It's been a long time since my last post . . . the reason, plain and simple - grief. I have not scrapbooked since the first week of May. The last time I tried I broke down in tears at pictures of Dave smiling back at me. I have not really pulled out the pictures since then, or even wanted to look at any. It has been too painful.
But, the desire to get my paper, scissors and photos out is beginning to return. It's like I can hear Dave's voice in my head, telling me to, "Go scrap it out." That's what he used to say to me when I was stressed . . . "Go scrap it out."
So, I've dusted off the scrapbooks and started reliving some of the good memories . . . and July 4th, 2008 was one of them. Caleb and I spent the day at Minerva Lake. Dave was working and I was very pregnant with Zachary, who was born that August. Caleb was all smiles and so happy to be in the water and playing in the dirt.
I had so many cute pictures of Caleb that I wanted to put on this layout. The best way to do that was group them all together. I needed just a few embellishments to create a true patriotic layout! I used all paper scraps to put these pages together. I used my Creative Memories trimmer to create the wavy red strips and a star punch with white paper to create the stars.
Scrapbooking Tips:
Instead of journaling, I used photo captions. For a while I was typing my journaling out because I thought I liked it better than my handwriting. But, I've found it's faster to use my handwriting, and it leaves a little personal touch of me in the family albums. Here I typed them out, cut them into small squares and inked the edges red to keep with the patriotic theme.
It's hard to tell, but I added some dimensional glaze and white glitter to the stars. I wanted them to stand out a little, but not too much to take away from the pictures. I also didn't want them in a strait line. I find that perfection takes too much time, and I like the more casual look it gives my pages.
(This picture of Caleb reminds me so much of Dave at that age - it's all in the eyes and smile!)
I love that you are sharing your personal struggles! sometimes its hard to admit to oneself especially as a scrapper, that it's ok to be heartbroken when we are scrapping or even can't scrap because it's hard. I hope you get your scrapbooking inspiration back. I love seeing your layouts!!! I have found that for me I have learned to heal by scrapbooking, I didn't realize how good it would be for me to get it out in scrapbook pages when I started my daughters make a wish scrapbook. I just an't get enough scrapbooking now! It is so inspirational to read your story!!Thanks for sharing!!
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