Cropped Round 5

Yes! I made it to the fifth and final round. There are10 finalists, and only one will be crowned the champion. Yikes. In the last three rounds, statistically, any contestant was more likely to move on than to be cropped, but not this time!!

Here is the prompt: "Round Five is Dessert, and we think it's the perfect way to finish off a great meal, and our contest. This week's challenge is to go all out... Make your "dessert" layout luxe, rich, decadent, sugary sweet, and over the top. Whether that's through your subject, your journaling, your embellishments, your techniques, or all of the above, now is the time to go all-out. Don't forget to include the 4 Mystery Basket Ingredients."

And here is my entry:

Cropped Round 5 Mystery Basket, Cardstock Essentials 3 and Life Story April Glitter + Gloss by Karla Dudley;
Punchfetti No. 1 and No. 5, Twinkles No. 1, Brushies No. 2, Oscar Alpha, iLove Alpha, Hei Hei kit, Head Over
Heels Kit, and Torn Bits 4 by creashens; Gold Foil Text Styles by Mommyish

This one was quite a challenge for me, because of the whole blank canvas/wanting to use a template thing. Once I came up with my idea, I searched and searched for a template at P&Co, but just couldn't find one that seemed perfect for my idea.

I started with a split-page design with one photo on the left and one photo on the right, but I just couldn't get the text to fill in the middle in a way that worked. So I grouped those clusters up and just started moving them around, and I finally decided that placing them toward the middle worked best.

I think I've got the dessert idea covered from a few different angles. I love the story here and how it spans across the years. My journaling refers to a piece of paper that I've saved for about 15 years - a true scrap! I like how that harks back to the more historic roots of scrapbooking, before it was a commercial industry. Part of the message is a little bitter-sweet, with the mother's dilemma, but my son's response ("Mommy, I'll always come back.") keeps it on the sweet side.

And I think I've created a decadent page. All that glitter and sparkle reminds me of sugar, and I think the use of the confetti is a bit "over the top" by using so many of them. Plus, the punchfetti is laid over the top of the photo for a more literal translation. And the bright white background makes me thing of white butter cream frosting.

Some of the mystery basket items I've used in a more straightforward manner, and some I used a little more creatively, by working them into the glitter and gold.

To be honest, even though making a page a week for five weeks straight is "a lot" for me, I'm kind of sad for the contest to end. The winner will be announced soon. Wish me luck?