The Design Team was chosen and as expected I didn't make the cut. I told Melanie when she made me promise to do this that this particular company was looking for the big names in scrapping. Everyone on their current DT are either published or on several other DT's and I knew once I looked at their current team that my chances were slim to none to even be considered. But a promise was a promise so I did it to fulfill my promise to Mel and I'm perfectly content to just continue scrapping for myself and enjoying my hobby without all the deadlines and special projects of Design Teams. I thought I would still go ahead and post my layouts for you all to see. I tried to concentrate more on highlighting their stamps and not flowering the layouts with a lot of fluff that takes away from the stamping. When I looked at the ones that won, I saw that they were drawn more to the fluff layouts with a subtle stamp here or there. I was thinking more along the lines of marketing their stamps and they were looking for the major technique layouts. My friends keep telling me that they like my layouts and think I should submit because my style is more "everyone's style" where the majority of the average scrappers out there would prefer to see in mags so they feel it's doable. I've argued with them for years that my style is not what they want. They want showy and over the top type of layouts. Mine are just too basic and average to even be considered. Nonetheless, I submitted to show them my point and now they know.
I did three layouts for the submission and one extra one for a challenge where you had to show how you can use a continuous stamped image. Since I needed three I did one layout on each of my kids. I told Mel that I'd be done with my Christmas card and gifts by now if I hadn't spent my month working on this but she said, at least you got four layouts done. I guess that's one way to look at it. I figure if it caused me to use my ever growing stash of stamps then it was a good thing. Of course I would have mixed in other stamps along with these if I were doing it for myself so they aren't totally the way I would have done them if I were doing them myself. It gave me an excuse to buy some new stamps though so any excuse to get something extra this time of year works for me. Hope you like the layouts. If I share them here then at least I'll feel like they were seen by someone and go a little air time for the effort I put into them.
I was pleased with them and they are true to my style and I told myself although I know how to scrap like the magazines, I would be true to my style and not try to be something I'm not. I've never seen a point to the one photo layouts or the layouts that are so full of embellishments that you don't see the pictures. So although these layouts are semi my style, I would have more writing on them to tell the story because that is the most important thing to me. For this project though I just had to showcase stamps and that's what I did. It was a big stretch for me to do the one picture layout of Amber but that particular picture was a stand alone picture. Since I did it on white paper, another stretch for me, it really didn't show up on the email. There is a sewn one inch margin around the outer edge and you can really only see the sew line when it is displayed on a white background. Hopefully it will show up better on my blue blog background. So here they are, the losing layouts from the DT application. I liked them so that's all that matters in the long run.
The Design Team was chosen and as expected I didn't make the cut. I told Melanie when she made me promise to do this that this particular company was looking for the big names in scrapping. Everyone on their current DT are either published or on several other DT's and I knew once I looked at their current team that my chances were slim to none to even be considered. But a promise was a promise so I did it to fulfill my promise to Mel and I'm perfectly content to just continue scrapping for myself and enjoying my hobby without all the deadlines and special projects of Design Teams. I thought I would still go ahead and post my layouts for you all to see. I tried to concentrate more on highlighting their stamps and not flowering the layouts with a lot of fluff that takes away from the stamping. When I looked at the ones that won, I saw that they were drawn more to the fluff layouts with a subtle stamp here or there. I was thinking more along the lines of marketing their stamps and they were looking for the major technique layouts. My friends keep telling me that they like my layouts and think I should submit because my style is more "everyone's style" where the majority of the average scrappers out there would prefer to see in mags so they feel it's doable. I've argued with them for years that my style is not what they want. They want showy and over the top type of layouts. Mine are just too basic and average to even be considered. Nonetheless, I submitted to show them my point and now they know.
I did three layouts for the submission and one extra one for a challenge where you had to show how you can use a continuous stamped image. Since I needed three I did one layout on each of my kids. I told Mel that I'd be done with my Christmas card and gifts by now if I hadn't spent my month working on this but she said, at least you got four layouts done. I guess that's one way to look at it. I figure if it caused me to use my ever growing stash of stamps then it was a good thing. Of course I would have mixed in other stamps along with these if I were doing it for myself so they aren't totally the way I would have done them if I were doing them myself. It gave me an excuse to buy some new stamps though so any excuse to get something extra this time of year works for me. Hope you like the layouts. If I share them here then at least I'll feel like they were seen by someone and go a little air time for the effort I put into them.
I was pleased with them and they are true to my style and I told myself although I know how to scrap like the magazines, I would be true to my style and not try to be something I'm not. I've never seen a point to the one photo layouts or the layouts that are so full of embellishments that you don't see the pictures. So although these layouts are semi my style, I would have more writing on them to tell the story because that is the most important thing to me. For this project though I just had to showcase stamps and that's what I did. It was a big stretch for me to do the one picture layout of Amber but that particular picture was a stand alone picture. Since I did it on white paper, another stretch for me, it really didn't show up on the email. There is a sewn one inch margin around the outer edge and you can really only see the sew line when it is displayed on a white background. Hopefully it will show up better on my blue blog background. So here they are, the losing layouts from the DT application. I liked them so that's all that matters in the long run.
