Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it! Tonya Regular here for a little design inspiration. 🙂
When starting a page, most often I do not have a plan in place or specific design techniques that I want to use. I usually start by choosing a photo that I want to scrapbook – this one is not the best quality, taken out in the cold with snow falling, but I wanted to capture the memory of last winter’s first snow.
Often I’ll start by placing the photo on the background paper first and then arranging other page elements around it. However, the muted colors and patterns in the Autumn Love Page Pak inspired me to start by using the blue paper as sort of a ribbon embellishment balanced on both sides, adding the punch label, then using a few fitting elements to anchor the photo between the two paper ribbons. An autumn-themed pak might not be what first comes to mind when creating a winter page, but our page paks are versatile that way.
All of my pages are created as 8×8 rather than the traditional 12×12 or 24×24. I started doing this some time ago due to memory restrictions on my laptop. Although I’ve since upgraded, I still create 8×8 pages. This means almost all of the materials I work with are resized as I’m creating. When resizing, care needs to be taken to not distort or degrade the quality. Sometimes I resize to minimize the elements, when creating an accent cluster for instance. Sometimes, I enlarge (or leave an element at its original size) to make a bolder statement on my page. The punch label used on this page was enlarged for effect.
I wanted to add some contrasting color to the page and I love the DECEMBER title in the 2016 Everyday Calendar Pak. Recoloring the snowflakes from the Christmas Wishes Page Pak and layering those added depth to the page. I finished it by adding the story inside the frame. As you can see, I like a lot of ‘white’ space in my layouts.
It’s pretty obvious what month this picture and story took place, but I’m realizing now – after the fact – that I did not include the year. I know myself pretty well, so I know 5 years from now, I will not remember what year this was taken so I will go back and tuck in a “2015” text line. This is what I love about digital scrapbooking – it preserves the memories and is so easy to edit and update.
That’s how I made this simple page. See other Punch Label pages here (minimized) and here (faded and blended)!
Happy creating, Tonya