"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field." ~~ Niels Bohr
If that is the case, then I really must be an expert because I have made a lot of mistakes! I thought it might be fun to share some of my older scrapbook pages to illustrate that sometimes learning comes from doing, and then realizing years later that you wish you would have done it differently. LOL! I still love these pages in many ways, but I'm glad to have learned a few things over the years that (hopefully) have made me a better scrapbooker today.
Page from 1999. I guess I was trying to be a digital scrapbooker back then since I made my title on the computer in an old program called The Print Shop. I also typed up my journaling. Yikes on the busy background paper! Kind of silly sticker placement also. Cute kids though. :)
Lesson to learn - don't use busy backgrounds.
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Page from 1999. Some of the worst scrapbook advice I ever received (and unfortunately used) was to crop my photos around the subject. I went through a whole phase of this. I guess this was a precursor to extracting the subject digitally, but it just looks awful. I tried to do a good job, but my cute little guy is surrounded by jaggy scissor cut lines. The random sticker placement doesn't do much for the page either, and I'm not sure what I was doing with those doodles. I'm happy that I did some decent journaling on the page and left the 2 nicest pictures mostly intact.
Lesson to learn - Don't overly crop photos! Even if you do nice digital extractions, are you cropping out some important history by getting rid of the original setting? Something to consider.
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Page from 1999. This page was during my border phase. I loved making little sticker borders to use on pages. See the cute little dots around the egg stickers? I was sure proud of myself for thinking of that. :) Nothing terribly wrong with this page, but it's a little crazy. No consistency with fonts or embellishments and that sure is a big Easter egg. LOL!
Lesson to learn - Don't get so caught up in using a certain element that it overshadows the rest of the page. Think about font choices. Focus more on the photos and journaling instead of the embellishments.
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Page from 1999. Guess who got a new circle cutter? I think I went a little circle crazy! Wild tablecloth, wallpaper border, busy photos and a busy title border all makes this page a little to much to look at. Glad I used my own handwriting to include some details. I'm also feeling pretty cool for having thrown a fun little Halloween party for my family. :)
Lesson to learn - Crop circles can be scary!
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All of these pages were created more than 10 years ago, so naturally things have changed in the scrapbooking world since that time. The pages do look dated to that time so it makes me wonder what I'm doing to my layouts now that will make them look like they were created in 2010? I hope that I have found a more timeless approach to scrapbooking. It's fun to try out new trends, but it's also important to create pages that you will feel happy with for many years to come.
