My Style Philosophy

I got an email from someone new to my site this week that really excited me. I'm always happy to hear from readers who enjoy what I am doing and have found my information useful. She mentioned "my style" and how she really likes it, and how it's a lot like her own. It made me so happy to read it!

If you haven't been following my blog, you might not be aware of my philosophy on style. I mean, don't get me wrong--everyone is entitled to their own style and to do it the way they want--that's one thing I love about digital--the individuality of it. But my style includes several things that might be considered unorthodox. Here are a few of them, along with some of my most recently completed pages:

1.  8 1/2 x 11 pages. With the ability to resize pictures, 12x12 pages are not really necessary anymore. I like the slim, easy to carry around look of a regular 8 1/2 x 11 books. And its cheaper.

I love how this page turned out! The Leonardo is a brand new museum in Salt Lake. It's awesome. I loved their very interesting logo, so I tried to copy it a little in my layout design.

2.  Number of Photos- I have to print this sucker. I have to pay for each page I print. I want a lot of bang for my buck! So I squeeze a lot of pictures on almost every page. Occasionally I'll do a page where it's one giant picture, as you'll see below. I DO NOT do pages where there is one tiny picture and tons of froo-froo elements. Total waste of space in my practical world, no matter how cute it might be.

For my First Year baby books, I take a picture of my baby on or close to their one month "birthday" each month. Then I have a cover page of that month with that picture as a full bleed page. I did the same thing in my older daughter Afton's book.

3. Journaling - Isn't this really the whole point of scrapbooking? I want future generations to know what's happening. I don't journal every page, but I always have something. With my twins' books, I take a few minutes each month to jot down what they've achieved and my feelings that month, and then when I scrapbook it, I already have the writing done and its still fresh and chronological.

4. Actions - I have a whole post about this, but I'm realizing that my using actions on every page is actually kind of unusual. Most people who use actions use them for the photography side. I use them for the scrapbooking side. You'll notice that most of my pages have some sort of actions--usually I use them on the borders. Like chalking, tearing, or inking edges.

In this one, I used the Chalk action from Atomic Cupcake to edge the pictures. I used the Inked Edges action in the page below, as well as Chipped Painted Metal on the title below.

5. Purpose - I think what defines my style the most, though, is its practicality. I have this dual nature of creativity and practicality, and when they compete, practicality always wins. In fact, I almost called this blog "practicalscrap" instead of Realscrappy!Although this is definitely a creative outlet for me, it also must have some practical purpose. Therefore, I scrapbook everything chronologically, and divide all my pages into books. I do one book each year as my family "yearbook" printed in a bound book. Sometimes I do other special projects--like my children's "first year" book, as well as other projects I mention on this blog. But to me, if it's just saved and my computer and never printed and put in an organized fashion, it's like I never did it.

Again--I don't claim this is the ONLY way to do it. Its just the way I do it. There are many areas of my life that are lacking, where I wish I were doing a better job or trying harder. (Gym? What's a gym?) But at least in THIS area, I like exactly how I do it and I'm actually CAUGHT UP! (almost...)