I (Katie) was so excited to finally get these pages scrapped a few weeks ago. This is a memory from 2007 and I was pretty proud of myself for completing this 2 page spread. Can you believe how tall Shawn Bradley is? He’s definitely the tallest person I’ve ever met. He is 7 feet 6 inches tall. Wow!
Layouts by Katie. Credits: Template by Get It Scrapped. Bookworm kit by Kristin Cronin-Barrow. Font is Times New Roman.
I posted these layouts on my personal blog and didn’t think much else about them. A few days later, one of my readers left a comment that had me a bit confused. She said “I’m sorry, but all I can see when I look at this page is I Hate Chaz.” She asked me if I noticed my mistake? I got the comment via email so I went back to the blog post to look, and sure enough – there were the words “I Hate Chaz”! Do you see them now? I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before! The letters on the alphabet paper on the 2nd layout spell out that strange sentence across the bottom of the page. It’s just a matter of how I placed the paper and it certainly wasn’t anything intentional by me or by the paper designer. Just a weird little fluke!
It was hard for me to see the error because I had looked at the page for quite awhile and was thinking about things like what photos to use, where to place the embellishments, and journaling a big story. It might seem obvious to you at first glance, but I assure you that I didn’t see it at all until I received that comment. I was so glad to get that comment before I sent the layout to be printed! Because I still had my layered psd file on hand, it was super easy to fix! This is one of my favorite things about digital scrapbooking, mistakes are SO easy to fix!
I just opened up my layered file and moved the paper around a little bit. I actually duplicated the paper layer so I could keep the top of the page looking the same, and then I just moved the duplicate paper around on the bottom of the layout until I liked how it looked.
That’s SO much better! I’m much happier with it, and I bet Chaz is too! LOL!
It helps to have another set of eyes look over your pages. It’s easy to miss a typo on a page, and I’ve even put the wrong date on a layout before because I was thinking about the current year. If you don’t want to have someone else do some “proofreading” for you, at least take a break from looking at the page for awhile and come back later on with a fresh set of eyes.
Oh, and it helps to hang on to those original layered files!
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That is hilarious, but so relatable!
Yes, yes to the ‘save the layered files’ mantra. I also wait to print my layouts until I have gone back to look at them several times. It is amazing how many times I catch errors–even after the third look! There are probably spelling errors in this comment as I am so poor at typing. Saving them to the web (flickr) for the family to see also saves some printing errors. Thanks for the great and fun post. Love your work Katie as it is obvious you are passionate about this hobby of ours!cx
Oh, that’s too funny! Now that you’ve pointed it out, it seems really obvious, but I don’t think I would have noticed either!
Text papers are tricky. I had a friend who had done a really sweet paper layout about her baby and the text paper she used in the background had a really morbidly inappropriate poetic quote right near the photo. It was one of the first things I noticed when I looked at it, but she’d been so focused on the design that she hadn’t noticed. Fortunately she was able to figure out a way to fix it.
Yep, I agree with taking a second look with fresh eyes. I’m always finding mistakes when it’s too late to change them.