National Scrapbooking Day!

Oh, joy! It's National Scrapbooking Day! I may get to some scrapbooking today, if I am blessed by the gods of time. I doubt it, but I can dream.

Today's inspiration challenge was to find a scrapbook page to use as inspiration. I knew that I needed to check out one of my three idols: Becky Higgins, Cathy Zielske, and/or Donna Downey. I started with Cathy Zielske's clean&simple scrapbooking and, of course, found a sketch.

Here's what I love about Cathy, her book, and her column:

~She deals with a lot of everyday stuff in her scrapbooking.
~Her design is so very balanced, which appeals to my Type A, OCD issues.
~She always discusses design elements... which opens up the inner graphic designer in me.
~She is all about having time to live life as well as scrapbook it, believing that the former is more important than the latter.
~She uses fabulous photography on her pages.

These ladies are true artists, each with her own style. I love the works of each of them for different reasons. Click on their links and explore their blogs if you would like to know more.

My card is inspired by page 61 in her book. I have scanned her image of a terrific scrapbook page. Here are the elements I chose to use in my card:

~Rule of Thirds: The card is divided into three horizontal areas.
~Line: The gray background has definite lines that run horizontally and vertically.
~Image balance: I took the SU! Lots of Thoughts Stamp and my Stamp-a-majig and split up the Happy Hellos stamp. I kind of knew I was going to do that when I got the set, as I felt it was too many sentiments all at once. "Happy" and "Hellos" were offset, much like Cathy's quotes from her kids are on her page. For "Just a Note" and "Have a Great Day" I used my SU! tab punch and cut off the excess.
~Color: I noticed Cathy's upper-left and lower-right-hand corners had patterned paper, which she balanced with solid papers in the other corners. Since in her middle piece, she pulled out a color from her patterned paper, I decided to do the same.
~No photo: Since I didn't have a photo for the middle section, I decided to use brads to emphasize the linear dominance of the card. I made them a bit haphazard, though, to try and tie in the patterned paper's design elements.

Size: 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches
Stamp: SU! Lots of Thoughts
Ink: SU! Basic Black
Paper: Sixth Avenue Little Italy (American Crafts), Bazzill textured gray, SU! Certainly Celery
Brads: Spare Parts (Paper Studio)