Winter

Welcome to a rather long post from me today, and in order to keep it as compact as possible, let's get straight to the point by saying: Winter is here!

Not the actual season though, as the first spring flowers are already in full bloom. No, "Winter" is our theme at the Alphabet challenge blog this fortnight. For my DT inspiration I prepared a little photo album, but let's start at the beginning...

A family friend has lost her dog in a stupid car accident in the end of last fall, and naturally she was devastated. We don't visit as often as we used to due to health and family issues on both sides, but we would go for short walks every now and then with her furry companion. On one of those walks in the beginning of last year, I managed to get a couple of nice pictures of her dog, which I intended to turn into an album at some point. I've never created anything like that before, so I postponed over and over again. With Christmas approaching, I thought I might give it a try at last and create a Christmas present, a booklet featuring the best shots for her to have as a rememberance of that beautiful winter day we had together. The ideas I had in my mind were still very vague - until she called one day to say the dog was gone. The gift was never meant to be a memory of a lost dog, but here we go. 

I began to prepare everything I'd need, selecting the pictures and the papers that would go with them. Once that was done, I needed to come up with a way to print the photos. With a very spirited dog, most of the pictures needed to be cut and/or cropped, which would be quite inconvenient  to be printed at the local photographer. Instead, once I figured out the ideal size of each picture, I decided to make a quick pre-print on scrap paper using my home printer. I then made a few more adjustments, and later printed the pictures on photo-paper that came with the printer. I never thought I'd use those sheets and almost threw them away recently. Yay for all the crafting hamsters who believe everything *might* be useful one day!

Once the printing was done, I cut each photo to the right size, and started placing them onto different sheets of patterned paper. Most of them come from a winter collection (which matches the walk through winter wonderland), but I've also added some random sheets from my stash. 

There are 12 album pages in total, and I won't go into detail about every single one as the pictures speak for themselves. What they all have in comon is that I decided to present the photo as an eye-catcher, meaning the background papers would be mostly pastel shades with minimal pattern. Among the dog shots I'd place a few landscapes to fully sum up the beautiful sunny day. As you see, most of the photos are in original colour, but I edited some to be black & white, which seemed suitable for the last picture especially.

The album starts with an excited dog face and ends with the two walking towards the afternoon sun. Between are different scenes of him playing in the snow, running around or just waiting for the next command (which he wouldn't follow anyway). 

I contemplated adding embellishments for quite some time: a few silver stickers here, a punched border there, maybe a couple of pearls, a piece of lace or ribbon, a wooden snowflake or a few paper flowers... In the end, I decided to go without. On the one hand, I was afraid of making the album too thick and difficult to handle, on the other hand, I didn't want to take attention from the main motif(s). The only shimmer I incorporated can be found on the background papers in form of glitter snowflakes and silver swirls - enough to melt with the shiny snow in the pictures, but still discreet enough to blend in with the scenery.

Once I was done, I struggled to get the optimal light conditions to document my project. I did the best I could on a relatively sunny winter day, to no avail. This is the best I could come up with, but let me tell you that in reality the album is really bright with white and blue shades that are not leaning towards a cold, blue-ish pallete. 

In the very end, I wrapped the album already as I meant to stop by her house, only to learn that our friend ended up in the ER due to a bad fall & fracture. Fortunately, she managed to alert family, but she had to spend quite some time in the hospital meaning I couldn't deliver the gift personally due to visitor restrictions. However, I managed to drop the album off at the reception who organised for the album to be brought to her room. Later, I learned it arrived safely, and I was more than happy to hear the gift was well received.  

challenges: 

- 613 avenue create: ATG
- a bit more time to craft: ATG
- a place to start: ATG with optional twist "add a critter"

- as you like it: true love or fabulous friendship (apart from creations I do just for fun, I'll mostly design for friends & family as I feel like it gives me a broader spectrum of motifs to work with. Love is too often reduced to red roses and hearts, while crafting for friends gives me more artistic freedom to work around their favourite things and patsimes.)

- classicdesignchallenge: ATG DT 

- crafty calendar: ATG
- crafty catz: ATG
- craftyhazelnutspatternedpaper

- love to craft: ATG 

- pennys papertake: ATG
- scrapping4fun: ATG

- through the craftroom door: ATG

- wortartwednesday: ATG
- worldwide open design team challenge: ATG