My Story Layout

Hi Everyone! It's Andrea here today and I want to share with you a fun layout that I did using the "Storytime" collection! Yay!!! I love the Storytime kit! It is such a beautiful collection of pretty papers and embellishments that is so lovely to work with and feel very dreamy! I wanted my layout to feel very dreamy so it just works perfectly! 

So for this layout, I wanted to create something about my life and my story right now -- specifically about how I "live my life as a fairytale".  At the top, you can see that motto written out and paper-clipped to the page along with an ephemera piece from the kit that says "summer magic" and a little piece of pink unicorn patterned paper. And then the title of "My Story" is spelled out using one of the ephemera word script pieces and also the gorgeous gold-foiled alphabet chipboard stickers that come in the kit to spell out "my". 

The story I am expressing in this layout, is basically a look at my outlook right now. It has been quite difficult lately with my health and all the pain, but at the same time, I refuse to let it break me or stop me from dreaming and believing! I maintain my positive outlook and continue to "live my life as a fairytale" and believe in a brighter tomorrow! I think I express these ideas through different items on the page... For example, I used the travel tickets from the patterned paper and fussy cut those tickets out and spread them across the side of my page. Each ticket is to a different fairytale place (like "under the sea" from The Little Mermaid, "Motonui" from Moana, "Never-Neverland" from Peter Pan, etc), I think they help express how I am still a dreamer despite the pain...that I escape from the pain and constantly being stuck in bed through my imagination and creativity! I may often be stuck in one place, but in my heart I have traveled to "Never-Neverland". I am stuck in pain but am also in a beautiful, enchanted world, because I focus on all the beauty in life and I laugh with my loved ones and am playful and silly, and I write and read and draw and paint and craft and create beautiful things...I see and experience a world of wonder! :-)

At the bottom of the page, you see scallops of patterned paper that I layered on top of each other. One of the patterns says "you are here" on it. I wanted to put that there and then have the different fairytale tickets flowing up off of it with all the pretty sequins and hearts and other little goodies flowing up to the top of the page, to show that even though I am here...stuck inside my house so much of the time, that I am also living in a beautiful world of love and laughter and beauty that is like a magical, fairytale world. I am rooted here and yet, I float and fly on beautiful dreams and ideas! It may seem like a silly thing, but I think it is true and it is just the kind of person I am.

In the picture you can see me holding up a divider (from the kit actually), that says "I'm really a mermaid". And I will be speaking on that sentiment more later, in an upcoming project that I am starting called "the mermaid project". In short, I consider myself to be a girl who is really a mermaid...because in the original story by Hans Christian Anderson, The Little Mermaid, she is always in pain...she is has been transformed into a human and the cost was that her new legs would always hurt and when she walked it felt like she was walking on glass. For this reason, I have always felt that way...that the pain is because I am in human form...but really I am a magical creature...a mermaid. I am stuck in the pain in my body, but my heart and my mind live in a world of beauty and magic and that is who I really am!

I hope that you are inspired by this layout and please stay tuned to hear about my upcoming project, "the mermaid project" which I will be detailing more soon here on the blog and on my YouTube channel! Have a good day and remember to "live your life as a fairytale"!