Insider Tips: "So Ready"

What you'll see here on the blog every Thursday now is something we're calling "Insider Tips". Whomever is scheduled to blog that Thursday will provide some insight to one of her layouts... either a step by step of a technique, a discussion of the design of her layout, why she used a certain product, etc. There was a huge request for this when Maggie posted asking what YOU would like to see here on the blog, so once again SC delivers! :)

Okay, so onto the good stuff. I'm always hesitant to post my "process" because I'm horrible at putting it into words. But this is a layout I'm really pleased with, so I'm hoping I can pull it off. ;) This layout is one I did for the "Back To School" challenge that Joy and Davinie posted last week. I'm going to talk a little bit about the way I used color on this page.

This layout came together really quickly. Those amazing Cosmo Cricket Boyfriend papers had been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks and I was waiting for just the right photo to pair them with. Then, when Erika posted the link on the message board to this cool site, which turns your photos into polaroids, I knew I wanted to use this photo of my oldest on his first day of Kindergarten.

Now, in this photo, Jackson is wearing a dark navy blue shirt. There isn't any navy in these Cosmo papers, but by adding the black accents it pulls everything together. Notice how there are three places where your eye finds the black on the layout...in the chip letters, the buttons in the top left and the punched border above the journaling strip. You will also notice that the other colors are repeated in "threes" as well...the blue chip circle, blue button in the title and the blue paper on the right side of my layout. Then with the yellow...the pencil paper, the circles in the blue paper and the letters in the title. Some people call this using the "Visual Triangle", which really helps bring all of the elements together on your layout.

Okay, that's it for this edition of "Insider Tips"....lol. Happy Thursday! :)