Be Kind: Step-by-Step

I'm away in France for 10 days.  While I'm gone, I have a whole bunch of fun posts for you.  Here is today's....

I often get asked about my scrapbook page making process.  So I figured I'd go through the basics of how my brain works!

My first decision: what to use?  I decided to do a layout for one of my monthly Prima assignments.  So now I know that everything I use will be Prima.  Easy enough.

But what to do?

My husband and I had a conversation the night before I made the layout about kindness.

Aha!  What a great topic!

So I scrolled through my photos to find one of the two of us.

I found it and printed it.

Now what?

Given that it's Fall and the seasons are changing, I decided that I wanted to paint some leaves.  (Sometimes I'm motivated by a photo or a story and sometimes it's just technique that's rattling around my head.)

This made choosing a background paper easy!  I chose a floral paper with a light enough background that it was paintable.

I used black acrylic paint to create my basic leaves.

Once the acrylic paint was dry, I started in with the watercolors.

And I just kept adding color in layers...

...until I was satisfied!

Okay, now it was time to add my photo and a few flowers.

Ick!  Ick!  Ick!  I *hate* the way those white flowers look.  First, they're too small.  Secondly, they stand out too much.  Thirdly, they match the white flowers in the background paper and it's making me stare at the background paper instead of the photo.  I want all the focus to be on the photo!

Time for different flowers.

Ah!  Much better!  The scale is better and the colors are fantastic!  Whew!

Now before I go embellishment crazy, I want to make sure that I get the words on the page.  I want to make sure that I tell the story.

I drew some pencil lines for my journaling and added my title using felt letters.

Wow, that black really stands out!  I love how bold it is.  Because that vine is so colorful, it's really important for me to force the focus back to the photo.  A bold title and some black writing can help me do that.

The journaling really helps to balance the page.

I erased the pencil lines and took a step back.

You know, I could have left the page just like this.  It's a fine page.  Pretty.  But for design team assignments I always feel like I want to make it a little more special.

I wanted to add something that would have a lot of impact, but not feel heavy. 

I decided to audition some rhinestone swirls.

When I say "audition" what I mean is, I place them onto the layout while they're still on the transparent plastic backing.

This way I can see if I like them.

I liked the swirls, but I needed to cut them up a bit since they were going to get stuck behind some of the flowers.

A little bit of scissor action and voila!

Again, I could have stopped here.  But I wanted to add a little bit more texture and layering.  It's too obviously put together right now.

I sprinkled some tiny flowers across my leaves.

I knew that these tiny flowers would work because (a) the colors matched, (b) the scale was right, and (c) they had the same little hard yellow center (albeit smaller) as the larger flowers -- so they felt like part of a set.

Not to sound like a broken record, but I could have stopped here.  But I didn't.  I wanted to frame my layout.  I like to mix hard and soft, artsy and clean, together.  The tension between the two makes for a very satisfying look.

I trimmed the layout down to 11x11, rounded the corners and mounted it onto cardstock.

I did add a few tiny flowers to hide the wrinkles (the top paper was warped from the painting and adhering the two papers caused wrinkles), and had to adjust the word "kind" to fit on the page, but that's pretty much it!

Check out the details:

 I hope you've enjoyed taking a peek at how I create!  Let me know what you think.   What's your process for creating a scrapbook page?

Thanks for stopping by!