Epic Fail | Lisa-Jane Johnson | Journalling

It's Lisa-Jane from Pretty My Page here today with my take on getting some journalling onto our layouts.  I'm the first to admit that although I believe scrapbooking should be about the story as much as anything else, sometimes there just isn't a story to tell, and that's fine.  Other times there is a story and we plan to come back to it and add it, but we don't, and that's fine too (there are no scrapbooking police thank goodness!) I am definitely guilty of this!  So for this challenge I chose a photo that had a definite story attached and I made sure I got it down on the page!

I didn't actually have a plan in mind when I was pulling out some papers to go with the photo.  Then I came across this Pink Paislee paper with the diagonal hand writing on and I was inspired to create something similar with my journalling.  I didn't intend to use the actual paper as it was the wrong sort of grey but I'm glad I happened across it.

I wanted to create the journalling on a slight diagonal like the paper but of course you can't do that with a 12x12 piece as you need a bit of extra real estate to allow for the slant.  Luckily the pattern in the paper worked in any direction so I was able to rotate it slightly to give me enough to cover right across.  I trimmed off the corners and then matched up the top and bottom, and voila - I have a diagonal piece that stretches right the way across.  

I wanted to add a contrasting strip in above and below the main piece but it obviously meant I would have the same problem with it not reaching.  The pattern on this piece couldn't be cut on an angle so I broke the strips and stuck the ends down first which left me with a little strategically placed gap to cover up.  I also added some stencilling to add another subtle layer.  I used the Ranger blending tool and the Grunge stencil from the Pretty My Page shop with some Tim Holtz Pumice Stone Distress Ink because the story was partly about the mess in the house during our first lot of renovations.

Before I set to work on the journalling, I wanted to add in any base layers for the clusters so that I knew how much room I had to work with.  I didn't add the rest of the embellishments until afterwards so I could write without being impeded or getting enamel dots stuck to my elbow...  The dots and hearts are from the Pretty My Page shop and the stick pins and metal studs are very old bits from my stash which always makes me feel good :-)

Typically on the day I did the journalling, my arthritis was quite bad in my hands and they did not want to be flexible and allow me to write neatly at all!  I didn't keep to the right slant on the stop half either and I considered redoing the background but, you know, life's too short!  And anyway, the whole story was to do with mess and chaos things being out of place so it's quite fitting really!  In the picture I was taking a moment to try and focus on the positives of the renovations which hadn't gone very well.  We were almost at the point of getting the bath in so I posted this picture on Facebook to say "yay, we are getting somewhere, it's not so bad, etc".

Then 5 minutes later the children were charging around and not heeding my warnings and consequently tipped over the bath bashing them both on the head and trapping them underneath! My son ended up with a huge egg on his head and my daughter was fine until she realised her big brother was getting all the attention and she started howling too!  I do think it is important to journal the not so good things about life too, don't you?!  The journalling here blends with the design because it was intentional in it's placement and the grey background means that the writing doesn't stick out.  I wish my writing was neater but here it becomes part of the design and I'm happy with that.  

Don't forget to enter the journalling challenge on our Facebook page to be in with a chance of winning the prize draw for vouchers for the Pretty My Page shop and as always, we'd love to see what you create so don't forget to hash tag us!

 Now go forth and make pretty pages!