Hello, friends! It’s week three of February–week three of documenting your favourite things! I hope that you are working through each prompt, enjoying the process of documenting the special things that you love most in your life with the February Favourites kit! We would love to see how your February Favourites album is coming together! Share your album pages with us on Facebook or on Instagram, tagging @sctmagaine and using the hashtag #createwithSCT!
Today I’d like to talk to you about layering. Layering is an important part of my design process, even in a project like a mini album. It’s important to me because it adds so much interest and dimension to a layout or project. It makes your viewers look closer—just to be sure they have seen all that there is to see!
The most important aspect to layering is one of my favourite principles of design: contrast. Contrast is defined simply as two dissimilar objects in juxtaposition or close association, and the opposing colours or textures help to make the grouping “pop,” drawing your eye to that area of the page.
When I curated the contents of the kit, I wanted to be sure that I included a variety of different colours and textured products, just to be sure that there was an opportunity for contrast when layering and creating your pages. I start my page layers with paper first, and if you’ll notice my pages, I always make sure that the cut paper layers I top on my background layer have a contrasting color and pattern—a polka dot on top of another polka dot would be too jarring to the eye, so bold patterns typically go on top of toned-down, neutral patterns, like a grid. I also want to be sure that whatever layers I add to the background have a contrasting colour, just like the “favourite place” page in my album. That bold and colourful striped title card just popped against the teal polka dot pattern!
But this is where I didn’t stop with the layers—I added the stamped, punched seal on top of the colourful stripes to add another layer of contrast. Then below the card, I adhered a strip of metallic washi tape—a different texture to the matte paper above. These are all subtle details, but they all add up to small areas of contrast on each page, and they are typically focused around my photo, which draws your eye to that central area.
Dimension can be tricky when creating inside pockets and mini albums that do not call for a lot of bulk, but there are ways to add layers without too much dimension, and stamping is my favourite way to do this! Unless you choose to cut out your stamped image and adhere it with dimensional adhesive, stamping adds no bulk, and you can layer stamps on paper, die cuts, or photos, using permanent ink! It’s also fun to layer the stamps in the February Favourites exclusive stamp set. In the exclusive video I shared last week, you can layer the outline stars and hearts with the solid stars and hearts to create a really sweet effect!
I sewed on a lot of my pages, and I gave you the option to do the same in the kit album instructions. Sewing adds texture, interest and an extra layer to your project, and does not need to take away from whatever you are sewing on if you use a low-contrasting thread, like white or yellow. I really think that this extra step adds a lot to the album. In the photo above, you can see that my sewn, fussy-cut ticket topped off a big grouping of layers! It started with the background stripe, then the metallic washi tape, the red ticket, “picture perfect” sticker with a puffy dot on top, then my sewn, yellow ticket. That’s 6 layers in that corner of my photo, created without bulk, and it adds so much interest to the page!
One last way that I added layers was with the differing sizes of my pages throughout the album. Adding skinny or smaller inserts to flip creates a visual layer of pages, like you can see above. I love seeing the journaling from my favourite memory laying on top of the colors and pretty layers from my favourite hobby page. The differing shapes and sizes of these pages make flipping through the album interesting because you never know what the next page will look like!
I can’t wait to see how you add layers to your February Favourites album, and I hope that this lesson on layering, with an emphasis on contrast, has given you food for thought for not only this project, but any other that you choose to create this week!
Have a great week, friends!
Meghann
