Last Minute Examples

This week I was invited to teach at our local Youth Center, Key Center's Red Barn on the Key Peninsula. This building came about as the result of a lot of hard work and community support. Out here in the boonies, there isn't a lot for a young kid to do other than get in trouble- or at least that's the way it seemed for my friends and I during those formative years.

At the Red Bard, kids from middle school through high school can come to get homework assistance during the school year, as well as hang with their buddies playing foosball, table tennis, pool, or just sitting on a cool bar stool waiting to watch the cooking show in the kitchen. During the summer, the director, Laura, has partnered with the Two Waters Art Alliance to bring art classes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Civic Shade Seekers

Enter Teacher Anna (and her capable assistants, Rainie and Sunny). Being a teacher of papercrafts can be so rewarding, and I was fortunate to impact other children in our area during the school year teaching at our library for the homeschooled group out here. What is so rewarding for me is that I am guiding the kids towards capturing their stories, whether its through collage, a home for their family pictures and legends, or even by exposing them to that old fashioned way of writing, snail mail.

My completed Summer Home Page

After a quick trip to the supply cabinet housed in the Civic Center, my girls and I enjoyed a picnic lunch outside on the playground. Well, they enjoyed lunch, and I put together my sample for the class I'd be teaching, My Personal Homepage Scrapbooking. Basically, this is a scrapbook style page of any size which represents where you are Right Now. Are you loving summer? Dealing with ongoing personal issues? Missing your friends or family? There are apps for that! No, really, there are lol. In this class I asked the kids (and you of course, can ask yourself), what are you loving right now. Like, what are you really in to?
After compiling a list of ideas, words that summarized what we love, we thought of icons that could represent those ideas, and searched for representations amongst the magazines, newspapers, and a donated stash of summer fun from my friends at Queen & Co. The kids had fun searching for pictures that "spoke to them."


If you search for them, images will appear...

 

We then thought a little more about the design of our home page. For instance, when you look at your Google app on your smartphone, you don't just see a link to open your browser for searching, there are often other icons included under that heading, such as your GMail, YouTube, and Google+. We did the same thing, for a subject like Sports, we would include all things sports. How did we do this? With my favorite element of fun- the FlipFlap! Take an element, add some more awesome Queen & Co. tape, and voila! You have an interactive element to contain more information/pictures/journaling on your page.

One of my students even thought of branding his page and elements with the first initial of his name: I. I love that he let his sister add her art beneath his hidden flip flap at the top left.
 

Jade and Olivia are in the middle of crafting up a storm

I also love that each student created a page that was uniquely their own- exactly the purpose of the class :-)

 One of the goals was also to allow them to decide which size project they wanted to create. I personally wondered about this because even when I attempt to create 8.5x11 inch pages for my albums, I usually end up backing that completed page with a sheet of 12x12... don't know why, but I'm working on it! WELL, the outcome was that 3 out of 4 kids decided to go with the standard, suggested size of the full sheet as a background. But then there was that ONE who decided not to. The funny part was that this young lady was probably the most experienced scrapbooker in the room- or at least she, like many of us, had all the supplies she'd ever need and had not used most of them. I know, I know, they will be used someday, right? Her example was very detailed and included some trendy items I picked up on discount from Michael's a month ago. Her page measured approximately the same size as my Samsung Note3-  Tres Chic!
Interested in attempting a project like this? Go for it! Think about your background picture/ home screen. The subjects you spend the most time with would perhaps be the largest icons. Under those icons you may have additional images to represent the deeper meaning. You may decided on fonts that represent your style, or convey the feel of your subjects. Its a fun way to explore yourself from a topical standpoint.
I hope you enjoyed this project share! I'll be back at the Barn next week to teach some awesome cardmaking to the youth who arrive, so watch for that post, and if you are at all inclined to want to help an incredible organization that serves our community's youth, consider volunteering your time (or funds) in that direction. More information can be found online at http://www.redbarnkp.org/