Review of Hello Story Class by Ali Edwards

Ali Edwards taught a 12 week class at Big Picture Classes called Hello Story. For 12 weeks I was spellbound by the creativity and inspiration that was put forth. I was blown away by how beautifully she presented simple and complex topics and how she made such meaningful layouts for every layout. These days where most layouts are a single photo or there is so much white space in the layout, her layouts are very different and graphic and clean. I love her style. I love that she uses embellishments but they are just the right amount, never overbearing or never meaningless. Every single item on the layout totally makes sense and so well placed. In the whole process she always remembered that we are all artists after all and kept up the artistic component. I cannot tell you how much I loved and enjoyed this class. This was my first ever live class and I am so happy that I selected this over anything else. I felt so sad when it was over.... but hopefully I can sign up for another class taught by her in the near future.

My original goal was to keep up with every week of this class and make two layouts a week ( we were given new material and topic every week) and did so for about 3 weeks, then it got down to at least one layout for every topic and then I started missing some of the weeks because it was summer vacation and we ended up travelling and so on. I finally got done with at least one layout for every week last week so I thought I should write up what I thought about  this class and what I did in this class.

Every week for each new topic, we were presented with about 3 beautiful new layouts, some project life ideas and tons and tons of digital elements (silhouette cut files, .png files). I haven't even used half of what was given just because of the sheer amount of material given to the students. THANK YOU ALI. I directly scrap lifted some of the layouts and some I used as inspiration and jumping off point. I still want to do many more layouts on these topics and the digital handouts in the future. During this process, some of my layouts got selected at Two Peas In a Bucket as the featured layout and Layout of the week at Studio Calico. All credit goes to Ali for providing the needed inspiration.

Here are the layouts I created for each week: (click on each image to read more about each post related to this layout)

Week 1: Timeline

Week 2 : Fill in the blanks format

Week 3: Arrows - This is not as literal as it seems

 Week 4: Passage of time

Week 5: Mathematics

Week 6: Six word story

Week 7: Pie Charts

Week 8: Maps

Week 9: Numbers - This was the feature of the day at Two Peas

Week 10 : 5Ws

This was the layout of the week at Studio Calico.

http://www.memorablescraps.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-5-ws-fun-at-zoo.html

Week 11: Opposites

Week 12: Rules for Living

During the 12 week period, so much got documented and I went through a whole self discovery process. I realized how hard it was to write something about myself down. Superficial stuff is okay but to look deeper and express it was a big challenge. It was so much more easier to do anything related to the kids or others as compared to making a layout about myself. 

In these 12 weeks, I also organized all my photos and collected them from all over the place and gave the folders meaningful names. I started falling in love with large photos. My respect for Ali grew phenomenally. I fell more in love with scrapbooking than ever!

Do take this class if it is offered again, every single cent that you spend on it is worth it.

Have a great day!

~Neela