Idea of the Month

Scrapbooking Secrets:  Simple Tricks for Making Your Scrapbook Layouts Look More Professional- Part II

This month's topic is a continuation of October 2002, where I began sharing some simple techniques for making your scrapbook layouts look more professional.  Trust me... you really CAN learn these techniques and put them to use in your scrapbooks.  Take a look back at the October 2002 Idea of the Month if you missed Part I of this article.  Now, let's move on... 

Once again, we're going to use the following simple layouts as an example for our discussion.  I am going to walk you through the design concepts that are behind how this layout was created:

Continued from October 2002...

Step 4:  Crop and Define Your Focal Point Photos

Once the base pages were created, it was time to crop and mount each of my photos.  I tend to stick with squares and rectangles because they are quicker and easier for me, but if you decide to use different shapes keep in mind that your goal here is to accentuate your focal point photos.  Let me repeat that: your goal here is to accentuate your focal point photos.  To do that, use one or more of the following techniques:

Step 5: Create a Visual Triangle

You also want to keep the eye moving across the layout.  You can do that by creating one or more "visual triangles."  In my layout, you should be able to see 3 items that are mounted on Buttercup cardstock: the journaling area on the left page, and 2 photos on the right page.  These are in the general shape of a triangle, and it is a subtle way to keep the eye moving across both pages.

A second visual triangle is formed by the 3 green biker guys.  This triangle is more obvious.  Visual triangles are formed in a similar way to creating focal points: use your mats and your embellishments (ie: stamped images, stickers, etc).

Step 6:  Add Some Emotion to Your Layouts

There's quite a large journaling area on this layout.  I've never done that before.  I do a layout every year for my kids, but usually it's a layout of photos with a bit of hand-written journaling underneath each one.  This year, I was really struck by what I saw in Ian's photos: so many fears and challenges overcome, such as his first roller coaster ride (and it was a BIG coaster at that, LOL), a fear of not being able to swim, a fear of heights that he overcame by finally climbing the rock wall, the soccer coach taking a chance on him as goalie and he became the team hero.  It was an exciting, emotional year, and one that would not be communicated very well had I just glued down the photos.  So, I used my computer to write "the story" of his 9th year.  

Here's another example: a customer showed me a birthday album that she is in charge of maintaining.  A father and daughter in her family share the same birthday, so they always celebrate together.  Every year they celebrate, a photo is taken to commemorate the day, and my customer adds it to the scrapbook.  The father is now in his 70's or 80's, so they have many photos together.  Yet one year, the photo only shows the father.  The daughter is missing.  As we turned to that page in the book, my customer started to tell me the whole story about why the daughter was missing (she'd had surgery that year, so they celebrated for her later on), but nothing was written on that page!  If you saw that album, wouldn't you want to know why, too?  Those kinds of details NEED to be written down for future generations.  If you've ever looked through a box full of old family photos, not knowing even who these people were, you know what I mean.  YOU know the story behind your pictures, but your children and their children will not... unless you tell them.

I encourage you to share your stories in your scrapbooks!  Your children will thank you for it.

Click here to return to the Past Ideas page

  ©Linda Harrison 2002