#29 Inspired by Dr Seuss

Those of you who have been reading the Flickr thread Pam started off over in our group know that I found this one hard! In fact, the prompt isn't hard at all. I just made it hard for myself and took myself round in circles concentrating on all the wrong things.

This isn't what scrapbooking is supposed to be like ladies! It's a hobby. It's fun. It's an escape. If you experience what I did, then you need to step away from the scissors and go and have some chocolate (or a gin and tonic - whatever does it for you!) and calm down.

I realised I was getting all whiny on the message board because I was caught up with the idea of scrapping my own personal experience of Dr Seuss but couldn't really come up with an example of something specific. I never owned any of the books though I read them with a passion while I was at the library and just loved them to bits. But even my mum couldn't come up with a specific memory of me and the books. I drove myself crazy trying to pin down a memory - ANY memory.

And then I stopped, had some said chocolate and relaxed. I imagined Pam sitting next to me, laughing at me getting all het up over nothing and smiled at myself. I could do this. What was I getting worried about!

First off, I decided to spend some time on the site that Pam had directed us to for inspiration and went through some of the titles, the book covers, the characters etc and decided to pick up the colour scheme for The Cat In The Hat - red, white and blue/aqua. And also to pick up on the quirkiness of the characters and his books. And I was off.

Except, scrapping at night under electric light can distort colours and my "blue" was way too green! I only saw this when I scanned it.

So I took off the green and searched around for something a bit more blue. And added that.

Next day, I took some photos and realised that it was still off, but better. The quirkiness was still there though with my splats, the slant to everything, the silly title, the odd selection of items and the original 1970's (scanned) photobooth photos.

In the end, I LOVE this layout! I think it's such fun. I rarely use red and I love the wow factor it brings to this white base.

The blue paint splats were actually the perfect colour - who knew!

And this is the original I made with all that gorgeous green! Still lovely but WRONG!

While I had been browsing the site, I came across the most perfect quote that got me thinking about the photos of us at the Northwest Territories border. The photos have been used before (what a surprise!) but this as another angle to the story.

The quote is, "I'm a North-Going Zax and I always go north. Get out of my way, now, and let me go forth." If that isn't perfect for the fact that we have been working our way further and further north through the holidays we've taken over the last years, I don't know what is!

I've made this using my CKC March kit, Soothe and while not a total favourite, I still like it. The photos are fun and I can remember standing there as if it were yesterday, when in fact it was August 2007!

So the moral of this story is - never forget to have fun, don't worry if you make a mistake - it's only paper! - and beware of taking it all too seriously!

I still have several other ideas from my brainstorming Dr Seuss session and only one directly relates to the books themselves :-)

Thanks Pam for really stretching me this week and for sitting here beside me when I got a little out of control!