Out & About :: Beyond Boxes School Scrapbook Layout

After a stroll down a typical school hallway, there's a familiar sight–lockers along the wall, one after the next. They are the inspiration for today's frame-tastic layout from CP Gal, Jill Sprott.

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As a scrapbooker, I'm always on the lookout for inspiration, believing that it can be found anywhere. As an English teacher, I am no stranger to the quest to inspire and to be inspired. Recently, walking through campus at the dawn of a new academic year, scrapbooker Jill and English teacher Jill took notice of the rows of lockers stretching across the school.

In considering these everyday objects with fresh eyes, the scrapbooker started to imagine a page filled with compartments or boxes, while the english teacher reflected on what it must be like for students to deal not just with lockers, but with all sorts of different "boxes" in their lives. Scrapbooker and teacher came together to create this page, with some help from the Notes and Things collection.

In addition to sparking the idea for this layout, the students' lockers also became the focus of the photo, helping to reinforce the central idea expressed in the journaling: "They wake up in boxes, sit in traffic in boxes, head toward their locked boxes, and then enter their assigned ones. They spend their days in boxes, staring at boxes, but somewhere, in the midst of the day, let me be the one who helps them see beyond boxes. Let's unlock, let's defy compartmentalization, let's open up the world."

This message is enhanced through the series of "boxes" on the page, in the form of frames containing various accents, including calendar pages pulled from my planner.

The presence of the days of the week on the page is a reminder that even my days are structured in the form of little boxes.

The title letters, arranged as they are, remind me of stacked boxes. To add some color to them, I used a light pink watercolor pencil on the word "beyond", distributing the color with a wet paintbrush, and then smoothed a bright pink ink dauber over the word "boxes."

Admidst all of these corners and frames and boxes is a polka-dotted backdrop–a sheet of appropriately named Notes and Things "Schedule" paper. The random nature of the polka dots stands in contrast to the more structured frames, echoing the message in my journaling: sometimes we need to move beyond boxes.

Thanks for visiting today!

Comments

[Lisa C.]

Super cute layout! I love all the frames and how you painted those awesome Thickers!

[Danielle Flanders]

What a beautiful layout and journaling, and so true. I wish there were more teachers like you, Jill! Your journaling is always inspirational and has such meaning. I love the photo too, need to make sure I get a picture of the red lockers in Taylor's high school!

[Bernii Miller]

What a great layout!!