Simple Digital Scrapbooking Designer Tips
This is a page from the New Romance Collection
My goal here is to share with you how I like to scrapbook and how I can achieve finishing many layouts in a short amount of time. I like to get a lot of pages done and I usually like to have 6 to 8 pages in the same theme or color scheme. Using similar colors is one way to keep things moving quickly. I also find that limiting the amount of embellishments and paper I use is a time saver. I prefer most of my pages to be relatively clean and I prefer a more uniform linear look.
I start with a thumbnail or 'sketch', usually I will sketch out 2 or 3 pages on a scrap piece of paper. There is no point doing more than that because after one or two pages, your layouts will just start to evolve. Thumbnails seem like a waste of time to some but it actually saves you time as it is much quicker to pencil sketch. There is nothing worse than looking at a blank screen, so start with something.
S.C.R.A.P. TIPS - for scrapbooking and digital scrapbooking
Here are some tips that you may find useful when building your digital scrapbook pages. These principles apply to both digital scrapbooking and traditional scrapbooking.
1. S. - is for SKETCH. Start with a sketch of how you plan to layout your digital scrapbooking page. Are you going to have one large picture dominate the page or are you going to have several smaller photos? If it is a double page scrapbook layout, do a sketch for both pages. You can scribble many little sketches until you like what you see. When you have a plan digital scrapbooking is much easier. Sometimes looking blank computer screen is very overwhelming. Digital scrapbooking requires creative planning. Your sketches will save you a lot of time. Keep a separate scrapbook or folder for your sketches. You will use these sketches many times over.
2. C. - is for CONTRAST. You need to have contrast in your digital scrapbook pages. You can achieve this with color or with size. Contrast will make your scrapbook pages more dynamic. You can use contrast to draw the eye to the most important elements. In the above digital scrapbook page I have used color to add contrast. The red punches up the overall page look. You can use size to emphasize the most important photo in your layout.
3. R. - is for REPETITION. This just means you should repeat certain elements or colors for continuity. If it works well once then it will work well twice. When creating this digital scrapbook page I used the repetition rule a few times. I repeated the top border on the bottom of the page and I used the same size photo placement down the right hand side of the page. I also created a border down the left side by repeating an element. This creates continuity. That is why it is nice to do a few similar pages before switching to new colors or themes, it is easy to follow and groups the photos.
4. A. - is for ALIGNMENT. I feel that this is the most important principle. Have you ever looked at a page and thought it looks pretty good but something is off. Well it is probably the alignment. Alignment is so important it means that you look at the spaces around your photos and your embellishments. Take a look a my digital scrapbook page. You can put a ruler along a lot of lines on these scrapbook pages that means the alignment is correct. If you look at the top photo on the left side, it is perfectly aligned with the journal tag on the bottom of the page. OK well you don't have to be that perfect but keeping the alignment rule in mind will really help the end result.
5 .P. - is for PROXIMITY. This means keep similar items together. In my digital scrapbook page I kept the small photos on the left together. This principle also applies to journalizing. Make sure your journalizing is close enough to the correct photo so there is no mistaking who or what you are talking about!
The new Romance Collection from the Simple Digital Scrapbooks line is designed to make your life easier particularity if you are new to digital scrapbooking. There are premade pages to get you started and to spark your inspiration. There are just enough papers and embellishments to be functional and not overwhelming and the palette is coordinated to help you achieve a perfect page every time. When I say perfect I mean a page that looks great to you, and it didn't take you all night and half of the next day to complete it.
