New Kids On The Block Contest Week 1

This first week of the NKOTP Contest was a lot of fun for me.  I had that week off from work and was able to spend a lot of time working on my layout.  That was a very good thing because I was so green that I needed a lot of hand holding that week from the "mommies" and I spent hours and hours on the layout.

Part of the instructions we were given for that first week were:

Use the following First Page tutorial for your software from DSP Tutorials: Creating Your First Layout

RULES:

• You MUST use the Welcome kit but you do not need to use everything in the kit
• You MUST use at least one item from the Alphas or Word Art sections in the Freebie Gallery.
• You MAY use as many items from the allowed Freebies as you want.
• You MAY re-color, re-size, and otherwise alter the kit as you like.
• You MAY use anything that comes with your software such as shapes, presets, actions, brushes, tubes.
• You MAY use any font.
• You MAY use sketches or scraplift (recreate, copy or adapt an existing layout or design sketch with credit given to the original)
• You may NOT use elements from any other kits
• You may NOT use Quick Clicks or Ploppers.
• You MUST give credit - (list the kits you used and the designers)
  Example of basic credit
  Welcome Kit by DSP Designers
  name of freebie by designer name
  

This is the preview of the Welcome Kit that we used, it was created by the DSP Designers, you can grab your own copy by registering on the DSP Forum:


I also modified and used a piece of word art from the DSP Freebie Gallery which is available to all registered members of the DSP Forum:

Word Art Sampler
Friday Freebie 10-03-08
Created by & ©2006 & 2008 Tina Chambers

My first version of my layout for that first week can be seen below. You may laugh, but please don't fall off of your chair, you might hurt yourself. I promise it does get better before the week is over.

As you can see, the third picture does not match the other two, that was a problem with the photo's background because it was much darker. Also the photo strip is overshadowed by the journaling and the title. But, hey, remember that this was my first attempt. I got lots of good feedback on this layout and after seven revisions, yes I said seven, it looked like this:

Do you see all of the changes? I changed out the pictures for three that went together better, additional color and elements were added, the photo strip is larger, and all of the page elements have been moved and modified.

Better, much better. But still not a fabulous layout. However, I learned from the exercise and perhaps one day I will improve this layout a bit more before I actually have it printed.

My goodness, it's sometimes hard to believe that these pictures were taken only two years ago. Myah, my granddaughter, has grown so much since then! I guess that is the way of life and childhood. Sometimes it feels a bit sad.