a scrapbooking do-over... sort of.

so, last night I made a scrapbook page. (sort of.) Last spring, I started taking a scrapbooking class offered on the website 2 Peas in a Bucket... I made a couple layouts, one of which I never really liked, but I couldn't really figure out why. Here it is below:

Flower Garden: before
(the colors are a bit off, since I took it with the flash.)

 It started out okay (4 quadrants of patterned paper, a cluster of horizontal strips, one photo, and journaling), but it just never looked 'right' to me. I've been spending a lot of time online (on 2Peas and individual scrapper's blogs) studying what makes a good scrapbook page, and I finally figured out what it was about this layout that made it 'off' to me... it just looks unfinished to me, and that's kind of because it was. The title stickers are sort of lost in the pink paper, and there's nothing 'interesting' about the page at all... just the flat borders and labels above and below the photo. 

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday afternoon thinking about this, and last evening I sort of gave myself a 'do-over' on this page to see if I could improve it. I didn't start over from scratch, but I did add a number of elements to the page.  I used quite a bit of Un-Do to get the title stickers unstuck so I could rework the title (thank goodness for Un-Do; I love that stuff!!) by adding a paper doily behind the title stickers, rearranged the border section a tiny bit, and added some buttons as embellishments. 
The re-done page is below:

Flower Garden- after

 The doilies help to take away some of the 'pinkness' from that quadrant of the page, so you can read the title a bit easier... the top border sticker was moved to the left a bit so it now overlaps the edge of the patterned paper This allowed me to have the right-hand doily overhang the edge of the patterned paper, as well. I added another bit of sticker border (the wood-grained scallop), which I think helps to bring together the brown photo mat with the rest of the colors. I re-did the two small tags near the photo in a blue patterned paper, and added the pink button flower and leaf embellishments. The button flowers add more dimension to the page, in addition to 'framing' the photo with a visual triangle. (All things I've been reading a lot about the past few months.)

Above and below are a couple close-ups showing the added embellishments pink button flowers, with leaves I punched from green cardstock. I added white crafting floss to the flowers (I tied it in the back) and glued them to the page.  I don't like the look of buttons without thread through the holes; it just bothers me... so, even though it takes a bit longer, I usually add the thread. (Plus, that way I didn't have to punch holes in my layout to actually sew the buttons on.)

Usually when people say 'I don't like my pages and I want to re-do them' my first instinct is to say no, don't do it. And I don't think I'd ever take a page totally apart and start from scratch (although I'm not sure, now- I guess I should never say never, right?). But, I think in this particular case, my changes are quite an improvement. What do you think?? 

I have another layout sitting on my desk right now that I never did quite finish... it's a 2-page spread that's missing some of the design details that make a layout interesting, so it's getting a makeover next!  (and then, maybe my room will be cleaned up enough to make a scrapbook page from scratch; we'll see!)