Scrapbooking your faith - Part of my journey layout

One of the main challenges I have in scrapbooking my faith is a lack of photographs. While it's true that there are pictures I could plan and go take, I don't already have those on hand. I've learned that I don't like any of the local developing here in town, so I send my pics to Snapfish. That means that there's a week turnaround time between ordering my pics and being able to make layouts with them. This is really a hassle because I'm inspired to tell a story but can't do so until the pics arrive. (At least that's my preferred method of working on a layout.)  I really need to do a better job of having some of these 'backlog' or 'planned' pics taken and developed. Let me just add that to my mile-long list of things to do...

Since we had a podcast about scrapbooking our faith this week, I was challenged to make some layouts about that topic. In looking through my pics, I could only find one that was directly related to a faith based activity - it's a pic of me, my daughter, my ex-husband, and my father in front of the Episcopal Church in town after our  (mine and Kelsey's) baptisms from about 15 years ago. I'm not thrilled about scrapbooking this picture. My ex-husband is in it; it's an awful picture of me; the quality of the picture overall isn't great either. But it's what I have on hand, and the story does need to be told. It kind of bums me out to start with a pic I don't like, but I'm trying not to dwell on that.

Next, I faced a different dilemma. How can I tell the story in a way that is aesthetically pleasing? I'd just finished another faith based layout earlier in the week that had a large block of handwritten journaling along one side of the layout - well, it was about advice/morals rather than strictly faith. I don't want to do another huge block of journaling again. There are only so many ways you can go about incorporating huge chunks of text though. Beyond that, which part of the story did I want to tell? Should I tell how/why I chose baptism at that point in my life? Should I reflect on the baptismal ceremony itself? Should I discuss what prompted me to choose the Episcopalian faith? Should I try to incorporate all of that into the story? How much did I want to share publicly? Since my faith is personal to me, I felt paralyzed at the idea of sharing too much. As I pondered the possibilities, the focus of the story (or lack thereof) began to overwhelm me.

Since I was struggling with both layout design and scope, I decided to look online for inspiration. Here is a layout by Nettio on scrapbook.com that I pinned on Pinterest.

I loved her use of journaling + embellishments along a vertical line! and the horizontal photo fit with the pic I had to use. I liked her use of color and pattern and her layering techniques too. My layout isn't a literal scraplift, but I was definitely heavily inspired by her work. 

And here's some pics of my process and the finished layout:

I started by layering tags and doily pieces in a way that I thought was reminiscent of the layering in the inspiration layout.

I decided to hide my journaling in a pocket so that I could retain some privacy about the experience.

You might notice the background paper is a heavily embossed textured cardstock. I checked the back of the paper, and it was Autumn Leaves from 2005. How's that for using something ancient from my stash? Go me!

I used some really old SEI letter stickers for the title because they were the perfect color yellow for the layout.

While the paper and letter stickers were ancient, I used new product too - cards from October Afternoon, embellishments from Studio Calico and Dear Lizzy, baker's twine, and other new items keep the layout feeling fresh.

Here's the finished layout in its entirety. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out in the end.

I hope you enjoyed the layouts I did this week on scrapbooking my faith and that you found time to listen to our podcast! What stories are you inspired to tell about your faith or set of values? I'd love to hear about them.