So many of you comment to me "How do you come up with a two-page layout design?" Well for classes it's a little more involved, but for my own books - like the spread here - I follow the KISS principle. "Keep It Simple, Sister"
If you have kids, you have a multitude of photos of the same event and, if you're like me, have trouble choosing which ones to use (because you want to use them all!). In this layout, I selected five photos of my boys playing in the marsh. In order to "Keep It Simple", I employ the following never-fail design principles:
Technique #1. Enlarge one photo in your layout and make it the focal point. Here I made the photo on the far right 6x8. The rest are 3 1/2 x 5.
Technique #2. Use your other photos as supporting photos to draw the eye effortlessly across your layout. Your eye naturally reads from left to right, so your two page layout should take advantage of that. Here I placed the focal photo on the right page and allowed the supporting photos to bring my eye there. I kept the supporting photos in the same relative size. The sizes can vary slightly if you want (keeps things from getting too boring), but something needs to bring them together - color (making the supporting photos all black and white and the focal one color), size, common patterned paper mats, position on the layout- something to harmonize them.
Technique #3. Anchor your focal photo. I typically use an embellishment, title, journaling box, circle of brads or something to anchor the focal photo. It isn't always the far right corner, but it is a lot!
Technique #4. Sex it up! Simple doesn't mean it can't be sexy. Use hand cut pieces from patterned paper, brads, punched embellishments (here I punched dragon flies and inked them), torn layered mats (I have been known to tear and layer the background paper even if it was the same paper!). On this layout, I used long single torn mats and embellished them with the wooden brads with hand cut leaves as "petals". You can also use scraps as an offset mat (as I did with the green paper behind the focal photo on the right). Add photo corners - you can make them yourself easily - cut the length twice the width , e. g. 2" x 1", and fold in the center on a 90 degree angle to make perfect photo corners every time! But remember to keep the design in balance. Too much of anything can throw the design off and make your page look cluttered. Again, keep it simple...
Keep it simple by using these 4 easy techniques and you'll have beautiful two-page layouts every time!
2 comments:
I myself always struggle with 2 pagers -I never scrap in that format in my books and I just have a hard time training my brain to 'go there' - thanks for the tips and I will definitely be trying them out.
These are some great tips -- I love doing two page layouts for my own books, so it will be fun to incorporate some of these techniques into my own designs.
Post a Comment