This week we’re looking at technology, and in terms of one generation to the next, this topic is huge! We’d love you to join in the fun with this theme by next Wednesday 24th August by emailing us your layouts to [email protected].
This steampunk style layout by Nic Howard is perfect for our generation gap series. Nothing screams '’technology’ more than this collection of random embellishments, cleverly pulled together to depict the widening technological generation gap between Nic and her son Jacob. Nic had been wanting to attempt a layout like this for a while after being inspired by the amazing eclectic creations of artist Finnabair.
She started the layout by creating a base with Prima papers, a Tim Holtz mask and Glimmer Mists in various colours. Then she turned to a variety of Tim Holtz Ideology items for her embellishing; Word keys, grungeboard elements, tissue tape and coloured inks were bought together to provide a base for her photo. Journaling about the difficulties Nic has keeping up with the electronic items is tucked in several tags behind the photo, this leaves room for the messy gathering of embellishments, look closely to see the details; paperclips, buttons, brads, chipboard elements, laces, ribbons, word keys, washers and even the can tab off the diet coke she was drinking while this layout was being created!
Journaling:
Abby’s homework the other day: “Ask your parents if they had a microwave when they were little. If not, ask how it made things different”. I answered the question honestly. We didn’t eat as many quick meals or leftovers. This would be, of course, because we couldn’t heat things up like we do now. “Of course you could of, Mum!” Abby replied... “You used to rub sticks together to make fire, didn’t you?!”.
Seriously. I’m not that old. Although sometimes I feel it. I struggled daily with the things the kids talk about. Jacob’s talk of electronics sends me for a spin lately. The wifi and wii. X-Box, DS or even better (apparently) a DSi – sometimes it’s all too much for me. Maybe I’m not as old as having to rub sticks together to make fire, but sometimes I feel like it. July 2011.
Suz Doyle also has a journalling heavy layout and chose to focus her page on the technology of her childhood, while contrasting it with the ds’s and the ipads of her children’s generation. Uncharacteristically she combined purple in her layout with what she could recall of a 70’s colour scheme (when you got away from the browns and oranges, there were the purples) with BasicGrey’s ‘Green At Heart’ papers and Crate Paper chipboard embellies.
Here is her journalling:
Thinking back, the technology of my childhood held a lot more promise than it perhaps delivered. I’m focusing here on technology based games and activities that you could play on your own, rather like today’s ds’s, phones and tablets.
We had drawing stuff… Spirograph was in fact cool and I spent many a long rainy afternoon drawing circles within circles. It just worked with the whole 70’s decade. Etch-a-sketch was ace – paper-free, so environmental before its time, but it was pretty damned hard to do those angles and curves. Sketch-a-graph was just deplorable. Based on the premise that anything you traced with the pointy end then sketched with the pencil end, it sounded brilliant. But most things ended up with an unidentifiable drawing, and a frustrated child.
And then there was Simon. Who knew how many hours of amusement could be wrought by attempting to repeat an ever-increasing sequence of lights and tones? Simon kept his promise. The ubiquitous calculator was another popular choice – I spent many a spare moment testing it to see if it really got it right every time.
But the best thing? The old portable record player, that looked like a fat briefcase in two shades of 1970’s brown. It had two speeds and a crackly old needle and speakers in it’s lid or base, I don’t really know. We could only play the designated kids records because mum worried the either we or the needle would scratch good records, and we had what I would probably now call an eclectic selection.. from Bing Crosby to the Royal Guardsmen, via Elvis to the book and record genre of the likes of the Speedy Little Yellow Taxi (that always got to the fire first) and Bambi (that always made me cry).
