Hello there, SCT fans and friends! It’s Meghann Andrew and I am so excited to be here with you to share a new Tuesday Team Tip! Designing my layouts is one of my favorite parts of creating, but I know that for many, the process can seem daunting, and even frustrating! Today I want to share with you one of my biggest design considerations: emphasis, and tips on how you can use it to showcase what is important on your page. 

I was fortunate to work with the new Pinkfresh Studio Some Days collection to create this new layout, all about my two little loves:

Supplies | Patterned paper, die cuts, stickers, enamel dots: Pinkfresh Studio Some Days collection; Die cut tape: Stampin’ Up!; Other: twine, doily; Adhesive: Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L EZ Runner and 3D foam squares

This page may be full of pattern and color, but before creating I knew exactly what element I wanted to emphasize on the page—the photo of my daughter touching my son with his face lighting up in a smile. There are a few different ways I emphasized this page among all of the other page elements.

  1. Size matters: The first way to emphasize something on your page is to make it bigger than the other elements. I printed this photo out at 3.5” x 5”, larger than the second photo I used. I still wanted to keep both on the page to showcase the full extent of this sweet moment, but this photo was by far the showstopper. Making it larger than the other emphasized its importance.

 

2. Incorporate other elements to draw attention: Instead of placing my title elsewhere on the page, I cut the number patterned paper from the Some Days collection just so that I could place the “2” right on the corner of my photo, and overlapping it with another fussy cut “2” placed a big element on the page right alongside of the photo. 

3.  Use pops of contrast: The predominant colour in my photos is my daughter’s blueish purple shirt, so to contrast that hue, I used a large piece of yellow patterned paper behind my photos. To really emphasize the largest photo, however, I matted my photo with pink and used that bright vertical “POP” of red paper that ran directly through the center of the photo, drawing your eye straight through the image.

4.  Importance by embellishment: Last, but not least, I arranged my embellishment clusters around my large photo. Flowers, puffy stickers, die cuts, a tone-on-tone white doily, and die cut doily tape surround the photo, making it the center of attention.

When you know what element on your page, whether that be a photo, your journaling or a piece of ephemera, takes precedence, making design decisions to emphasize it can help you create your scrapbook layouts quicker, and make it more appealing!

I hope you enjoyed today’s tip! Emphasis is just one of the design elements we touched on in my Scrapbook 101: Better Than the Basics class, and I hope you’ll join us for this year-long course to learn how to love your layouts, and the process of creating them, even more! We even have a private Facebook group, where we are inspiring each other by what we’re creating. It’s not too late to join us!

Find more of Meghann’s work here: Instagram | Facebook | YouTube