How is it April already!? I swear each year goes by quicker than the last. Well, at least the good thing is that a new month means a new word.
The word for the month of April is: GROW (you could also use growth, grown, growing, or grew)
The definition of the word grow is: 1. undergo natural development by increasing in size and changing physically; progress to maturity 2. become larger or greater over a period of time; increase; cause something to expand or increase 3. become gradually or increasingly; come to feel or know something over time
Other words and phrases that might be helpful in your journaling are: grow apart, grow into, grow on, grow out, grow out of, grow up, get bigger, get taller, increase in size, swell, multiply, balloon, build up, pile up, skyrocket, sprout, shoot up, spring up, develop, bud, burst forth, bloom, flourish, thrive, produce, raise, nurture, expand, extend, progress, make progress, arise, emerge
Page ideas and journaling prompts you could use:
• When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?
• What has surprised you most about growing up?
• Compare two different time periods. What has changed? How have you grown?
• What kind of growth have you experienced lately?
• What is your greatest personal growth?
• What is the best part about growing up?
• What is the word part about growing up?
• What excites you about growing up?
• If you could change anything about how you grew up, what would you change?
• Do you fear change and growth? Why? Why not?
• What kind of growth have you seen in your children? Changes in appearance? Changes in personality? Changes in maturity?
• Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?
• What have you learned most about growing up?
• What do you miss most from your childhood that you can no longer do now that you have grown up?
When I think of April, I tend to think of Spring and all of the new growth that takes place. Grow felt like the right word for the month when everything in nature starts blooming again.
One of the best things about scrapbooking is that because we are so often documenting our lives, we are also automatically recording the growth in our lives. A flip through our albums and you see your babies grow into toddlers, into kindergarten, into pre-teens, into teens, and before you know it, they are all grown up. I say thank goodness for scrapbooking because it really does goes by way too fast.
I got a big, heaping dose of the “where did the time go” when my kids and I went to our local zoo for the first time in many, many years. We happened to come across an alligator statue that I suddenly remembered my oldest, Drew, sitting beside as a tiny, curly-haired toddler. I was standing there looking down at the alligator statue and saying to myself, “I swear, that statue was a lot bigger the last time we were here!” I asked Drew to pose for a photo with the statue so we could compare the photos of toddler Drew with today Drew to see the difference. And what a difference it was!
I used a popular “growing up” (or I guess I should say “don’t grow up”) quote for my title and for a large part of the design on my layout. I didn’t have enough of the alphabet stickers for the whole quote so I substituted some stitched letters as a replacement. This is always one of my go-to plans when I don’t have enough of the letters I want to use. It’s easy and I like the attention it brings to the title/quote.
The biggest advice I can give you if you want to hand-stitch letters is to keep your holes fairly close together. Mine are probably 1/8” apart. If you have the holes too far apart, you won’t end up with the smooth, fluid curves on some of the letters like the “D” or the “R.”
To play along with the growth theme, I used arrow strips to complete the design. I even turned my journaling strips into arrow strips. Arrows are a fun way to represent movement, or in this case the growth from toddler to teenager.
If you create a layout using the word of the month, be sure to post it in the comments of this post! I always love seeing how you guys interpret and use the words!
Supplies - Cardstock: American Crafts; Patterned paper: PhotoPlay and Simple Stories; Alphabet stickers: Fancy Pants; Stickers: PhotoPlay and Simple Stories
PhotoPlay collection "Free Bird" found here: https://scrapbookgeneration.com/brands/photo-play/free-bird/
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