Taming the Lace

So, I decided to challenge myself to work with lace.  I needed to make a happy engagement card for my uncle.  He has spent his 50 years as a bachelor and now has finally found "the one".  Hooray!  So I set out to make a lovey dovey card and I wanted to use lace.

The lace did not want to behave.  It was very unruly, curling and bubbling here, there, everywhere!  Since I knew I was putting a panel over top of it, I decided to cheat and put some tape underneath the lace.

I got you good, wild lace! For the panel going over top of it, I knew the lace would be bulky under half. So I double mounted the top portion of the panel with foam tape and single mounted the portion going over top of the lace.

Tah-dah!  I used a sparkly marker on pink the hearts of the stamped tree.  It looks much sweeter in person.

For a first time using lace, what do you think?  I'm not a very frilly girl, so I don't know if I will use this medium again. You never know unless you try though!

Design Elements – My Style Journey

This is the final post in my style journey series.  I have already meandered through The Basics and Page Arrangement.  Now we'll talk about Design Elements.  Although there are nearly endless embellishments to use (and I own a hefty smattering of them), I noticed two elements in particular that frequently appear on my pages.

CORNER ROUNDING

(This layout was inspired by the "Happy Parents" layout below!)

While I do have a love of straight lines, I tend not to love hard corners much.  I use my corner rounders a lot.  I think it helps to make my leading lines more fluid and continuous than choppy and abrupt.  I especially like rounding two of the four corners to create a little more design interest.

It really is a simple thing: nothing fancy in the slightest, yet still effective to me.  I’ve been eyeing the Cropadile two-in-one Corner Chomper and can’t wait to have it.  I use both my ¼ inch and my half inch corner rounders with regular frequency, so it will be nice to have one tool that cuts both sizes.

CLEAN AND FLAT

No lumpy bumpy layouts for me: no bulky flowers, no metal or charms and rare chipboard.  I don’t mind distressing edges but not whole pages.  My style is definitely not shabby-chic, vintage, grunge or steam punk.  (While I love the look of steam punk, it’s just not how I design.)  My go-to embellishments are cardstock die cuts (or punches), buttons and pearls/dewdrops.  I’m starting to get into stamps and a little bit of ribbon.

While flipping through my albums, I found I disliked the pages with stickers and pre-designed borders the most.  I prefer to "frame" my layouts, more than "border" them.

Guess that means I can give away my deco scissors (except the scalloped ones!) and put all my stickers in to the next LSS garage sale!  Some stickers are okay, if they are large focal ones or dimensional but no longer will I buy the ones that came in a pack or a large sheet just because I thought was getting more stickers for my money.

SUMMARY:
To recap, my own personal style is:

• Big Titles
• Lots of Cardstock
• No particular colour preference
• Good use of negative space, preferably via photo clusters
• Straight-lines paired with corner rounding
• Clean and flat

There.  Now that I have examined my own work, I know what I should and should not buy.

DO BUY:

• cardstock,
• die cuts/punches/stamps
• buttons
• pearls/dewdrops/rhinestones
• corner rounders

 DON'T BUY:

• Patterned paper stacks
• Anything just because I like the colour
• Brads/Eyelets
• Stickers
• Ribbon (I have enough for the amount I use!)

I hope this personal guide can help you review your own style and cut your frivolous shopping in half too!

Page Arrangements – My Style Journey

Continuing on my style journey, we've already covered the basics.  Now we're going to consider page arranges: how do I like to place my designs?

WHITE SPACE

I learned that I like white space.  My pages are not all about what I put on them; they are also about what I don’t put on them.  White space can be used to corral the eye.  I feel like my pages that make good use of white space (or negative space since it isn’t always “white”) look the most like magazine pages.

I find an easy way to make good use of negative and positive space is to use a cluster photo layout.  I like when my photos are somewhat bordered in a cohesive pattern.

LEADING LINES

I like straight lines and geometric shapes.  I do deviate from straight lines and block shapes with fair frequency.  In those cases, I find the use of symmetry helps bring back some definition to the layout when the clean lines are absent.  These techniques lead the eye around the page.

While I tend to favour straight lines, I do have a soft spot for circles.  I use these in smaller bits: pearls, dew drops, buttons, or stacked medallion-type embellishments.  I don’t use eyelets much, even though they are circular.  I bought a Crop-a-dile II to set them and it really does make it easy!  I’m finding, however, that I prefer circles that don’t have a “backing” on the other side of the paper the way eyelets and brads do.  That means, I'm allowed to buy buttons, pearls/dewdrops and rhinestones, but brads and eyelets are off the list until I am completely out of them.

Pattern Seeker – My Style Journey

I am the pattern seeker.  That’s right.  I’m transforming my scrapbooking and cardmaking habits from being the product seeker to a pattern seeker.  I was inspired by a question on the Two Peas in a Bucket scrapbooking forum.  Someone asked how scrapbookers found their style.  Someone responded with a link to a series of blog posts where another scrapper documented her style reboot.  Here’s my journey.

When I read the question on Two Peas, I already had an idea of my style.  “Clean and simple” is my style but that definition is pretty general.  So, while I have an idea of my style, it’s still a fuzzy idea.  Let’s see if I can bring some clarity.

Some people suggested looking at the layouts and designers you admire, follow or bookmark.  Others suggested looking back at your own work and choosing your favourite layouts.  I know that the artwork I admire is often not an artwork I can imitate.  I like it but it’s not my style.  So, I decided looking at my own work would be a better place to start.  I’d rather analyze what I actually do than just what I like to fawn over.

I went through my scrapbooks and bookmarked a lot of pages.  (I don’t think I marked ANY pages in my two oldest scrapbooks.  That made me a little sad!)  As I marked them I started to notice common elements and I began a list.  That list is what I’m going to share with you to help you see pattern possibilities in your own work too.

BIG WORDS
The first thing I noticed is that almost all of my favourite layouts have titles.  These are not just any titles.  They are BIG titles.  The title is a major element of my page.  They range in size but are rarely smaller than half the size of the photographs.  Often, they are larger than the photographs.  Some people don't title their pages at all.  They prefer to let the photographs take centre stage.  For me, though, titles are a must!