Just Breathe … and scrap
The joy of creating with less-than-perfect photos. Just breathe .. and scrap them anyway
Many, many years ago I travelled through Europe for months on a shoestring, sleeping mostly in an ‘estate car’ doubling as a campervan, but with a few rare nights in very cheap hotels.
At the time I was no photographer. I had a very, very basic point and shoot camera. My travelling companion had a slightly better camera and skills, but still the photos we have of the trip are far from perfect.
This one is of me on the first night, when in our exhaustion from making it from London to France, we ended up in a room straight out of the 1940s above a Vietnamese restaurant.
I did what I could to improve it by upping the brightness and contrast in photoshop but there is something about the grainy-ness and lack of focus that actually makes it even more special to me.
I paired it with papers and elements that reflected the colours in it, and had fun creating with it anyway. To me at least, the result is more evocative (and magical and mysterious) than a crisp, perfect photo would have been.
Here are some other photos from the trip, blurry and out of focus and just perfect in their own way:
Fast forward over three decades and I was back in London, this time on my own. After a stressful few months, it was a little moment of absolute solitary pleasure to sit down on my own in the sun with the Sunday papers and some fresh strawberries.
Being on my own and a novice at travelling alone, I was limited in the photos I could take to capture more than the scenery.1
But this simple capture of the papers and the berries will never not catapult me back to that moment and remind me of the pleasure and relief I felt. And remind me of how being alone can be the best thing.
I hope this might encourage you to scrap with the photos that you have. Because the most imperfect of snapshots can shine on a page made with love.
For these pages I used the “Breathe” project kit, which was initially gifted to our premium subscribers in May, and has now landed at both The Lilypad and Oscraps.
It’s full of painterly papers, collage sheets and fun elements that are designed for both digital and hybrid creating.
PS you can save 20% on the Breathe Kit this weekend and both The Lilypad and Oscraps.
Don’t wait too long though as our 20% discounts end on Sunday night.
MORE ON THE BREATHE PROJECT KIT
Finally here’s some more inspiration from Rachel and the rest of the team:
THANK YOU - AND REMEMBER …
As always, thank you ALL for reading and thank you for being here :-)
PS If you are a premium subscriber check your inbox on Sunday for more inspiration from me creating with the ’SEEK’ Project Kit gifted to you at the start of the month (and don’t forget to download it before the end of the month!)
Lynn :)
Obviously I was limited mostly by myself and my own inexperience with the phone, because there are lots of fun ways to capture yourself on camera when alone. A little tripod and the timer function can work wonders. And when I was in Europe last month I played around with setting up the iphone for voice commands (look under accessibility settings). I was able to just lean it against a step or rock and then order it to take the photo, which was a lot of fun and resulted in some surprisingly good captures.