Welcome to day 3 of “Jumpstart Week”! Christine here to take you through a week of Jumpstarts! We’ve covered layouts inspired by photos and colors. Today we will discuss how page DESIGN can be a jumping off point to inspire your layout.
For me personally, I am inspired by geometric shapes, or simply shapes of items that relate to my layout. For my layout about summer, I created a sunburst shape on my layout using paper strips, washi tape, and wood veneer arrows.
I live in Southern California and am always inspired by the ocean. For my “Beach Love” layout, I found a map of California online and used it to do a trace & cut with my Silhouette digital cutter. Using a map shape of a state or country is a great way to incorporate into travel layouts!
For this digital layout about my husband’s rock band, I wanted to create a feel of movement and music, so I created wavy shapes in Photoshop and used them as clipping masks for my digital papers.
Sometimes I just like to use a repeating shape on my layout for no good reason. In this layout about a date night with my husband, I cut a bunch of square papers into triangles and adhered them across the whole page.
On this layout I simply cut a bunch of arrow strips and sewed them onto the page.
I think it’s safe to say that I love incorporating shapes onto my layouts as a design element!
Another way to design a layout is to use a repeating shape. In Jennifer’s layout she used long strips of photo with numbers across her page to summarize their summer vacation.
For Jennie’s layout about her favorite photos of fall, she used a sketch and adapted it to her own liking. She incorporated a lot of squares onto her layout and tilted the whole design on the page.
For Jennie’s layout “Mister Sunshine”, she was inspired by the sunburst cut file and used it to fill in the gaps with a rainbow of patterned paper.
This layout by Jennifer H was perfect for her photo of the train ride. The sewn on paper strips look like train tracks!
A great way to jumpstart a page design is to use a sketch or digital template as a starting point. Celeste used a digital template by Gennifer Bursett for her digital page.
Another page by Celeste using a digital template by Sara Gleason.
Another way to jumpstart the design of your page is to scraplift someone else’s layout. Just be sure to credit them with the design if you post it to online galleries. Celeste liked Debbie Hodge’s layout “Sleepover”.
She used it as inspiration of her own layout “Muppets”.
One of my favorite design principles is the grid layout. I love looking at grid layouts! Lisa O used our Write.Click.Scrapbook. sketch for April to inspire a new layout. Here was the sketch.
And here’s Lisa’s layout. The photos are from her Garden board on Pinterest. The layout is about all the dreams that her family has for their garden and inspiration they get from Pinterest. The grid actually looks like a Pinterest board too!
And sometimes it's just plain fun to try a design that is out of your usual design element (pun intended). Amy S tried an experiment in design, as she wanted to do some things that she doesn't usually do: use one small photo and leave lots of white space. She wanted to see if she could make a layout with this design approach still feel like a layout she made (instead of copying from someone else). I'd say her experiment was a success!
Scrapbook pages can be inspired by page designs, shapes, sketches, templates, and even Pinterest! Sometimes the design of the page is just the jumpstart that you need to get scrapbooking!
