Themes - What NOT to do!

For today's Theme Thursday, I decided to show another page from the scrapbook I made for the dance teacher, and talk about it's theme.  This page would have been better if I had taken the time to really think through the theme - though in all honesty, I didn't know the story behind the main photo until after the book had been presented.  Had I known, I would NOT have made that mistake.

Anyway, the focal picture shows a dancer dressed as a penguin.  The story is that someone told her that when she danced, she looked like a penguin, so she decided to go with that for a fun dance.  Whether I knew that or not, this page would have been better had I focused in on the penguin theme. Instead of some or all of the flower embellishments - which have no relationship to the theme, I could have used little penguins for my embellishments, making a cute theme cuter. 

Of course, I didn't HAVE any penguins, but I could have found some to print and cut out, and/or I could have used my penguin stamp (shown below on a Christmas Card), stamped in black with a red scarf.  If I used the stamp and wanted different sizes, I could have created a stamped image, colored as I wanted it, and then scanned it in and printed it in different sizes. I could even have changed its facing direction before printing it. When one is up against the type of deadline I had for this book, there are bound to be ideas that come too late to implement, but it's helpful to note them anyway as doing so might help them come sooner the next time.