More Bang for your Buck

Okay, so the other day I got a very unexpected email that just made my day. It was from a lady named Tenika who has a scrapbook blog dedicated strictly to multi-photo layouts (3 or more pics). She had seen a layout of mine in an on-line gallery, and wanted to know if she could post it on her blog. Um, SURE! (here's the link to her blog: http://scrapbooklayouts.blogspot.com/ )
Here's the layout she requested...I'll let you know when it's up on her site.


So, I started thinking about my scrapbook style, and realized that quite a few of my pages have 3 or more pics. Not all of them, but a lot. And probably for a lot of reasons...
1) It just seems to feel right to me. You've heard of the rule of 3? Well, I don't see why it can't apply to pictures...sometimes a certain # of pictures just feels more balanced.
2) With 3 kids, nearly 7 years of marriage (with 3 homes & a few pets mixed in) I don't have time to scrap 1 photo at a time...I may never get 'caught up' as it is!
3) I don't have room to store a gazillion layouts! I don't care to have that many albums! So I better put more than 1 pic on a page, or I just won't have space to keep it!
4) Sometimes it seems to me that several pictures can tell the visual story much more effectively than just one great picture...even if those 'extra' pictures aren't the perfect shot, or aren't in focus, or whatever else we look for in photography. Sometimes it's more about the progression of events that tells the story or sparks our memories, rather than the great professional quality of that one gigantic-sized picture in the focus of a layout. I'm not always willing to give up that progression for the sake of dramatic impact.
In short, I think multiple photos just gives you more bang for your buck! I want to post a few of my favorite layouts that fit in this category, so that some day I can look back at this post & see where I was in my scrapping, and what was on my list of fav's.

ALL THAT'S LEFT














I did this page for the Queen of Paradise contest in 2006. It was the result of a series of horrific mistakes! I finished the page, hated it, cut it apart, finished it again, screwed up the last 3 things that I'd done, and cut it apart again. This is the third layer of attempts to get it right...It's TOTALLY outside of my normal style, but I think that's part of why I like it so much. It just sort of HAPPENED. It wasn't planned. And the photos are some of my favorites of me with each of the kids. But, above all, the journaling communicates to my children a part of me that I may never have shared had I not been pushed to scrap this page. Definitely one of my favorites - and 6 photos!

WHEN I SEE YOU SMILE














Another 'contest' page...I had no real idea where I was going with this when I first started. The assignment was to use the title 'When I see you smile...' Well, as I thought it through, I couldn't pick just ONE person to focus on. So, I decided to focus on the family! This, more than any other scrapbook page I've ever done, has served the purpose it was created to serve. When I finished, Lucas and I sat for almost an hour looking back at each individual photo (there are 31!!) and remembering the moment - where we were, what were some of the fun characteristics of our children at that time, etc. Isn't that what we scrap for? For that reason alone, I could easily say this was one of my favorites.

Okay, one more for now...

COLOR ME HAPPY

























I ADORE these pictures of Meagan and Lucas together! Look how happy she is getting Daddy's attention all to herself. I went a little crazy with the camera when I was photographing this moment of the 2 of them, but, let's face it, a girl can never have too many pictures with her daddy! However, when it came to scrapping them, I didn't want to leave any out, but I didn't want a gigantic page FULL of such similar pictures. So I picked the ones I thought best told the story to use as the focal point. The rest of them I left smaller, so they still show the progression of their time together without taking away from the bigger pictures. I just LOVE her expressions! She's soooo HAPPY!
(11 pictures)