I am a stay at home mom with a great husband, The Man With No Name, and two children, the Princess Pea and the Little Gunner.

This is my blog to show off my newest hobby. Digital Scrapbooking. Most likely there will also be posts about my family, my other favourite hobby-knitting, and eating gluten free.

30 December 2007

Messy

I have been wondering about "messy" pages. The kind with a lot of elements all over; stacked on the picture, under the picture, around the picture. Messy, except they make a beautiful page. Random, so all the pieces looked like they were naturally strewn on the page. I wanted to try this.

Becki had some sparkle swirls that would be a wonderful chance to simply fill a page with elements. I envisioned a wreath made up of the swirls, all entwined, and a circle shaped picture in it, on it, or feathered behind it. I would figure out the single picture after I had my messy elements.

I started with four of the coloured swirls: silver, gold, green and red. I placed them together and rotated each one ten degrees more than the one before it. The plan was to copy these four layers around enough times to create my circle of swirls. By the time I had four sets that went all the way around I realized that they looked nothing like a wreath, and were looking too patterned for the natural look I wanted.

Instead I layered and rearranged the sets so they were different. Starting with the top swirl I erased where I wanted it to be under the other three swirls. Each layer had one less layer it could swirl under, making each step faster. In a short time I had four unique yet intertwined vines.

Since they would not form a circle on my rectangular page, I chose to have them come in from the corners. Then I could tell which picture to use, and how I wanted it to go on the page. I also realized that a title would be too much for me to deal with. If I just put it on the page I would lose my entwined mess. If I entwined it, the title would probably disappear. There would be no title on this page.

credits: Becki Kress - Sparkle Swirls

And this was the result. While it is almost nothing like I planned, I like it. It has a feel of the Princess Pea walking in a tangle of vines, in the woods, as Little Red Riding Hood does. Without a title or journaling it lost the feel of a scrapbook layout. Instead, I see it as a beautiful picture.

How messy do you like your pages? How do you keep track of all of the layers?

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