Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Scrapbooking 101-411 Style!

Simple Steps to a Good Layout

Here's a few things to consider when doing a scrapbooking layout:

1) Let a Theme Rule

Build your scrapbook page around a theme like your family's Christmas or your son's first basketball game. If more than one photo are used on the page, each photo should relate to the theme or to each other. So that the page could tie together meaningfully as a neat scrapbooking layout design idea.

Three to six photos can generally fit into a page. For more photos, a two-page spread would work great. From each occasion or for each theme, select the best photos for your scrapbook page.

Tip 1: You don't have to use all your photos for your scrapbooks. I usually pick the best pictures for the theme of my layout and put the rest of the pictures in a photo album.

Tip 2: If you still need more help in doing effective layouts, a recommended help would be to use sketches. This tip is one that I use all the time!! There are alot of different sites out there that offer scrapbooking sketches. I mainly use Page Maps but there are many more. After a while you will get to the point that you are comfortable using sketches that you can then take card sketches and turn them into scrapbooking layouts too.

2) How to Arrange Photos

Select a focal point - Choose a main photo that can arrest the eye for a start before leading it to the rest of the page. A good scrapbooking layout design idea would be a photo that represents the overall theme. Generally, such a photo will require minimum cropping.

The focal point doesn't have to land right smack in the center of the page. Highlight its importance by placing it slightly off-center, tilting it ever so slightly or even giving it a multi-layered mat.

Maintain a Flow and Balance - With the focal point settled, the placement of the other photos should contribute to the whole flow and balance of the page. A good photo placement is one that seamlessly leads your eye from one photo to the next.

After experimenting with different scapbooking layouts, I would usually take a step back and observe the layout for a few moments. Then I would ask myself, "Is there a good flow and balance?" If the answer is no, I'll continue to make some little adjustments here and there to get the right balance. If the answer is yes, I'll move on and mount them onto the page.

3) Crop It the Right Way

Cropping a photo could improve the look of it by taking off the unnecessary details. Cropping narrows down the focus on the subject of the photo. Cropping also allows you to fit more photos into a page.


Here is a layout I did awhile back using one of our sketches. As you can see my layout takes on the design of the sketch.











Happy Scrapping!!!
Tiffany

No comments:

Post a Comment