Friday 12 September 2014

Simplicity is Beautiful

More often than not the pages I like most are very simple. Lots of white space, lots of colour and an eye-catching design. Of course I love elaborate layouts too--lots of layering, bling, intricate die-cuts and lots of stamping--but I began as a simple scrapbooker and I keep going back to that style.

Simple layouts have important advantages too. Aside from being quick and easy, they tend not to have a lot of ephemera to bulk up a scrapbook. I find they also give me a sense of accomplishment ("Ah! Another page done!") when more elaborate pages sometimes leave me frustrated.

Can you believe this page was pulled together, start to finish in 15 minutes?! Here's how I did it:

  1. Start with coordinated products. Here I used Snowhaven paper and Complements.
  2. Keep embellishments simple. Just a length of twine and Glitz Glitter Gel added all the necessary sparkle.
  3. Trim and mat your photos on a single piece of paper. Keeping all your photos together on one mat creates a tidy visual space for them.
  4. Instead of creating a journaling spot, write directly on the white space in your photos.

One of the tricks I used to keep it simple was to use a single piece of patterned paper. The diagonal stripes along the bottom are actually the Zip Strip from the B&T Duos paper! Instead of trimming off the strip, I trimmed off a half-inch from the patterned paper.

For your next scrapbook page, look for the beauty in simplicity.