December 7, 2009

challenge : be inspired by a children's book

Hi all! Kelly and I are hosting the blog this week, and I'm here to give you this week's challenge. =)

As a mama of three, I spend a fair amount of time reading children's books. Board books, chapter books, picture books, easy readers - we have an extensive library. And more than once, I've turned to these books for a bit of inspiration when making scrapbook pages.



This book is a classic, and was given to us shortly after our first child (Alexander!) was born. I imagine most of you have read this tale of a little boy whose day has gone terribly wrong.

When I set out to record the story of Sam's first Christmas, which started with a fever and ended in the ER with a double ear infection, I couldn't help but pull inspiration from the way the title uses a string of adjectives to describe just how bad Alexander's day was, and ended up with this page :



Sammy and the sniffly, coughy, achey ears first Christmas. Since that's a bit unwieldy as titles go, I opted to break it up, spelling his name in letter stickers, and stamping the rest as a subtitle.




Moo Baa La La La! is a looooooooooong time favorite in our house. I've had it memorized for years, and I remember reciting it in the car to Alex when he was tiny and fussy. When Ben came along, he loved it just as much, and the two of them have read this book over and over to Sam.



When I saw these chipboard pigs from American Crafts, I knew it was time to get this book onto a page. I spelled out the opening lines of the book using rubons and chipboard letters, and added a bit of journaling on a label sticker.

These are just two examples of how you can be inspired by a children's book - Kelly will be back tomorrow with some of our favorite kid's book inspiration for you. And we would love to see how YOU are inspired by children's literature - you can use any of our examples, or one of your own (and we'd love if you share it if you do!). Link your new project to this post by 7pm EST Saturday night, and we'll draw a winner at random from those entries - the prize is a $5 gift certificate to everyone's favorite shop. =) I'm hoping to play along with this challenge, so I'll post mine later this week.

5 comments:

Ally said...

Loooooove this challenge. Having plenty of children's books still around (some my children refused to let me donate away although they clearly no longer read them), I think there might be more than one from which I might draw some inspiration!

{VICKI} said...

My favorite children's book is

Green Eggs and Ham!

Susan (Lucky Java) said...

Anything illustrated by Mary Blair. She's got the absolute best color schemes and illustrations. I fashioned my daughters nursery around her colors :) Google her- she's awesome!

Lauren said...

Okay this "la la la" layout is absolutely stinking adorable!?!

Anonymous said...

Thank you! Your blog post will be advertised on the DigiFree Scrapbooking Challenges & Competitions search engine today (look for timestamp: 19 Dec [LA 02:29pm, NY 05:29pm, UK 10:29pm] - 20 Dec [OZ 09:29am]).