Circles Galore

While at a recent scrapbooking weekend the girls started challenging each other to try new things and stretch ourself out of our comfort zones.  I found a layout in a scrapbooking magazine...guess which one...  :) that used a circle photo.  That intrigued me and was something I had never tried before, so that was challenge number one.  My second challenge was to use yellow.  I tend to use lots of greens and blues since I am usually scrapping my boys, but I wanted to extend myself into bright yellow.

I found the strips of yellow patterned paper in my scraps box.  These strips were ALL I had so I had to find a way to make them work on the page.  I also had some strips of dark yellow cardstock border.  I again didn't have enough to do the same border in all areas so I had to mix it up.  I then used my cricut to cut the circle around the large photo and trimmed the picture to match.  Smart huh?  That is where my intelligence stopped on this particular layout.  I struggled to figure out how to fill the page and give it variety.  My friend Tara suggested using some more circles in red around the page.  Great idea!!  So I start trying to cut circles with a template and blade.  I wanted to make rings.  Oh those circles became my nemesis!!  Why didn't I cut them on my cricut you ask?  NO IDEA!!!  Never thought of it, even though I had already cut the large circle for the photo on the cricut..  Maybe it's because it was getting late on the 2nd day of scrapping and I was going on very little sleep.  Whatever the reason, or excuse :), I was trying to cut the circles by hand.  They did not turn out well.  After going through an entire page of 12x12 paper I found 2 circle punches.  One was slightly larger than the other.  So I punched with the larger circle and then punched again with the smaller circle.  I used the rings and circles alternately around the page.  After WAY to much cutting and stressing, this simple technique worked really well.

My third challenge came from my friend Tara who told me she wanted to see me journal by hand instead of typing.  I was going to skip journaling because I didn't know where to put it, and as I've mentioned before I don't like to write on my pages in case I mess up.  This time I took on the challenge and hand wrote my story.  As I wrote I was inspired by the circles and my memory of the occasion.  Here is what I wrote, "[my younger son]...wants so much to be like his brother.  Even though he can't manage the pedals he's perfectly happy to sit on his tricycle while [his brother] goes in circles around him."

 

I really enjoyed working with the challenges given to me by my friends.  It caused me to think in new ways.  Recently I have started looking for challenges online to keep me growing.  Thanks to my friends for getting me started on this new journey.