Make the ordinary extraordinary
I find what I do as a storyteller, memory documenter, and scrapbooker can be covered by much of what he writes about in his smallish books.
One of my favorite quotes from that books is as follows:
You do not need to have an extraordinary life to make extraordinary work. Everything you need to make extraordinary art can be found in your everyday life.
Don’t you love that?
I love that quote. It sums up for me what it is that I love to do with photos + words. I take what is ordinary to the rest of the world, and I make it extraordinary for me. Take this photo and layout in point. Well, OK...so it’s not a normal ‘ordinary’ photo...it was my oldest daughter’s wedding week and she was heading out with her sibs, seen here, and friends, for a girl’s night out.
What is extraordinary for me about this photo? It’s MY girls during a very special and hectic week. It’s them taking time out for each other. It’s me actually getting a photo to create a marker on this day.
That is just part of what makes this photo extraordinary.
It’s also just for me. It’s not special to you. And that’s OK. That’s what makes this pastime we all enjoy so fabulous. We all GET each other and our love for the making. The making of relatively simple photos into the extraordinary.
Isn’t’ that fantastic?
This layout here is sitting in my Storyline Chapters Insert for April. I created the background on a separate piece of Cardstock to hold all those die cut scallops of pattern paper well.
The unfinished layout stayed, well, unfinished for quite some time.
Having recently got my hands on that Memories Stamp from ScrapbookCom, as well as some of their new Slimline Stencils, I started adding this and that to the layout.
You know...making the ordinary into something extraordinary by giving the elements just a little more attention.
Let me share some of the details :
I began by die cutting Tattered Butterfly as well as pattern papers for the scallop portion. But I felt it was needing more. So then I die cut a Mini Detailed Butterfly with the new Roses Smooth Cardstock from ScrapbookCom.
But then I was like...wait...what more can I add...it literally went like this:
I then used Distress Embossing Ink to ink the Beautiful Memories stamp and did that on vellum. Which was then embossed with Pearl Blush Embossing Powder. Wow is that a beautiful embossing powder finish!!!
I needed to find a way to layer the vellum embossed circle to the layers of butterfly. I did that by adding another piece of vellum to the back of the stamped circle with double sided adhesive sheets. Then I used a glue dot to adhere the circle embellishment to the butterfly layers. That way the glue dot is mostly obscured from the casual observer. I’m pretty happy with the results.
In the case of this layout, I could have left it as I had originally. It would have been OK. I would have liked it. But I reached for a little bit more this time. The extra attention I gave this seemingly ordinary page created, what is to me, an extraordinary page layout and story.
I hope this inspires you to remember that your stories matter. Whether you put your photos in a pocket page and say done! Or you let your page sit for a few days and add this or that. What a great hobby that none of that matters. You get to do you. You get to tell YOUR story. And isn't that extraordinary.
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So lovely Jamie! I love your use of a variety of products. Such interesting and fun layouts! I am going to try harder to use my stamps more….when I find them in all these boxes!
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