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After working hard all day you finally get a few moments to yourself to work on a layout. You sit down at the table with your pictures and just stare at them. Where do you start? Many people are a little scissor-happy, cropping photos right off. But then when it comes to designing the page, they find that they made a few cuts that they wished they hadn’t made. Or you get all your photos and embellishments on the page and come to realize that you have no room left for journaling. This is where planning ahead can really help you make the most of your scrapping time and help you create beautiful, thought-out layouts.
A great way to get started on a layout is to spread out all the photos for a particular layout in front of you. From there, start weeding out the not-so-good photos, the blurry shots or the ones without the best composition. Have similar shots of the same thing? Sort through them to find the best one. It takes some people a while to realize that you don’t have to put all the photos from one event on a page. Just a few representative shots will do. Or maybe you want to do a one photo layout? Or do you need enlargements or reductions of some pictures? These are things to think about before you get going.
Once you have your photos picked, sketching layouts is one of the simplest ways to decide where you want to go with a layout. Sketching makes you think about things like the style and composition of the layout before a single cut is made. Where will your focal photo go? Will the title be horizontal or vertical? On the top or on the bottom? Where will the journaling go? Will there be any journaling? Is there somewhere to tuck in hidden journaling for more personal words?
That being said, there is no reason you have to stick to your original sketch. It’s just a good way to start, to get your creative juices flowing. This sketch made of “Discovery in Boots” doesn’t look much like the final layout at all.
Planning ahead before you ever cut a photo or write journaling helps to assure that you have all the tools and supplies close at hand when it comes down to the actual creation of the layout. Pulling out all the sheets of paper that might coordinate with your layout makes deciding on paper a bit simpler. This might also help you realize that a trip to your local scrapbook store is in order to get some coordinating paper or embellishments.
Just a little advanced planning will help keep your creativity flowing smoothly. Having enlargements made, sketching layouts and thinking about composition are all great ways to stay organized and help the creative process along.
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