Do You Redo?

I have often read comments on forums or spokeen to people at crops and scrapbooking events where they talk about redoing their early layouts. This has always been something that makes me feel slightly sad, ok so your style has changed, your techniques have become a little more sophisticated and there may be new and lovely products around that you would have used on that layout if only it had been manufactured back then but still, your early layouts are a documentation of your development as a crafter as well as layouts in your album.

However, what I do understand is that feeling when you work on a layout and can't quite be happy with the direction it has gone in. On those occassions I usually put the layout away and leave it for a while before revisiting it. Most of the time when I come back to it somehow it all seems to have settled into place and I leave it alone but sometimes, just sometimes, it still is not working for me. The layout below was one I did for the Design Team gallery in March 2011. I did add it to the gallery and put it away with the other layouts but it wasn't how I wanted it to be.



This past weekend I had a little time to craft and despite a lot of other pressing things that needed to be worked on I pulled this layout back out of the album to try to make it work. Looking at it with fresh eyes I knew exactly what was bugging me about it - I ADORE the Prima embellishment but it wasn't working on the layout. I had added the bright strip of Prima Dude paper to inject a bit of colour and zing to the layout but it looks out of place without any other bright elements.

After a good evenings working on it I added more clear embossing (the sun burst from the top left corner of the photo, additional edging to make the title pop, some clear tapes along the bottom, the fancy pants glitter cuts which added the extra colour it needed along with a heart, some bling, some painted, stamped and embossed chipboard and some stamping and doodling on the background itself!


Once again I am proving that I simply cannot pull off the "Less is more" style and I am much happier with it now I have re-done the layout!

I still won't be pulling apart and rescrapping my early layouts but I am definitely not against amending recent layouts that are not quite as I wanted them to be!

My question to you is where do you stand on this subject? Have you rescrapped your earlier efforts and if you did, did you keep the original layouts or did you get rid of them?