AND I DARKEN by Kiersten White | Mood Board Monday

You may recall that on Friday, I posted my written review of AND I DARKEN on the blog, and I also recorded a video review that I posted on my YouTube channel a couple of weeks ago.

Well, I thought that now would be a perfect time to create a mood board for this book as well!

The Anatomical Shape of a Heart by Jenn Bennett | Moodboard Monday

Do you not know what "Moodboard Monday" is? Check out this post that explains it! 

THE ANATOMICAL SHAPE OF A HEART

Who was your favorite character in the book? 

My favorite character from this book was Jack! There was just something about him that pulled me in.

Did you pick any specific characters or scenes to be represented in your Moodboard?

I tried to include a variety of pictures that focus on Bex, a picture or two that focus on Jack, and a picture or two that focus on both of them. I wanted to incorporate more of Bex and her passions because the story does focus on her quite a lot (plus she is a very interesting person), so I wanted to give her the spotlight she deserves.

Did your Mood Board take a specific color scheme? If you actively chose one, why did you chose that specific color? 

I think that all of the pictures of Bex tend to have a beige coloring to them, a yellowish tone. The other ones, because most of them are during the night time, tend to be darker and have a little bit more contrast. I think this is interesting because to me, I think you could tie the plot of the book into these pictures as well: the life Bex lives in the daytime is completely different than what she does at night, or what she does with Jack.

Was there a picture that you just couldn't find to incorporate into your mood board? If you can answer it with little to no spoilers, tell us how it related to the book!

I really wanted to find a girl standing in front of a medical facility, with a lab coat & some equipment (even if it was just a clipboard in her hand), but I understand that the Internet doesn't have every single picture that I want, and I'm okay with that. I found some really cool alternate shots, and I'm still really happy with how my Moodboard turned out!

If you read the book, what was your rating for it? Link us to your review if you have one! :)

If you want to read my review of the book, you can click here! I actually read this book as part of the Sunday Street Team all the way back in November of 2015 (which was oh-so-long ago!).

Synopsis of the Book:
Artist Beatrix Adams knows exactly how she's spending the summer before her senior year. Determined to follow in Da Vinci's footsteps, she's ready to tackle the one thing that will give her an advantage in a museum-sponsored scholarship contest: drawing actual cadavers. But when she tries to sneak her way into the hospital's Willed Body program and misses the last metro train home, she meets a boy who turns her summer plans upside down.

Did you participate in MoodBoard Monday this week? Link me to your post in the comments! Did you read this book? What did you enjoy about it/rate it?

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl | Moodboard Monday

If you read my post on Friday, you would know that I recently finished reading the book Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews. I thought this book would be a great book to post a mood board for, so I made my own!

Do you not know what "Moodboard Monday" is? Check out this post that explains it! 

Who was your favorite character in the book? 

My favorite character was, without a doubt, Rachel! 

Did you pick any specific characters or scenes to be represented in your Moodboard?

I didn't really pick any specific "scenes", but I kind of wanted to capture the essence of the characters. Greg is the boy in all of the shots, I have two of him with a camera because his passion is creating films. The middle picture is supposed to represent the book that he is writing. For Rachel, I wanted to capture her "style" by picking an outfit that I think she would wear. 

Did your Mood Board take a specific color scheme? If you actively chose one, why did you chose that specific color? 

I didn't actively choose a color scheme, but it seems like all of my pictures have a yellow tint. Maybe that's fitting, because it seems like you are looking through a film cell. Yellow to me also represents happiness, and even though there are a lot of sad things happening in this book, there are also a lot of great happy memories that Greg reflects on. 

Was there a picture that you just couldn't find to incorporate into your mood board? If you can answer it with little to no spoilers, tell us how it related to the book!

Oh goodness, I really wanted to find a picture that looked like Rachel while she was in the hospital. I just couldn't find a picture that captured the mood I wanted. I can't say too much about that mood without spoiling the book though, so I guess you have to read it! 

If you read the book, what was your rating for it? Link us to your review if you have one! :)

If you want to read my review of the book, you can click here! I actually really enjoyed reading this book. If you haven't read the book, I'll include the summary below.

"Greg Gaines is the last master of high school espionage, able to disappear at will into any social environment. He has only one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time making movies, their own incomprehensible versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics.

Until Greg’s mother forces him to rekindle his childhood friendship with Rachel.

Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia—-cue extreme adolescent awkwardness—-but a parental mandate has been issued and must be obeyed. When Rachel stops treatment, Greg and Earl decide the thing to do is to make a film for her, which turns into the Worst Film Ever Made and becomes a turning point in each of their lives.

