Special Guest Blogger, Mandy Douglass

Hi. I’m Mandy Douglass, CK’s 2008 Scrapbooker of the Year. One of my exciting responsibilities as a SOY winner is to write a monthly column for the magazine called “Mandy’s Challenge,” which poses a challenge and shows how several different scrapbookers interpret that challenge. In April, my challenge was to incorporate hidden elements on layouts. In response to this column, I was asked the following question by Lisa, who is a reader of my blog:

Q. LOVED the feature on the hidden elements. How do you put these into page protectors so they can be seen and used? I really like the concept to show more photos on a page but not sure how to make it useable in an album.

A. Thanks for the great question, Lisa. I have a couple of answer for you.

 1. Cut Creatively: Place your page inside a sheet protector and use a craft knife to cut the sheet protector around just the opening element. This keeps your interactive element accessible while also protecting the remainder of your page.

 2. Keep Things Private: One of my favorite elements to keep hidden is my journaling. Often times I don’t want my journaling to be read by every person looking through my scrapbook. It can be very personal at times, and there are certain things that are intended for only certain eyes. For this reason, I have chosen to show you three pages where I’ve purposely kept my thoughts a little less accessible. No cut page protectors here.

Here are a few examples of pages I’ve designed using hidden elements:

This spread is of my son Bryson’s baby blessing. As you can see, I sewed vellum to my page to create a pocket, which holds my journaling card. By taking this approach, the general details of the event are visible, while the more intimate details are hidden. How? Well, when you take the journal card out, it opens up and the actual blessing is recorded. This gives Bryson access to it as he grows up, without making the intimate details known to the world (or at least to those who flip through my albums).

This page was actually one of my entry pages for the Scrapbooker of the Year contest. I chose to hide the journaling behind the picture of my husband holding Bryson, because these are words I want to keep for Bryson’s eyes only. I did, however, decided to slice my sheet protector on the right seam for easier access to the card. This is subtle enough that those flipping through my album likely won’t notice, but the journaling is still easily accessible to our family. You might say it’s the best of both worlds.

The details of this trip to Chicago are very important to our family, as this was one of the last trips we took together before my husband’s brother passed away. Plus, I had a lot to record and not much room to record it. Thus, I hid the journaling behind the pictures on the left page. I like large pockets like this. Besides containing larger amounts of journaling, they’re great for holding memorabilia (postcards, brochures, etc.), extra pictures and more!

As you’re thinking about how to incorporate hidden elements on your pages, I encourage you to answer this question: do you want the element easily accessible to any audience or is it something you purposely want to keep somewhat out of view? The answer will help you decide on the approach to take with your positioning.

I hope this additional look into my April “Mandy’s Challenge” column has given you more ideas and motivation to try hiding an element on your page! For more inspiration, be sure to join my group on the CK website and see what other scrappers are doing with my challenges each month!

Mandy Douglass

Do you have questions for Mandy about anything you’ve seen in her “Mandy’s Challenge” column? Leave her a comment here.