Page Accents - good exercise in Not "Over Thinking"!
I was thinking last night, whilst preparing my demonstration for this afternoon's crop, that it is actually helpful for people to watch the process of making scrapbooking layouts. By this I mean the process of how I make the various choices for what goes on a page and where.
To this end I try to show my notes and/or sketches and practise pieces in order to convey how I achieved a particular item on my scrapbooking layout.
This month’s crop subject was Page Accents.
I think these items are particularly useful for using up all those scraps we have piling up after a project. They are great for using up the bits and pieces left over, such as odd alphas, stickers, die cuts… in fact anything.
They can be used for Scrapbooking layouts, but also for cards. They are home-made “toppers” if you like.
A good way to approach the subject is to gather a few bits together and then make up a page accent without anything in particular in mind. It frees the mind, just to put a few papers, stickers and other embellishments together for their own sake and not to try to match things to a photo.
I have found that a page accent I had already made, actually matched a photo perfectly and all I added then was a background and some journaling. (see picture above)
Page accents are ideal as a quick fix for pages… so a scrapbooking layout would actually only include a background, a photo and the page accent… hey ho… you’re done! And if your picture is black and white, you can make up the page even quicker as you’re not dictated to by the colours in the photograph!
Some people find it difficult at first to stop trying to “match” what they are making to particular page they may have in mind. I call this “over thinking” and it is something of which we are all guilty.
The beauty of Scraps
To this end I try to show my notes and/or sketches and practise pieces in order to convey how I achieved a particular item on my scrapbooking layout.
This month’s crop subject was Page Accents.
I think these items are particularly useful for using up all those scraps we have piling up after a project. They are great for using up the bits and pieces left over, such as odd alphas, stickers, die cuts… in fact anything.
They can be used for Scrapbooking layouts, but also for cards. They are home-made “toppers” if you like.
A good way to approach the subject is to gather a few bits together and then make up a page accent without anything in particular in mind. It frees the mind, just to put a few papers, stickers and other embellishments together for their own sake and not to try to match things to a photo.
I have found that a page accent I had already made, actually matched a photo perfectly and all I added then was a background and some journaling. (see picture above)
Page accents are ideal as a quick fix for pages… so a scrapbooking layout would actually only include a background, a photo and the page accent… hey ho… you’re done! And if your picture is black and white, you can make up the page even quicker as you’re not dictated to by the colours in the photograph!
Some people find it difficult at first to stop trying to “match” what they are making to particular page they may have in mind. I call this “over thinking” and it is something of which we are all guilty.
The beauty of Scraps
The beauty of using our scraps is that we aren’t using our precious “save that for a special page” papers and embellishments and therefore we should feel a more free to experiment and make the page accent purely for the sake of it.
A good way to do this is to use some papers you may have received as a free gift with a magazine or similar. I have a number of papers (usually in collection of 6 at a time) which I gain from Scrapbook Inspirations each month.
A lot of the time they are collections of papers I would not ever choose for myself, but as they are ready-made collections of complimentary colours and designs, I make use of them to get me thinking outside of my usual “comfort zone”. I can usually find embellishments, etc to match them from the “left-overs” of packs which I have bought.
A good way to do this is to use some papers you may have received as a free gift with a magazine or similar. I have a number of papers (usually in collection of 6 at a time) which I gain from Scrapbook Inspirations each month.
A lot of the time they are collections of papers I would not ever choose for myself, but as they are ready-made collections of complimentary colours and designs, I make use of them to get me thinking outside of my usual “comfort zone”. I can usually find embellishments, etc to match them from the “left-overs” of packs which I have bought.
In this way I have 'made' myself think
differently and it can be satisfying
to see the end result has worked well.
For things like page accents, whether for scrapbooking layouts or cards, it often pays to make use of free goodies that wouldn’t necessarily be your “usual” style, just to see what you can achieve.
So I urge you to pull out a few papers, a couple of embellishments, and maybe some ribbons and just make up a page accent or two just as an exercise in a little free thinking.
The magazine I mentioned earlier, Scrapbooking Inspirations, does have a regular feature at the moment regarding Page Accents and they are a good source of ideas for getting you started.
Visit my Scrapbuddies site to see how some of the group got on with their Page Accents.
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