Designer Showcase: Everyday Life

It's another Wednesday. Which means it's Designer Showcase Day.  I'm Cathy, back again to share this day with you.  It's just an ordinary day. Well, it might be a special day for you, but here on the blog today, we are going to talk about ordinary days and scrapping them.

Are you doing Project Life? or P365/52 or any variation of the projects to help encourage you to scrap the day-to-day of your life? How's that going for you?  I hope you are finding ways to keep yourself motivated to stay on track with your project.  It can seem like a huge undertaking. But there are ways to help you keep it more manageable.

There are all sorts of helps out there for these projects. This list we are sharing today, is in no way all inclusive. These are but a few places to help get you creating.  Becky Higgins has all sorts of inspiration on her blog for project life.  She also has products to make the task simpler. Ali Edwards is another artist that provides great ideas on keeping things simple and getting life recorded.

The Silhouette online store even has several "Life cards" cut files available to help you make 3x5 or 4x6 cards for quickly embellishing and journaling the little things in life.  For you digital scrappers, I've got 2 sites fro you to check out.  At The DigiChick, they have a monthly challenge called "Tell Your Story".  Each month has a different theme. They give you lots of ideas for the topic including some journaling prompts and questions to ponder to help you record these aspects of your life.  They even give you points to earn free products!

The Shabby Princess has "Project Scrap 2012" going strong.  They have broken it down into a project that encourages you to take just 2 photos per week and create just 2 layouts per month. Their gallery is full of samples, and their blog keeps you stimulated to create.  They even provide you with free templates to use!

We have a few "everyday" projects to share with you as well.

Gael created this amazing page.  It's about walking her dog.  Gael and her husband set aside Sunday mornings to take the dog for a nice walk. They get in the car and drive somewhere other than their own neighborhood.  This particular photo was taken while walking along the Derwent River in Hobart Tasmania.  Gael made this ordinary day moment special by creating a lovely garden feel with the flowing branches of the tree and the scattered flowers. She repeated the flowers in a nice row to create a partial frame around her photo. An awesome way to give her page that design triangle.

Lesley shares this beautiful page that she created. She used photos of her children doing everyday stuff, and yet sharing a special moment. As Lesley describes, this is the moment when her son realized that his little sister was not just about cries and keeping him up at night, that she was actually fun to play with.  Lesley took this ordinary moment to extraordinary by adding some masked ink to create the trendy chevron in the lower corner.  She did lots of fussy cutting to create a floral border for the photos and butterflies that seem to float off the page.  Note how she shaped the matting of the photos to have curves to flow with her layout design.

This digital page is about something my son did just about everyday. He liked to swing. Everywhere we went, he would seek out swing sets. I had to have a swing in the yard for him as well.  While it seemed like a simple way to pass the time, it was actually serving a deeper need for him. He has special needs and the swinging was satisfying an occupational need of his.  I have many memories of him smiling and laughing on the swings on any ordinary day.  The background paper with the slanted lines reminded me of the lines of the swing chains and from there, the page just came together.

This page (also digital) that I made, reminds us that ordinary days are not all lollipops and gum drops.  Some days are not so happy. Like days when the kids get sick. They can be down right nasty days!  Not something I would typically take a picture of. At this particular time, my house felt like a ward in a hospital with sick kids in every room! I used some brushes to create the painted messy look which matched the mood of the sick bay.  I share this to remind you that recording the down moments is OK too.  Sometimes it is helpful to look back at all the moments, not just the happiest moments in life.

We would love to hear from you on the ordinary days that you scrap. Please email your pages to me at Scrappycath@gmail.com and we'll share them in an upcoming Readers Pages post.

In the meantime, leave us a comment and let us know how you are doing with scrapping the everyday!