Anatomy of a Layout

When Maggie asked you guys what you'd like to see on the blog awhile back, one common request was to have a peek into our designing process. So I thought I'd walk you through the following layout from the Flea Market add on kit.

I start my design process very differently when I'm working with the kits. There are specific things I want to highlight, so I work with those things in mind instead of starting with the journaling or the photo. I didn't used to scrap this way, but I find it kind of fun and a very very good challenge.

This layout used only the Flea Market kit and I knew I wanted to use the following things: the A side of Tea Pot, the Hambly rub ons, the stamp set, and the Bella flower.

It started with the Tea Pot paper from Basic Grey. I was not particularly drawn to it, but I challenged myself to use the A side anyway. I am a B side girl. I admit it. Anyway, I was drinking my morning tea, in my very non-fancy cup and thought, "Hey, I should do a layout about how I love peppermint tea. But my cup is soooo ugly and not fancy, how embarrasing! I should go buy a cute cup and take a funky picture." Then the much more practical side of me said, "No, just take a picture of your reality. It's fine." So I sat my cup on the window sill and took a picture. It was not until later that I realized how perfect the blind slats would be for journaling lines.

{Suggestion: when you're taking a photo, see if you can naturally capture an element that would make journaling on the photo easy.}

My next step involved editing the photo. Honestly, peppermint tea is not a pretty peppermint green color. It's a dirty yellow color. Not a lovely thing. So I ran the photo through the Urban Acid action in Photoshop and played with it until I got the photo I wanted. Then I printed it off.



I initially had the green strip running down the entire left side of the layout. I love the look of split and stacked titles and I thought splitting the title up like I did would balance nicely with the green strip, but it didn't. However, cutting the paper off at the bottom of the picture did. Running the strip of salmony pink paper helped balance the title too. Using the Hambly rub on framed the bottom of the picture and paper, adding a bit of containment and directing the eye to the word "tea." Originally I had the tea pot in the top left corner of the picture, but then thought it might be fun to use it as an anchor to the word TEA. However, it kind of got lost. I'd been trying to find a place for the Bella flowers, since they kind of reminded me of tea bags. Using the one as an anchor for the tea pot and word ended up being just right. I had the pearl brad from the flower, so I used that as the dot for the "i," I think it added a nice elegance.

Adding the Bella flower made the title side a little stronger, but it also made it lopped sided, so I stamped the thread top stamp just under the top right side of the photo to add some visual weight. It needed more, so I went a little stamp happy. If I had it to do again, I'd keep them in the line of the title, notice the one that has veered off to the left? I don't like it. But hey...

Then figuring out the journaling, not as easy as I thought. I had to print out the photo again because I got too wordy. Oh, and just in case you don't know, use a Slick Writer when you write on photos.

And that is my anatomy of a layout. Thank you for joining me.