Children's books are one of my favorite sources for gleaning scrapbook ideas. The works of Dr. Seuss are a plethora of inspiration and have been used by many to create wonderful "Seuss inspired" works.

The Lorax: A Cheerful Source of Scrapbook Inspiration

  

In honor of National Poetry Month, Earth Day, and National Arbor Day, we decided on Dr. Seuss' The Lorax to be our April inspiration. If you are not familiar with this story you can check out the synopsis on Wikipedia, or visit your local library to read the book.

For today's post, I will be showing how I gathered inspiration from The Lorax. (By the Way, If you plan to plant a tree this year or celebrate Earth day, a Lorax page would be really cute!)

Inspiration List:

Theme:

    The Lorax portrays a message that is important to me.I imagine, in the book, many of the people missed the traffula trees. The lack of trees took away some of the beauty of their town. I live in a growing town that has changed a lot, especially over the past decade. I expressed, on my page, how I enjoy the convenience of the new businesses; however, I am glad that someone took action, years ago, to make sure the town's history and nature will be preserved. We will continue to enjoy their efforts for many generations to come.

    To convey my message, I decided to show two sides of my town: the nature side and the business side. I put them on opposites sides of my page (the nature areas on the top, and the business areas on the bottom) so the viewer could see the contrasts of my town.

The fun part: making a Dr. Seuss Page!

    *Notice that I did not use a single picture of a character from the book? You don't have to use characters or images from the story to make a themed page. There are many ways to be inspired, and have people say, "That page looks like it came from Dr. Seuss!"

Illustrations – Dr. Seuss was known for his unique illustrations. Here are some things to keep in mind while making your page:

  • Color – What types of colors do you think of when you envision a Dr. Seuss story? The colors I chose were inspired by the book cover:

Picture 3

I found Paper Tiles that were similar colors and went with this scheme:

Lorax Colors

  • Illustration Style – While looking at the illustration, I was inspired by the ink drawings. Notice how Seuss adds dark lines around all the objects in the image shown above? I decided to put this look into my page. Here is a close up:

Seuss close

Technique: I used black chalk ink around the edges of all the little squares. I liked how in the illustration that there is a little green hill, so I decided to make little hills and shrubbery within the blue squares. I put chalk ink on the edges of them too. This page started to really look like Dr. Seuss' illustrations.

Typography – another distinguising feature of the Dr. Seuss books

  • Fonts – Many of Dr. Seuss's stories have a similar font as the one on the Lorax cover. I found a font on-line and used it on my page. You can download it for free on dafont.com. This is a cute and fun font that really adds to the theme of your layout! If you don't plan to print your journaling from a computer, you can possibly find 'seuss' like alphabet stickers at your local craft store. Here is a close up sample of the font I chose:

Unless

Quotes and Writing Style –

Add a quote that ties in with the theme of your page. Here are few quotes from the Lorax you can use on your page. Here are a few samples:

  • "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
    Nothing is going to get better. It's not." (This is what I chose)
  • "It's not about what it is, it's about what it can become."
  • The Word "Unless" is often associated with this story. You can use this as a title.
  • Check out more quotes on goodreads.com

Do some of these quotes inspire what message you would like to use for your page?

And of course, what would a good Dr. Seuss story be without the rhymes? I am not a poet, but I attempted some rhyming for my journaling. Have fun thinking of cute little rhymes to tell for your story.