CA State Fair - Award of Merit!!!

I'm so excited!! At the last minute I decided to enter two digital scrapbook pages in the CA state fair, and I just got the letter informing me that one of them received an Award of Merit and will be on display at the fair!

The judging criteria required

• a two page spread
• at least four photos
• the photos should be the focus of the page
• elements should support but not compete with the photos
• the journaling should give the who, what, where and why 
• bonus for using color

This page was entered in the "Travel" category, and received the Award of Merit.  Yay!  And I'll get a ribbon, too! Click on images for larger pic.

Fancy Circles templates by Scrapping with Liz; Patterned paper from He by
DeCrow Designs; Cardstock by SuqyQ Scraps; Seaside Fall by Ziska
Advent Freebie by 3 Paper Peonies; Photo Action by My Four Hens

The only comment by the judge was that she (I'm guessing a woman based on her writing) loved the shadow pictures.

There was also a "Family" category, and I entered the following page, about getting Miller caught up on vaccines after having postponed them.  The judge left comments:  "great story, 2nd page - hard to read at bottom, lots of empty space" I will often cover text with embellishments, and the scientist has made negative verbal note of this on several occasions.  I had suggested moving the subtitle of the page so it didn't obscure the text beneath, but he actually thought I should go with my own true style.

Baby Album Templates & Zine Style by Scrapping with Liz; Neutral Freebie
by Three Paper Peonies; Stitches by K Studio; Propitious Perse
by DeCrow Designs; BG and bow from SO June Journey Mega (recolored)

Sometimes I design pages to go opposite each other in my album, although I do not think of them as two page spreads.  That was the case for all of these pages.  They were all designed separately, but intended to go side-by-side.  So I actually made some small adjustments to them to create more cohesive two-pagers.  Here are the originals:





For the Lighthouse page, I created a common top margin, and for the Vaccine page I removed the circle doodles on the right side.  I also edited some of the text to read better.

So see you at the fair! I'll be braving the heat this year to get my picture next to my winning entry :)  And I'll probably go look at the goats too, because well, I adore goats.  (My parents raised goats when I was little.)