had the photo in my hand it was too big, there was too much background noise on the photo and having one photo as a representation of the many mirror selfies I took just didn't feel right as well. I would rather prefer having a collage of many for that story.

So I looked at the papers again and the die cuts that came in the kit and then these thoughts ran through my mind: "I really should challenge myself to use that paper as a background!" - "Yes, what is the point of saving things you love rather than using them?" - "I wonder if I can fussy cut these houses as a strip and use them at the bottom of a layout." - "But what story would you tell? And where would the photo go?" - "Ok, this really does look good, it needs grounding but other than that ..." - "What if I cut myself out of that photo and then tuck it behind the houses? Then nobody would notice that I don't have feet in that picture. Haha, this looks just like a giant in a tiny world."

"Ok, this is complete nonsense, what is the story here?" - "Do I always need a story?" - "Well, you usually do!" (Muffles the sound of this other inner voice. It's just so much fun!) "Let's look at the die cuts, maybe I can ... oh! Those circles have affirmations on them ... maybe I can add them to embellishment clusters close to the photo. And then look for a quote that reinforces these affirmations. That is it! It is an image of growing out of your black and white world, growing taller than you ever believed you could. Perfect!"


Then everything came together quite easily: I decided to stamp the quote to the background using an elle's studio alpha stamp set and add even more embellishments in a vertical strip to balance the horizontal strip of the houses and give the quote an nice frame. And there's that! I am absolutely in love with this layout!

The Lovely Day collection by Dear Lizzy is 20% off for the whole month of March 2017 in the April Lilli shop!

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