I can often be found drooling over the elaborate layouts displayed by the owner of my local scrapbook shop. Her page designs are beyond phenomenal. They are crammed with unique embellishments, creative photo arrangements and memorabilia that I’d never consider placing on a scrapbook page.
The purpose of the shop owner making these grand masterpieces is two-fold. First, she features as much of the shop’s new merchandise in her monthly page designs to show customers how they too can incorporate the items in a variety of ways in their own memory albums. This not only gets one’s creative juices flowing, but it also helps push the shop’s new stock.
The other reason the shop owner crafts these sample pages is to illustrate various scrapbooking techniques. This month she highlighted sale merchandise to show that you can get more for less. For example, now that Easter is over, the shop is selling a slew of pastel-colored patterned paper at drastically reduced prices. While one may see the paper and automatically discount its relevance given that spring is almost over, the shop owner illustrated various ways you could make use of the less expensive paper to add more visual interest to a layout.
One of the ideas that struck me was the owner’s use of layering. She trimmed sheets of coordinating patterned paper with scalloped-edged scissors, and then layered the strips to create a ruffled background. She then embellished the background by curling a few of the paper strips to add another dimension. If you don’t like the look of paper curls you could simply use the strips as is and gather them to create a faux ribbon accent. Just secure each partially folded paper loop with a small glue dot, and then add small notches at the edge of the strip to complete the design.
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