Starting a new

Hey!

Welcome to my fresh new blog. Here I hope to create, inspire and evolve into a better crafter. And share my knowledge, experience and downfalls with you along the way.

I hope to share at least one layout with you every day, anyone that knows me knows that I love a challenge and so this is my latest!

Today I want to kick things off by sharing this mornings layout with you. It was inspired by a sketch from creative scrappers

http://creativescrappers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/cs-sketch-264-revealed.html?m=1

Have a look at the link to see how unusually similar my page looks to their sketch!

I say this because I tend to go off track, take my own way when I do things that other people have done. But I guess that's what sketches, starting points etc are for, I see them as beginning but not necessarily how it ends.

Anyways here it is:

As you can see it's VERY bright, I'm not afraid of colour whether it's bright or muted... Maybe that's why I find it hard to narrow down my style???

I attempted to dampen down the loud colour by doing 2 things. Firstly I used a plain black Card stock as a base. This grounds all of the splashes of patterned loveliness. Secondly I used plain white as embellishment and to mat some of the patterned pieces. This helps to lift and separate the stacked patterns and to mellow the bright patterns out.

Can you imagine what that will have looked like if I'd have used even more pattern on top???

Further embellishment called for little yellow enamel dots, this leads the eye across the page, from one point to another to draw your attention to different aspects of the page.

The ice cream, well that's just there because I've been dying to use it for week! It doesn't really correspond to anything on my page, not even the story but I don't think it looks out of place either, so one more lesson for today... Embellishment doesn't have to be linked directly to your story for it to make sense.

For example book pages are not just for layouts about reading as ice creams are not just for pages of someone eating an ice cream!

We can interpret embellishments any way we like, we are not limited to using something just because of what it is. To me, this layout screams summer and ice creams do the same, so in my head the 2 are linked, you can do the same. Everybody doesn't need to 'get it' and no doubt that not everybody will but scrapbooking is personal and if it makes sense and works for you then it's great! Please remember that.

To finish this page, and how I usually finish my pages, I added journaling and a title.

The hot pink brings together the other pink elements and the black tones it all once more.

I can't stress how important journaling is on our pages, these are meant to be kept for years, maybe hundreds of years so that our family and loved ones can remember and relive our memories, even their own through our layouts. If we don't add words about what we were doing or how we felt, how will they know? It won't tell a story, it will simply be a picture stuck on a page. Just something to think about xxx

Ok so enough analysing and teaching from me for today, please come back tomorrow for more scrappy goodness xxxxx