Saturday 23 May 2009

Double Layouts again...




I'm trying my hand at double layouts again as these are what are required for teaching purposes here in South Africa. I have nothing against them but I won't be "dictated to" to scrap them for the sake of the flow of my album looking flawless. Mine is a scrapbook album - not a desktop publishing publication! I have lots of photos of our recent weekend away in Joburg so doubles are working out just fine for these. Where I have fewer photos I'll stick to singles. I challenged myself here to make the bulk of my embellishments from paper & came up with the idea of punching, layering & mounting squares punched with my Creative Memories square punch. I layered them up on the diagonal then carefully stuck them in place & mounted them onto first white, then brown cardstock.



This is a tad on the bright side for me but I have years worth of cardstock to get through so blue it is. I don't use a lot of blue, just as it happens, but as Dorian (Shane's brother) is wearing a blue shirt this bazzill proved the most suitable as a background paper. I used lime-green to mount the photos & yellow as the accent cardstock. I double mounted the photos using Bazzill Swiss-Dot in a similar shade of green. I printed my photos with a white border so matted my "diamond" embellishments onto white cardstock to match - & also added a zigzag strip of white cardstock along the bottom that I cut with pinking shears. I cut the scallop using a scallop "ruler" from a piece of scallop chipboard I bought expressly to reserve for this purpose. I punched holes into it using my single-hole punch then adhered it to the yellow cardstock with double sided tape above the dots and Tombo below them - for the curved shapes. I then cut the yellow scallop edge slightly wider than the brown to "mount" it.



I used the American Craft twill Thickers from my April Cocoa Daisy kit but painted them brown first then varnished them with "Glossy Accents" dimensional glaze. I inked the mounts a bit with olive (comes out more like avocado though - which is what I wanted) The blue striped print & the brown diamond print (American Crafts - Craft Fair) are both from my Cocoa Daisy April kit. Notice how the design on the brown print echoes the embellishments - both diamond shapes. I continued this theme through with the punched border at the bottom. I am on a mission to use what I already own & this Fiskars border punch is one of them. Of course I am hankering after the new Martha Stewart punches but this will have to do for now... I bumped up some of the photos & some of the accents using foamcore. This works better than foam tape/squares for large areas as the whole area remains rigid with no denting in.



I couldn't resist using 6 aqua glitter embellishments from a Doodlebug glittered chipboard alphas set, just to give my layout that finishing touch. I positioned these carefully in order to create 3 visual triangles on my layout - to draw the viewer's eye all around the page & highlight the main areas of interest. I added a semi-circle - bumped up on foamcore - to repeat the scallop design somewhere else on the layout - aswell as for added interest/detail & to as one of the "points" of my main visual triangle. (the 2 diamond accents being the other 2points). If you learn the concept of the visual triangle (I guess you could google it for an illustration if you haven't yet heard of it...) your layouts will improve dramatically & there will be some "design" to your embellishment placing as opposed to randomness.

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Here is a collage of the details close up, including the hand-journalling, done with a brown fineliner pen. I am now in the habit of putting the date (at least the year) on every single layout. Here the journalling "includes" the full date - by saying that "these photos were taken the day before his daughter Lyra was born", so it wasn't necessary for me to include more than the year elsewhere. If you don't already include the date, start to do so, even if you use a small office date stamp & place it somewhere unobtrusive - no need to make a design feature of it if your layout doesn't require it. This layout is a lot more structured & fiddly than my true style but now that I am designing layouts for the purpose of teaching my approach has had to change to accomodate this. I can't wait to have a block of free time to create some layouts "just for me" where I can play & be free & experiment!



5 comments:

topkatnz said...

golly gosh ... I can't remember the last time I did a double page LO ...

Bernadine said...

Beautiful layout Helen. I must honest most of my layouts are double pages because I take so many photos of one thing. lol. Just one photo is never good enough. I do, do single layouts sometimes depending on the photo's I want to scrap. I will load some of the layouts later on today. :)

Michelle Ramsay said...

Stunning layout and thanks for such detailed instructions of how you created it!

Sandra said...

These are very cool, Helen!

Particularly love the bright blue you have chosen to work with.

Jessica said...

Great layout! I use quite a bit of blue, but I have two boys and I like blue ... but that is still a bit bright for me :) Looks good, though. I love all the detail! You really put so much into your layouts and it shows. I've always wanted to invest in circle and square punches or scalloped circle punches or border punches ... but every time I save a bit of money for scrapbooking supplies, punches are not what I get :)