Time Capsule: Weekly Challenge #23… Extended
I am so directionally challenged, it isn’t funny. I can give directions to the zoo in my city, but only for the last few miles. In my head, I cannot connect where I live with where the zoo is. So when I read the challenge and time capsule ideas, I knew this could be difficult. Instead of focusing on direction, I decided to focus on the second set of questions in the prompt, specifically the trip to and from school since we make that trip five days a week.
Once I had the general topic, I had to figure out how to do something meaningful with it. It’s one thing to simply document how I get my daughter to school and another thing completely to turn “I drive you to school” into something that will have significant meaning years from now. I also don’t have any pictures of me driving to school, so making a scrapbook page about getting my daughter to school automatically became a photo-less project.
Thinking about changes over time helped me find focus in my page. When I was little, I rode the bus to school everyday from kindergarten until the end of middle school, when I switched to a private school that didn’t offer busing.
The whole “bus ride” was something that was a novel idea to my daughter, as we have never lived in an area that provided busing. Her neighborhood schools have always only bused if you lived a certain distance from the school. This difference sparked journaling that not only brought back memories for me as I was working, but will make a connection for my daughter when she looks at the page.
Again, I didn’t have any photos of me on my walk to or from the bus ride (although now that I think about it, there is a picture somewhere of me getting on the bus for the first day of kindergarten). When I make photo-less pages, I always try to use elements that will take the place of a photo in some way, either as themed elements or to highlight the journaling as if it were an image. On this page, I did both.
The only thing I didn’t include on this page that I think would fit the theme very well would be a map. As a time capsule item, a map is such a great object because it can show so many different things – routes, locations, landmarks. It can also show change if you compare a new map to one that is even a few years old. Had I used a satellite map from somewhere like Google Maps, today it would have an image of my house (with a car in the driveway, according to my daughter) but four years ago, after having lived here for two years, it still showed a dirt road with empty land ready for construction (through the whole neighborhood).
As you think about ideas for this challenge, don’t just think about your habits today, but how they have changed or how they might appear to others years from now.
I am a wife, mother of two, and lover of all things memory-keeping. I have kept a journal (in one form or another) since I was 8 years old. I started paper scrapbooking in 2005 with my neighbors, focusing mostly on my daughter. I switched to almost 100% digital when I had my son in 2010 and started including myself on more pages. I am on a couple CTs for designers that I love and have started creating my own designs as well. I have two blogs, one for my scrapbook pages at http://iwishiwasthatcreative.blogspot.com and one for my designs at http://foosamoon.blogspot.com
Additional 2012 Design Team sample layouts for Weekly Challenge #23 may be found in this week’s Challenge Gallery… if you complete this challenge yourself, please consider posting your project in the gallery as well so others may be inspired by YOU!
Coming Thursday on the Time Capsule blog… get to know this week’s sample layout artist through our Q&A-style interview.
About Rachel McPeek