Wolf Pack

A few weeks back, I became a member over at Paperclipping.com. This is after months and months of listening to the Paperclipping Roundtable or PRT podcasts. Which, if you're a scrapbook and haven't already tuned in, GO LISTEN!! Like seriously, right now! It's a totally free podcast hosted by Noell Hyman, voted one of the 9 Most Influential Scrapbookers of 2010 by Ella Publishing. The show is produced by her husband Izzy, of Izzy Video, and also features some truly inspirational scrapbookers such as Ali Edwards, Stacy Julian, Becky Higgins, Cathy Zielske and so many more!

Now here's why I think you should check out Paperclipping.com: Noell hosts and Izzy produces scrapbooking video tutorials for the site's members. Ok so yeah, big deal right...? Wrong! They are fabulously shot videos of some truly inspiring tips, tricks and ideas. And I'll admit, when I first heard about the tutorials I'm thinking, "ok, so you have a few university design classes under your belt, do you really need to become a member...?" And the truth is, I probably don't. But, the way Noell can lay out all of these jumbled design principles I floating around in my brain, truly helps the visions of scrapbook pages dancing in my head, to come into focus.

Plus, I am a huge PRT fan and I will do what I can to support them and their efforts! While I don't always agree with what everyone has to say, I absolutely love to hear new and differing points of views and also gain a fresh perspective on this hobby I've been knocking boots with for 10+ years. Can I also add that this tiny plug, is my way of "sponsoring" the show. I took that Digi Marketing class! Getting people to talk about your project, most notably via Blogs, is an excellent way to get your product out there. So if you haven't already do check them out. The podcasts are totally free and there's a whole heap of free videos to watch as well.

Wolf Pack

Moving right along, you're probably wondering what this layout has to do with Paperclipping. Well, when I became a member, I also signed up to be part of their community, The Crop Circle (Seriously, you all know how much I love a good pun!) and I joined the Monthly Challenge group. Each month a list of challenges are posted featuring inspiration from either the topics discussed on the podcasts, or layouts created by Noell for the tutorials. This layout was created with two challenges in mind, the Easy Altered Backgrounds and the Hidden Journaling challenge based off of PRT Episode 24-I did it But hid it.

Would you believe that my page started out with a white background?! That this colorful layout is what I came to with the help of my trusty Maya Mists! Taking a cue from Noell, I created my own background paper using only my mists and confetti from a Martha Stewart punch, that I used as mini masks. The Maya Mist colors I used were: blue, hydrangea, purple, red, orange, gold and sunflower yellow. I also used a make up sponge to do some blending, to help get a better gradation between the colors. It was tough, as the cardstock I used very quickly soaked up the ink, but I achieved very close to what I was going for.

The journaling, which I hid behind a photo, is probably my favorite part! But all of it just didn't fit into the more graphic design I was going for. It's totally the basis for this entire layout, or rather, where I drew my inspiration from.

I'd decided that I wanted to create a page about my flatmates, and how they were more than just flatmates and friends, they became my family. And I also had this idea to use some hidden journaling to maybe share where they were from and such. But eh, that's kind of boring. And then all of a sudden it came to me, a stroke of genius! Not only were they my family, they were my wolf pack! Have you seen the movie The Hangover? Then you know all about a wolf pack! Basically, I found the quote of Allan giving his bachelor party toast and edited it a bit to fit my needs.

Journaling Reads:

"You guys may not know this, but I consider myself...a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one woman wolf pack. But when I joined the Mountbatten program, I knew I needed to find more wolves for my pack. Because you can't tackle a city like London, alone. So I met Sarah, and my wolf pack, it grew by one. So we were two...so there was two of us in the pack. I...I was alone first in the pack, and then Sarah joined later.

And then Tom walked into our flat. I thought...wait a third, could it be?! Meh...not so much. Then along came James, then Brittney, then Becky. And I knew for sure, I had added 3 more to my wolf pack. Then we moved across town, and we added one more wolf to our den, Zahra. It took awhile, but Tom finally made it into our pack. 8 of us wolves, running around the streets of London, looking for strippers and cocaine fun and adventure. So today, I make a scrapbook page!"

Thus we come to our final lone wolf. The little guy that started it all! I googled images of wolves and chose one that showed off its tail and looked like it was howling, freehanded it onto black cardstock and then cut the image out using my fine tip scissors. I added some Thickers for the title and used my Dymo label maker to include all of our names.

See, this is why I love to participate in challenges! I got to a point creatively, that I wouldn't have come to without the latest tutorials or the community challenge prompt. Which was simple really, go town on your background paper and hide your journaling. But this page, more than any of the ones I've created lately, truly makes me smile :) Thanks for stopping by today!

xxbesos

j.leija