Week 4 - Work A-long project

I had so much fun doing this work along challenge at simple scrapper! I am said to see that it is coming to an end!! Can we do it again, Jennifer?

Now, how I REALLY felt about the project... Besides loving to participate, I did have some challenges!

I am not a journaler (is that a word?) by nature! So having to journal brought me right out of my comfort zone! I guess that is what challenges are for, right? I had the opportunity to journal in different ways... week one was list format... It got my feet wet, I should say! Week two, was longer, and a reflection of how traveling had influenced my life. I chose to write a letter and I think it came out fantastic!!! Then on week 3, I decided to repeat a couple of words over and over again... as a "mantra" of sorts! That worked well with the learn to relax theme... it reminded me of meditation and calming down!! Finally for week 4, I chose to not journal at all, since the template was extremely busy, and my pictures and title told a story on their own!

I had other challenges to talk about! For an instance, I was always tempted to go to another kit for an extra bow here, or a flower there. It was really tough to have to stick only to that kit for all four projects! Specifically because my kit was very specific (travel) and I had little to no elements to work with that were "traditional" elements, as in bows and flowers, tags, etc! It was awesome to see the results, though, and I was impressed to see how resourceful and/or creative I had to become to accomplish what I wanted with what I had to work with!! Case in point, was this week's template. It had flowers scattered everywhere as elements. I know I could have substituted them with other elements... however, the flowers gave the template some softness... which I was really longing for after working for 4 weeks straight with maps, post cards, suit cases, compasses... you get the point! Then I saw this element which had nothing to do with my LO! An antique boot with flowers cascading from the top! The ONLY flowers in the entire kit! You know what I had to do next... I extracted the flowers and voila! The element I was longing for emerged! Bellow is the element from where I extracted the flowers!

The colors on my kit were hard to work with as well... I love the kit, and will definitively use it again... but after my first LO, which according to Jennifer has an Indiana Jone's feel, I was looking forward to go with a lighter color scheme! Well, that was kind of hard to do with my kit! So, for week 3, I decided to blend my picture to the background so I would be able to "lighten" my pallet, and keep it interesting at the same time! I really liked the results!

Now, regarding the final week, which preview you will find below. I went back to the dark colors!! Yeah! I was ready for it! This LO brings me back full circle in many ways! DARE to travel was my overall theme, and I wanted to talk about the wonders of traveling and letting travel control the traveler instead of it being the other way around! Honoring travel was well... Easy! I loved the jewel colors for this LO because of it! Honoring travel deserved strong, almost royal colors! Explore the world! That was my title... Can you think of any title more honoring travel than that? And then the pictures!! I have so many... but I settled for the three for a couple of reasons! The first one on the left, is of my son! I love to travel with kids because they just do what is on their mind! They are not afraid of trying new things, or looking silly! He is a true world explorer! The second picture was taken in Rome (can you tell?). The Romans were great explorers/conquerors and I love how one of the subjects of the picture is pointing straight out, almost as if he was saying: "Hey, you! Come explore the world with us!". The last picture is... (you guessed it!) of my son again!! He is sitting at the cockpit of an airplane! Exploring his surroundings and ready to conquer the world!

Dream, Adventure, Relax and Explore were my four words! and I used them in the order that they appeared (I am not sure if that was mandatory, but it worked out great!). I loved exploring this subject through scrap booking and I am ready to try it again!

Credits: Voyage kit by Malacima. Alpha: Darling Buds of May from Digi-Designs by Nicole. Fonts: Eight Fifteen and A truer blue - from the Internet. The template is Jennifer's at Simple Scrapper!