Scrappin' Fun

I just participated in a brag book page swap with my downline. My theme was "vacation" so I picked some of my favourite photos from an Alaska cruise my husband and I went on a couple of years ago. I discovered a few things about my scrapbooking style when I did these pages...

I started by picking the colours of card stock that I wanted to use with the photos. I decided on Taken with Teal, Tempting Turquoise and Certainly Celery because I liked the way they brought out the colours in the water and the glacier. Then I started to mat my photos like I always have in the past... placing the photo onto a mat that's a quarter inch bigger than my photo. The layout wasn't really working for me so I left them for the night, hoping that a fresh look the next day would provide a solution. Fortunately, it did!

Here's where my scrapbooking style changed a bit. Although I'm sure that quarter inch mats will continue to find their way into my pages often, on this layout I decided to use more of a colour block approach. Look at how I mounted the photos on the corner of the card stock. I found that this simplied the layout and let the photos become the focal point.

I printed my journaling using one of Stampin' Up!'s Jounaling Fonts CDs and then I had some fun with the Expressive Flexible Phrases stamp set, highlighting some of the words in my journaling text.

I've also discovered that I enjoy 6" x 6" brag book layouts. I used to be a dedicated 12" x 12" scrapbooker because I always thought that the larger pages gave me more room for photos and decorating. Of course, I still like the larger pages, but have found that the smaller brag book pages can make for quicker and simpler layouts.

Happy stampin' & scrappin'!

Bev.