If you’re a patterned paper lover, surely you’ve got a stash of papers calling to you. Challenge yourself to shake up your scrapbooking page storytelling process by starting with a patterned paper and color before your photos or story. It will give you a chance to play with new techniques and products and yield unexpected story angles.[hr]
Marcia Fortunato says, “I got this background paper in a recent scrapbook kit, and I immediately thought it would work well on a layout using a photo of a sunset.”
“This page shows a photo I took of a beautiful summer sunset, and the journaling speaks of how happy I was that I was able to finally get a sunset photo unobstructed by trees. I paired this photo with the background paper since it had similar tones of pink, and then I selected a turquoise paper to use as a mat for the photo. I felt it still needed more grounding, so I stamped with inks in the colors that are in the photo. Finally, I cut the title from watercolor paper and painted it to coordinate with the photo.”
Marie-Pierre Capistran says, “I loved this patterned paper with oversized center-pointing chevrons the first time I saw it, and I thought I’d need to use it with a picture on which I want to bring the viewer to focus on one particular part of the picture.”
“The perfect picture to go with it is one of my daughter taking a fondant figurine I made on her birthday cake. The story is that I spend hours on her cake each year and I always hope we can keep it one week or so to just look at it, but her, all she wants is to eat those figurines! The chevrons are great to highlight the act of taking the figurine. The pale pink picks up the hint of pink and the skin tones and make a beautiful contrast with the blue of the other patterned papers and of the cake.”
Audrey Tan says, “I was taken in by this photography-themed background patterned paper and knew I had to use it for my selfie-photo project.”
“This page is about documenting my selfie project. With a group of best friends, we churn out a selfie each week based on a theme that we make up. Hopefully at the end of this year, we will have a reflection of our selfies taken this year. I go a step further and create a page with every selfie that I take so that I have an album.”
Gretchen Henninger says, “I started with bold green patterned papers because green is my favorite color.”
“I then chose a photograph of my husband and me in Iceland. When were were there, I kept saying that their national colors should be green, black and white because these colors dominated the landscape. This photo not only has the green, black and white landscape, but my green jacket and my husband’s black jacket as well.”
Sue Althouse says, “I started my layout by piecing together a background of three patterned paper bands: a bold, playful polka dot on the bottom, a small grid in the middle and a tone-on-tone watercolor at the top.”
“A warm color palette unites all three and a geometric border sticker completes the design. I enjoy combining patterns like this to create a new look. This page is about the baby shower for our daughter in-law. The colors in the photos and the festive occasion were a good match for my background of color and pattern.”
Katie Scott says, “I wanted to work with library themed papers since I am always drawn to them while shopping but then rarely end up using them.”
“I recently took a trip back home and photographed lots of my family’s old books which are nostalgic for me. These photos of my family’s old books are a good match for these papers. I made one traditional 12×12 page and paired it with a pocketed 12×12 page since I had lots of photos that I wanted to include.”
Debbie Hodge says, “I bought these outdoor-themed papers last Friday, and challenged myself to use them over the weekend.”
“I’m finishing up an album for my mom of our time together in 2013 and these photos of water fights were OK, but I wasn’t sure I’d scrapbook them because I had so many photos and it seems I scrapbook this topic every year and these photos weren’t really grabbing me. The targets on the papers, though, gave these photos great energy, and I’m so glad I scrapbooked them.”