Scrapbook Kits & Coordinating Paper

As I've mentioned, I'm a huge fan of scrapbooking kits for those of us who are just starting out. In this next layout, I nixed the idea of creating two 12 x 12 pages for each event (phew!). The kit I picked up at Michael's came with about five different patterned papers - all of which coordinated beautifully. In this page, I used four of those patterns and pieced them together in this order:

Step One: I selected the polka-dot paper for my base page.

Step Two: I selected the dark brown wood-like paper for my photo mattes. (I wanted to select a paper that matched the dark brown polka-dots in the base page, and also one which would make the outfits in the photos "pop".) I matted the photos using glue dots and my trusty Fiskars and set them aside.

Step Three: I picked the busier two toned leafy pattern and cut big blocks of it to place over the base page. (Truthfully, this is where the art of scrapping gets a little tricky. You sorta just have to play around with the blocks and the matted photos from Step Two to figure out the overall "look" of your page.)

Step Four: I picked a fourth paper, which had a larger leafy pattern and lots of empty space for journaling. (I also cut a small piece of this paper and placed it behind my vellum title. More about vellum titles later. )


Novice tip: By using "blocks" of the busier leafy pattern paper AND of the larger leafy pattern paper, I created some repetition and balance. Result? Fabulous layout, if I do say so myself!