Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Then & Now....

I was attempting to tidy my craft area yesterday and today and as so often happens I got distracted looking at old layouts in Isabelles album. I realised that I have been scrapping for just over 5 years now and it made me want to look back at those earlier layouts.

The first four I have uploaded here are all from 2005 and the last one is from 2006. Looking back I can see how in some ways my scrapping style has changed and in other ways it has stayed the same. Looking at the Contemplating Bedtime layout and the Little Beautiful Girl layout I can see that even back then I had a fondness for inked edges. My love of circles clearly isn't a recent thing either!

I look back and although I would undoubtedly scrap these pictures differently now if I had just taken them I have no desire to go back and "re-scrap" them. I like that they reflect what I liked then and where I was on my scrapping journey. The bath time layout makes me smile everytime I look at it. I know I would be highly unlikely to go out and buy wooden ducks to adhere my letters to for a title now but I wouldn't change the layout for anything! Oh and that duck vellum was a present from Anam AKA Kihaku who kindly sent me some when it was unavailable here and I was coveting it on UKScrappers.




So, if you will forgive the terrible pun, why not take a trip down memory lane and browse through your early layouts, what has stayed the same, what has changed and how do you feel about those first layouts?
I often read on forums about people redo-ing layouts. It always makes me a bit sad actually. I have no problem with people scrapping the same photo many times but I think when people look at galleries it should be for inspiration for their future creative efforts, not to feel that their earlier ones are somehow not up to scratch. By all means make another layout with the same photo but please cherish those early pages - maybe you feel it is no great shakes when you hold it up against a Grungy Tim Holtz work of art or a clean and simple Cathy Zielske but you can bet your bottom dollar that someone who looks at it with fresh eyes will see plenty of good in it that is worth the space in a page protector!