And all at once Greg must abandon invisibility and stand in the spotlight."

How to Make a Mood Board | Mood Board Monday Instructions

If you haven't already, you should read my introduction to Mood Board Monday. Otherwise, you might be kind of lost as to why I'm providing this tiny tutorial.

If you read this post first, hello! This is going to be a fairly short post, because all I'm doing is introducing you to the website that I use to make my mood boards & a tiny bit of my process.

Of course, before you put a mood board together, you have to find images to use. You can pick as many images as you want, but I suggest anywhere between 4-8 for a mood board that is still easy to make. (Some "Mood Board Makers" have limits on how many pictures you can upload, hence the suggestion).

After you find your images and save them somewhere you can access them, you'll want to go to the website https://www.befunky.com/features/collage-maker/. Of course, if you want to find your own website for making these, you can always Google "photo collage maker" or "mood board maker" and then shift through the results until something suits you.

This should be the first screen that you see. Click on "Get Started" to enter into the collage maker!

Select your language, and then the following screen should be what you see. 

My photo maker is automatically set for 6 pictures (as you can see by the default pictures to the left) but you can easily change the amount of pictures/layout of the collage that you want to include by clicking the layouts button (the button with the four squares). You can even mess around with other settings such as spacing, corner rounding, and background color too!

Below, I've included a list of all of the sidebar buttons and the menus that they can take you to.

From Top to Bottom:

Image Manager (the default screen)

Settings

Layouts

Patterns

Graphics

Text

Greeting Cards (just ignore this one!)

Each one of these tabs offer different features and styles for your Mood Board. It is incredibly easy to use and extremely straight forward so I'll let you do the exploring on your own. :)

You can play around with all of these tabs and add new pictures/etc. to your mood board until you are completely satisfied with how it looks. It only took me about 30 minutes to make my first mood board, and that includes the time I spent searching for pictures!

The reason I love this photo collage maker is because it isn't only easy to use, but because they have premade graphics and text that you can layer on top of your photo collage. On top of that, it doesn't cost a penny. 

When you are done, just click the save button to download it to your computer, or the share button to post it across all of your social media accounts. For Mood Board Monday, I recommend downloading it to your computer and then uploading it to your blog post.

That is it! 

Now, go out and make your Mood Boards for the great new feature!

For Mood Board Veterans: Are there any other sites you recommend or tips you have for us? Let us know in the comments! :)

For Mood Board Newbies: Was this tutorial helpful? Is there anything else that you need to know? Most importantly, are you excited for the new feature?

Introducing Mood Board Monday | Weekly Blog Feature

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of book bloggers create "mini pinterest boards" based on the books that they read. Most of the time, I've seen these photo collages as an extra to their reviews, without any real emphasis on the photo collage, or mood board, itself.

Some of my favorites come from the blog What Sarah Read. She, like many others, makes amazing photo collages and I am blown away by the creativity in her posts. I thought I would enclose an example of one of her mood boards to show you all exactly what a moodboard is and how you go about creating one. 

A moodboard is basically a photo collage, a mishmosh of different photos with different subjects and "feels" to them that come together to create an overall piece. They are really quite simple to make and it's really fun too!

What does this have to do with the new weekly blog feature? It turns out, just about everything. 

Introducing.......Mood Board Monday!

Here's how the feature would work. 

The blogger (you) would pick a book that you have read or are anticipating to feature on your blog. Then, you would essentially create a mood board for that book (if you don't know how to do that yet, it's okay. I have a post explaining how to make a moodboard and what I use). After creating your moodboard, there are a few questions that you would answer about the book and the moodboard that you made. 

These questions are not a definitive list, I'll be adding and changing questions based on your suggestions, but if you think of a question that you want to answer, go ahead and add that in. You don't have to answer any of these questions if you don't want to, but I just thought that they would be a nice companion with the moodboard.

•  Who was your favorite character in the book? 
• Did you pick any specific characters or scenes to be represented in your Moodboard? 
• Did your Mood Board take a specific color scheme? If you actively chose one, why did you chose that specific color? 
• Was there a picture that you just couldn't find to incorporate into your mood board? If you can answer it with little to no spoilers, tell us how it related to the book!
• If you read the book, what was your rating for it? Link us to your review if you have one! :)

After answering these questions, I also request that you include a summary of the book, just in case your readers are interested in learning more. A link to Goodreads would be helpful as well!

And, that's it! If you are interested in participating in this new feature, let me know in the comments and link me to your mood board! I'm working on putting together a page for Mood Board Monday on my blog in the future, so that we can see all of the amazing posts that you have put together! I'll update this post when that page is live.