Third Grade Wall

By now, most of my scrapbooking friends know that my favorite scrapbook "celebrity" is Cathy Zielske. Her work is so clean, so beautifully designed, so perfect in its simplicity. She is an amazing designer! I have been following her blog for years now, and every now and then, I try to recreate the magic that is Cathy Zielske. Now, I'm not fooling myself - I realize that I'm not exactly on the her level. But every now and then, I like to pretend.

A week or so ago, Cathy posted this layout about her daughter, Aiden. I loved it immediately - it's so clean and uncluttered, very readable, just beautiful - so I decided to create my own version.

Here is Cathy's layout.

Nice, right?

Here's mine.

One big difference between the two is that Cathy prefers 8.5X11" paper, which more closely resembles a magazine page. I prefer 12X12. I love having all that space, but things look different when you go from a rectangle to a square. Also, Cathy lays out her pages using design software - me, not so much. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to, I'm just not that tech savvy and I'm pretty sure her software is super-expensive. Y'all know I don't want to stress Gil out like that! Also, When Cathy lays out text, the angels sing. I've taken a few mini-design classes on line, but I've yet to master the art. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Cathy's layout, I guess I'd give mine about a 6. The panda is too whimsical for the sophistication of the page design, I think.

I'll be sure to share my next attempt with you!