I tend to be in it more for the art than the story or the history, but Ali Edwards and Becky Higgins push to remind us that it's the story and the history that matters has me returning to my scrapbooking roots to make sure I do a better job of documenting life and telling the stories behind it.
With that in mind, I set out to scrapbook the obituary of my husband's grandmother. Because we don't tend to take photos at funerals, clippings from the newpaper were all I had to work with. There were no photos.
Pause for a moment to think about an obituary. On inital thought they bring news of a loss, but from the lens of a geneologist, these hold key information about a person - who they are, who they were, where they came from, who they married, where they lived. A "Cliff Notes" version of their life so to speak. To a geneologist, it's a treasure trove of information.
Today I encourage you to look beyond the everyday and the special occassions to take time to document family - in all of it's moments.
With only a few pieces about the subject of the page, I needed to find a way to fill the rest of the layout. One of my favorite hymns is "I'll fly away" and when I spotted my Martha Stewart butterfly anywhere punch, I knew it was just the thing!
Next I drew a grid pattern on the back of the cardstock. The punch area was about 2" square, and since that was easily divisable into the 12" page size, I went with it. (Have I mentioned how much I like Sharpie pens? Seriously, buy them in bulk!)
Click to bigify.
After I completed the grid pattern, I set about punching butterflies out of the background paper. Now, this would probably be much easier to align if you used a Fiskars anywhere punch because it has a little alignment thingy that helps you see where you're punching without flipping it over. I however am picky about my butterflies and therefore had to find a way to make the Martha one work. I ended up adding a little double-sided tape to the punch so the cardstock wouldn't shift when I flipped it over to punch.
Once the butterflies were punched out, I cut two pieces of 2" x 2" squares from each pattern paper -one piece for the background and one piece to be punched. Here's where things get a little tricky because your stapler won't reach.
I put a dab of adhesive on the grid and temporarily affixed the background paper to it. Then I aligned the punch out that would become the dimensional butterfly to the square by pushing it through the "window" in the cardstock. Then I carefully pulled the square off the cardstock and stapled the butterfly to it on the body. (The Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher works great for this.)
Once the butterfly was attached to the background square, I pinched the wings together, stuck it though the opening in the cardstock and glued the background square to the cardstock. Repeat until all of the butterflies are added and it will look like this:
See what nice dimension this gives your layout?
If you want the faster, "cheater" method simply punch out and staple two butterflies together and affix in a grid pattern. :)
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