Everybody Loves A Sticker Parade
All the world loves a parade! And summertime is full of parades! You can choose from local children's neighborhood bike parades to the extravagant Disney electric light and themed parades on vacation. There are 4th of July parades and all the city booster parades too. Our lake even has a boat parade each year! No doubt we all still enjoy the festive atmosphere of a parade. Take along the camera and you will get some great shots of strange animals and folks doing out of the ordinary things. You will also get shots of happily exhausted youngsters, silly clowns, and proud pageant queens. And don't forget the chagrined face of the teenager with the shovel who has to follow the horses!
Let's make a STICKER PARADE border!
When it is time to scrapbook those parade pictures, take advantage of the parade theme and get out your stickers. This is the time to use up all the "odds and ends" stickers in your collection! I already had all these stickers either in partial sheets or had just been 'saving' them for the right page. This was the right time to use them!
Here's how I did my Sticker Parade page for our local city parade in figures 1 and 2. Creating a parade of your own in a border relives the mood of the parade! I enjoyed it so much I had to make mine a two page layout! If you have lots of parade pics, consider doing a panoramic layout with the new fold-out page protectors! Don't try to go out and buy all the stickers I used or copy mine exactly. It is a flexible concept we are after here. Use whatever you have!
1) Place a foundation along the bottom of the page. You can use a border line street sticker or a grass strip. This is to anchor your parade and give it a base. you could also draw the street in after you are done placing the stickers down but be sure to allow about 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch of blank space under the marcher's feet for the street if you are drawing your own blacktop. I had some grass die cuts so I used those in figure 1 and 2.
2) Take out an assortment of 'people' stickers. They can be from any manufacturer. Line drawings or block coloring or realistic, pastel or bright coloring --it won't matter as long as the people are all about 1 to 2 inches tall. A mixed and motley crew is the look you want. Consider clowns and cartoon characters (like my Doug) as 'people' too. I even had a cheerleader, some Suzy's Zoo guys and a Mary Engelbreit girl to add in. Don't forget to add males in the parade. Babies would be great too but I didn't have any the right size. Attach the 'people' along the parade route (your base) in a random sort of fashion. I placed mine between and inch and an inch and a half apart so I would have room for the animals and vehicles. Don't press them down real firmly yet. Just place them lightly where you think you want them.
3) Add your vehicles. I use that term loosly! A vehicle can be a bike, car, unicycle, motorbike, jeep, firetruck--whatever you have! Keep in mind that it is fun to place people and animals in and on the vehicles. So, cars or bikes with open areas work well. Your vehicles should fit here and there between the walking people.
4) Now add some animals. I used monkeys, dogs, cats, insects, bears, birds, and a rabbit. My animal combination is a little 'weird' (ever seen a grasshopper in a parade?) but that is part of the fun!
5) Use a sense of humor! This is probably the most important element! Since a parade is a festive event, let that show in the way you place the stickers. My grasshopper is balancing a ball on his finger like some jugglers do! One balloon is floating away into the sky. The little female dog is eating a HUGE ice cream sundae and beside her a monkey is doing a handstand on the scooter! My horn-toting rabbit is peaking shyly out of her car and Minnie Mouse is enjoying a jumbo lollipop! I placed Doug balancing on the bike and THEN put his little dog balancing on Doug's head!
Look for food and accessory stickers that are roughly proportional for this part of the project. Food, musical instruments and notes, confetti, stars, hoops, street signs, and toys are all good additions here. Examples of how I used the balloon lettering idea can be seen in Figure 3 and 4 of the Minnesota State Fair. Note the added touch of money floating in the air? That was my husband's idea as he felt it was just flying out of his pocket anyway! LOL!
6) Add the Balloon lettering. After you have the parade designed and stuck firmly down, you can add the balloons and lettering. You can use balloon stickers with sticker alphabets on top of them. (Balloon stickers are hard to write on with pens.) Or you can use punched balloons with stickers as I did in Figure 3-4 or hand lettering as in figure1-2. I used punched ballooons in the Parade and State Fair layouts.
I clustered the balloons to form the words on the parade pages but I evenly spaced them out on the fair pages. You can do it either way. Rubber stamped ballons might also work if you are a careful stamper or if you stamped them on seperate paper and then cut them out. The balloon border wording if used alone looks great on the top of the page. The parade border takes about 1/3 of the page along the bottom but that is ok!
Some titles or headlines could be:
Let's go to the Parade!
Everyone Loves a Parade!
The Band Marches On!
On the Parade Route
Everyone Loves a Clown
The State Fair
4th of July Parade
Watching the Crowd Pass By
Neighborhood Bike Parade!
Princess of the Parade
7) Mat the photos simply! The border packs lots of visual punch so just add the pictures with simple bright coordinating single or double straight-edge mats. Poof! You are done!
Now wasn't that fun? This technique can be used for all the parades in your life! And don't forget the circus, county or state fair, birthdays, and winter carnivals! On-the-street band performances can all be scrap booked with a similar technique too. Many events share that festive feeling and include a wide variety of people sharing the celebration. Have a great summer and enjoy the Parade!
