This has to be one of my favorite Halloween layouts! In the summer of 2013, I was preparing lesson plans to teach the book The Hobbit to a group of Jr. High students. Something about the cover intrigued Caleb, who was 6 at the time. He asked me to read it to him. I kept telling him I didn’t think that he would like it, but he wore me down. Finally, one night at bedtime, I sat between the boys’ toddler beds and read the first chapter. They were mesmerized!
It took a while, but we eventually made it through the whole book. The first Hobbit movie had just been released so there was Hobbit merchandise all over the place. I thought the live action movie was too scary, but I found cartoon versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and they became some of the boys' favorite DVD’s.
When Halloween rolled around, we were not surprised when they wanted to be Hobbit characters. Caleb wanted to be Bilbo and Zach picked out the Gandalf costume. We splurged on costumes that year, but both boys were so passionate, and we really wanted to encourage their love of literature! The day the costumes came in the mail the boys couldn't wait to try them on. They wore their costumes all the time. Caleb’s favorite part was his hairy Hobbit feet while Zach loved the long gray beard.
When Halloween rolled around it was time to make the rounds. We did a little trick or treating - mostly at their grandparents' and then we went to a fire station where they were handing out candy. Although we were not out long on this cold and drizzly Halloween, the boys were loaded down with goodies and treats, and another successful Halloween went down in the books.
I will be forever grateful that my sister-in-law took this family photo of us. It was one of our last family photos and the last trick-or-treating with Daddy. He was so proud of his literature loving little guys that night!
Scrapbooking Tips
I created this layout using a free Scrapbook Generation sketch. You can download free sketches from their on-line store by clicking SG Free Sketches. I love them because they take all the guess work out of designing and give me more time to perfect my layouts. They are a phenomenal resource that I go back to over and over again!
To keep my Halloween layouts fun and spooky rather than scary, I like to incorporate bright colors into my design, and I gravitate to paper collections that mix in purples and greens with the typical orange and black color scheme. I picked out the bold purple paper for my background, and to coordinate with the polka dots I chose Bazzill Dotted Swiss card stock for a solid neutral. This cardstock features embossed dots, and I thought it would be a good way to coordinate my background papers.
The major design focus of this layout is the banner strips behind the photos - which I followed the sketch exactly for sizing and placement, down to the stitched lines This was actually one of the first layouts I stitched on, and since then I add stitching whenever I can.
I also loved using smaller accent photos of each boy to highlight their costume. My favorite scrapbooker, Allison Davis, frequently uses this technique, and I've come to love the versatility of it. It enables me to fit more photos on a page when I don't have enough pictures for a two-page layout, and if I have a ton of photos, I can fit more on two pages if I trim some down. Since I made this layout, I've learned how to resize my photos for printing so I can get more images on a 4x6 print, which has also saved me some money.
My finishing touches were the not so scary pumpkin stickers which I adhered with foam adhesive and layered on top the star stickers.
So, there you have a not-so-scary Tolkien Halloween scrapbook page.
Supplies Used:
Cardstock: Bazzill
Pattern Paper and Stickers: Simple Stories
Letter Stickers: American Crafts
Embroidery Floss: DMC
Sketch: Scrapbook Generation
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