Got bad photos? Use 'em!

I've recently been reminded that the name of my blog is "Of Cats AND Cardstock". A certain reader (who shall remain unnamed) suggested that perhaps I'm giving a bit too much attention to the CATS side of the blog. (I happen to believe that it's impossible to give too much attention to cats, but that's a topic for another day.)

So to balance things out a bit, I thought I'd best share a few layouts. They are, of course, mainly CARDSTOCK, with a bit of striped paper thrown in so as not to disappoint.

The common thread running through these layouts is that each one uses less than optimal photos. Sure, I'd love to have fabulous photos to work with, but that just isn't realistic for me. I firmly believe that scrapbooking is mainly about preserving the memory, so I'll use whatever I have. Even a less than perfect photo can trigger a vivid memory.

This is a page about the drivers' ed class Daughter took two years ago. I had no pictures of anything related to the class until Spouse recently drove past the place and grabbed a cell phone picture of the back of the Prius for me. I have trained him well. :) Enlarged and tweaked in Picasa, this photo doesn't look half bad.

This photo is actually a still shot grabbed from a quick cell phone video. Once again, I wanted to capture the memory and this photo allowed me to do that. Notice I used a bit of (old) flowered paper...along with the stripes. One bonus point for me today! :)



These photos were taken from a distance in a dimly lit restaurant. The quality was poor and the colors were a bit garish. Switching them to black and white masked the color issue and gave them a timeless feel. And at the time of this particular event (one of our daughter's last high school performances), I certainly WANTED time to stand still.

This last layout is made completely of cell phone pictures -- from two or three different phones. The photos aren't great on their own but in collage format, they manage to tell the story quite nicely. I used the journaling from my blog post to finish this quick spread. You can read it more easily here.

So my message to you is that you can create a perfectly fine layout using less than stellar photos. Forget your camera? Grab a cell phone picture instead. And USE it to write that story. Fifty years from now, you'll be glad you did.