Motivated to Scrapbook | Ronnie Crowley Lets Her Photos Sing

From the very start, Ronnie Crowley‘s scrapbooking has been all about the pictures. She started out making collage frames for photos of her children.  Then soon after attending her first Creative Memories party she was embracing the hobby of scrapbooking full on and searching for ways to let her photos take center stage.

For Ronnie Crowley, scrapbooking has always been about saving her pictures and letting them be the center of attention.

Ronnie’s cool thing right now is designing photocentric pages.  

Ronnie says, “From the very start my scrapbooking has been all about the pictures. I originally started making collage frames for my kids and my plan was to make one for each year of their lives. Then a friend invited me to a Creative Memories party and it wasn’t long before I embraced the hobby full on. When I look back at my earlier pages I can see the same basic structure I use today.

Every page I make starts with the question: ‘Where do I want people to start their journey on my page?’  Then I build my page around this.

Friends by Ronnie Crowley | Supplies: Anita Designs – Connected; Dawn by Designs – Sophisticate; The Big Title Templates by The Ardent Sparrow

Let your choice of embellishments enhance your photos.  

“I want and have always wanted the picture to be the star of the page and not what I have added. The additions are there to enhance the beauty of the picture. It’s like adding make-up to your face. Your natural beauty is what you want to stand out. The addition of eye make-up is to add to the beauty of the eyes you already have.”

“I just loved this picture I took on my phone. It’s only one picture which I used three times, to create a cluster of picture as the focal point of the layout. The use of the overlapping pictures helps support the focus on the picture as one. If there had been space between the pictures then for the design I would have to selected one picture as my focal.”

Breathless by Ronnie Crowley | Supplies: Anita Designs – Tranquility; Crystal Livesay – Breathless Templates; Scotty Girl Designs – Skinny Stitches

You can learn a lot from how others see your pages.  

“I’m constantly learning about design by taking classes. My greatest source of inspiration in the last 12 months has been the Guided Study Critique classes at Get it Scrapped. Having people willing and able to give critical feedback on what I’m doing on layouts has allowed me to take my layouts to another level.  And by being asked to critique others’ pages it has given me a better eye for seeing what works and what doesn’t. Although design principals seemed a bit boring at first I think a study of them can really help develop your pages. “

“This page is for a trip album I’ve been working on it was just a short stop at a beach for lunch but I wanted to include the pictures to show how my son spent his time exploring and my focal point had to be the pictures including my son. I used the bracket on the left hand side picture re-enforced with a cluster to make is the focal and added a small cluster with a tilt on the picture on the picture on the right side to draw the readers eye to my secondary focal.” 

Exploring by the Sea by Ronnie Crowley | Supplies: Crystal Livesay – Spring Fling Template; Creashens – Newport; Simply Tiffany Studio Window Systems Templates – set 4