Welcome to day 4 of Jumpstart Week. This week we are looking at the different ways that you can jumpstart your scrapbook page. We looked at Photos, Colors, and Design so far. Today we will look at techniques.
Trying a new technique is a great way to jumpstart a page. There are so many different techniques that I want to try on my layouts! For my “Beach Love” layout, I really wanted to try hand-stitching on my page. After I put down some papers and my photos and got a general idea of where I want to stitch, I stitched the word “LOVE” and an arrow in the upper left hand corner. I also stitched a star on the lower right corner to balance things out.
You can even stitch on Project Life journal cards. I stitched the speech bubble onto a 3x4 journal card and adhered my photo inside it.
On this layout, I hand-stitched the sun rays using twine.
Another technique that I wanted to try on a page was emboss & resist with watercolors. I did that on my layout about going to AT&T Park for baseball game.
Here’s a close-up of what the emboss and watercolor resist looks like.
If you’re interested in trying this technique, I have a video tutorial on my blog here.
For my page “Catch a Wave”, I wanted to simulate looking at things underwater through a porthole, so I created punched out circles on the bottom of the page and filled some of them with two layers of vellum and sequins and wood veneers in between. I think this see-through effect is a fun look.
Another technique I love is filling cut-outs with patterned papers underneath. For my layout below, I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the circles with hearts in them, and filled the hearts with coordinating patterned papers underneath. Pretty fun!
Lisa O created this layout by using the punched out negative space paper strips as mats behind her photo. She had punched out a bunch of butterflies and saved a few strips of the papers to use for the layout. 
So clever!
Jennie also wanted to use the negative space of a die cut on a page. The mat with the hearts cut out really pop off the page!
Laura O wanted to try some Photoshop actions on her photo. Laura says, “I used a photo action (Adrienne Looman Little Kisses). For something like this I always duplicate the photo to apply the filter and keep the original. I know that someday I might want to see how things really looked. With this photo the effects of the filter were so fun and super saturated I was inspired to scrap it with this polaroid frame and colorful papers.” Photoshop actions are a great digital technique to try!
Jennie wanted to incorporate letterpress into a 12x12 layout. She used that technique to create this page “The Great Outdoors”.
Another technique that Jennie wanted to try was to use large photos cut up into several smaller slots on a Project Life layout. That looks so cool!
Want to use up all your alphabets? Why not use the leftovers to create some visual interest? Jennie used it as part of her title + as an embellishment/page element. So creative!
There are many techniques that I still want to try. I keep a list of them in Evernote so that if when I have some time to experiment, I can go down the list and try something out. Trying out new techniques is a great way to jumpstart a page!
