Dude! Break it Up!

Dude! Not everything has to be in its solid, original form. Break it up!

You can cut apart a picture, a ticket, part of the brochure, or anything else and spread it across the page. It'll add some extra color and texture without any lace or bows.



In this case I found a postcard puzzle on clearance at the gift shop. The Badlands are puzzling anyway so this wasn't much of a stretch.

Dude! If you feel the urge to break things up, don't fight it!

Dude! If you Build It!

Dude! Remember how much fun it was to build with Legos when you were little? Dude! Put all those hours of training to work!

Take the pix and scraps, cut them all to the same basic size, and then put them on the page like a wall. It's simple, straight-forward, and something that the girls probably wouldn't do.



Dude! If you build it, the memories will come!

Dude! Keep them Guessing!

Dude! The girls might look askance at some of your choices. Just make sure you have a good reason that belongs to you. Dude! These are your memories!

Red should probably be the last color to use on this page. It was a very rural, green, gentle, pastoral place. Red seems harsh and disturbing.



But, dude!, this was a battlefield! Harsh and bloody is why the place is preserved and sacred in the first place. Making it all pretty and heartwarming would dishonor it.

And if you're ever not disturbed by the memories of a battlefield visit, perhaps you need to go back and see what really happened there. A man's work needs to make sure we don't ever need to preserve more land for battlefields and your grandkids will have to only guess what it might have been like.

Dude! Make sure all they can do is guess!

Dude! The Sky's the Limit!

Dude! Unless you're doing pages from a hunting trip to Montana, you don't need to use a lot of space on pix of the big sky. Dude! When you limit the sky, the sky's the limit!

This is especially true when the day is overcast or when you're dealing with skyline pix. If you cut out the sky you can create your own background or you can layer things in more interesting ways.



In this page I cut the sky out of two pix and the brochure. Think of how bad this page would have been with all that extra white and tan taking up the whole page.

Dude! Less is more!

Dude! Just Scan it Over!

Dude! Sometimes you don't need to sweat all the details to make something work. Just scan it!

Like on this page I wanted to include the badge my boy earned. It was too thick to fit right on the page and he didn't want to share it anyway.



A quick run through the scanner and printing on photo-quality paper solved both problems fast.

Now, the girls will scoff at you for not being a scrapbook purist. If you don't know how to deal with that kind of criticism then you probably don't have enough practice at using your own backbone.

Dude! Dude!!!