Ideas & Techniques for Adding Trendy Contour Lines to Your Scrapbook Page

Contour lines represent elevations on a topographical map and our creative team’s top trendspotter, Karen Poirier-Brode noted this trend’s emergence after winter 2014 CHA. We’ve put together a pinboard of contour-line inspiration and asked our team to make pages that incorporate this wonderfully organic and representational motif.

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Marcia Fortunato says, “One weekend last month, my husband, my son, and I took an impromptu road trip through parts of Ohio. This layout is an overview of that trip.”

“This contour-line patterned paper came in a Studio Calico scrapbook kit I received last fall. It was perfect for this layout since we traveled through areas of the state that varied in topography and our primary destinations were ancient moundworks. In addition to the patterned paper, I echoed the contour lines by outlining and matting my photos and some of the embellishments.”

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Kelly Prang says, “Contour lines remind me of topographical maps, so I used such a map of a favorite local hiking spot along with a paper that had contour lines layered over a notebook paper. I lowered the opacity of the top layered paper. I drew color inspiration from the map, which featured  light green, with touches of red.”

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Judean Patten-Clark says, “I took this picture last summer of my husband and two daughters going for a sunset swim. The light was magical, as was the experience of being on the lake in the summertime with our little family. I knew I wanted to capture something about the magic of our location as well as depict a sense of place and season: island, lake, and summer.”

“I made the two little watercolor paintings with this in mind, and used a DIY tutorial I found on the web. The tutorials was to paint agate slices, but the concentric organic shapes looked like contour maps to me. I chose colors that went with my photos and used them as supporting elements on my page. The paintings remind me of the islands dotting our lake, and the blues and greens evoke the colors of the water and trees. I chose a Henry David Thoreau quote as my title because I thought it fit in exceptionally well with both the little canvas that I used to paint on, and the magic of the natural world.”

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Sian Fair says, “This page gave me a chance to put down thoughts on how my eyesight has changed over the years.”

“As my photo contains the  strong black lines of my new glasses I sought to echo those by turning my journaling into contours. I planned with a rough sketch first – how many lines I’d need – before lightly pencilling the contours onto my patterned paper and then journaling by turning my paper as I wrote.”

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Amy Kingsford says, “This page is about a family trip to Yellowstone. I used a few different contour patterned journal cards and patterned papers in the design of this page, one of which I made by myself–starting with a swoopy piece of digital word art which I selected and then repeatedly expanded and stroked. One tip is to vary the pixels by which your are expanding the selection for a more interesting look.  You can also fill in the rings of your design with different colors or opacities using your paint bucket tool.”

“I thought this trendy pattern was particularly suited to my page not only because it is a travel-themed page but also because the contour pattern reminds me of the geyser pools we saw in Yellowstone.”