I promised to share how you can make simple but pretty (IMHO!) scrapbook pages with few tools and without spending a lot of money. Sorry for the delay…February was WAY busier than I expected! But, as promised, here is a recipe for five+ pages using everyday tools…4 photos + 3 paper strips + 4 paper triangles = FIVE scrapbooking pages!

What you need

• 4 photos
• 2 sheets of 8.5 x 11 colored paper (acid free preferred)
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Marker (acid free preferred)
• 12 x 12 scrapbook page or sheet of paper

Prepare your paper strips and triangles

You will end up with:

• One 11-inch x 1-inch strip of each piece of colored paper (mine are blue and orange)
• One 6-inch x 1.5-inch strip of orange paper
• Two 2.5-inch triangles of blue and orange paper (four triangles total)

If you don’t have a paper cutter, no problem! Lay your ruler along the shorter side of the orange paper and make a mark with your pencil 1 inch from the edge.

Do the same thing on the other edge. Use the ruler and your pencil to mark a light line connecting the two marks. Cut along the line with your scissors and you should have an 11-inch x 1-inch strip of orange paper. Repeat with the blue paper so you have one 11-inch x 1-inch strip of each color.

Repeat the process with the orange paper, this time cutting a 1.5 inch wide strip. Then measure and cut it down from 11 inches to 6 inches. You will use this strip for your page title.

Now to make triangles! I like to use triangles on my pages…sometimes lined up straight, sometimes tilted, sometimes as pointers. We are going to make an isosceles right triangle with two equal sides, but you don’t HAVE to make them even…feel free to mix it up! And if you want to impress the carpool, tell them you cut some isosceles and scalene triangles for your scrapbook page today.

Cut a 2.5-inch strip of orange paper across the shorter edge. Then measure 2.5 inches along the strip (remember to measure and mark both sides so you get a straight cut), mark a line and cut on the line. You should have a 2.5- inch SQUARE of orange paper. Now draw a light line from one corner of the square to the opposite corner. Cut on that line and you should have TWO triangles of orange paper. Repeat with the blue paper. Voila! You are DONE cutting paper for your layout!!

Prepare your pictures

Now it’s time to trim your pictures. I like to use two full sized pictures (mine are 4-inches by 6-inches) and two trimmed pictures (mine are 4-inches square). Learning to trim (“crop”) pictures becomes much easier the more you do it. And cropping pictures helps you learn to TAKE better pictures, too!

To crop a picture, use the same process as cutting paper strips. Measure, small marks, light line, and sharp scissors.

Look at the starfish picture. The main focus of the picture is the starfish.

Similarly, the main focus of the underwater snorkeler picture is the person facing the camera, not the legs of the snorkeler to the left. By lining them up, one of the other, you can see that both pictures could be cropped to four inches easily.

 

Time to do some layouts!!

I’m going to show you how you can do FIVE different layouts with these simple components. Note that we didn’t use a paper cutter, or any other special scrapbooking tool to prepare these materials. Just a ruler and scissors! For your layout, you need only three “special” scrapbooking items: a 12 x 12 scrapbook page or sheet of acid-free paper, an adhesive to attach the pictures and paper to the page, and an acid-free marking pen for writing the title and journaling.

Note that I did not glue down any of the items in the layouts below…so they might look a little crooked. But you get the idea! I also made little journaling strips, but you can write directly on the scrapbook page, on the strips of paper, etc.

Layout 1: Strips and Corners

You can use this over and over. Rotate it so the long strips are on the right, bottom or top of the page. Add a few small stickers along the long strip or on the corner triangles. Four different layouts just by changing this basic one!

Layout 2: Double Pointers

I like how the triangles really point your eyes toward the pictures. Again, this is a flexible layout. I had the long strips border the top and left side, but you can rotate that to any side. If you are doing a double layout (a facing page on the right), just mirror the layout so the long strips frame the two side-by-side pages on the outside and the center triangles point out toward your pictures on each page. Note that the title overlaps one picture and one journal strip is vertical. Feel free to break photo boundaries!

Layout 3: Center Title

Here I used the title as the focal point of the page but used the triangles to draw your eye to the pictures.

Layout 4: Three 4-inch Pictures

For this one, I trimmed the other tall picture (man in the sunglasses) to be 4-inch square. I played with the triangles to make a compass-like shape in the bottom left corner. The title overlaps the blue strip at the top. I tilted the starfish for a little more interest in the stack of 3 pictures and to leave a little space for journaling beside the starfish.

Layout 5: Tilting Title

Finally, I played a little more with the title, tilting it and using the triangles to frame it.

All five layouts took less than an hour!

A Hint on People in Pictures

Note that in each of the layouts, the man blowing the shell is always facing the middle of the page. The same is true for the man snorkeling. The man steering the boat is looking straight at you so his picture can in be in any spot on the page. It usually looks best when people are NOT looking “off the page.”

I hope that, if you new to scrapbooking that you will be encouraged (and excited!) to try a few layouts. Share your pics on the Scrappin’ Circle Facebook page!

Question? Comments? Welcome to add those below. No spammers or advertisers please!

Next time…Cropping and matting pictures!
Scrap on!
Marsha