Hi there! Carolina here today being truly honored to be part of the Creative Team designing for the amazing collections from Sahin Designs!
I would like to introduce myself sharing with you the 12×12 cover page of my project life album for 2016. But before I continue with the layout I would like to highlight a couple of ‘reasons behind my layouts;
- I like to pair the pictures’ palette with the cards/elements/papers I am using at that moment. If not possible, black and white pictures are the option then!
- I normally choose soft colors for the layouts. White is always a must for me.
- I like using a maximum of 2 colors to play with white.
Having in mind these ‘principles’ my layout ended up like this:
On this layout I wanted to show the most important thing for me at this time of the year, my family. And especially my two little girls. My house looks a little bit like what I wanted to show in the pictures, a floor full of soft toys from my toddler and a baby to take care about.
When I saw the Midnight collection and the colors which were used to design it, I knew immediately I was going to pair some of the cards with the color of my daughter’s soft toys. I also paid attention to the type of cards, what they say, the style, etc so I can get closer to the ‘theme’ of the spread.
I am going to explain a bit further every pocket and what I used from the Midnight collection. From left to right and top to bottom:
First 6×4 card shows a full picture of the busy feet of my little angel. The remaining space was ideal to use the black label from the Midnight collection elements and print it out with the word hello as to welcome the new year! An enamel dot matching the range of colors of this layout finished the card. Plain and simple but fine and elegant, without overdoing it.
On the next 6×4 card I used the word art ‘bright’ again from the Midnight collection elements and added the number 2016 from the gold alphas. One more silver star before the 2016 as to continue with the ‘bright’ idea for the new year. Done 🙂
The next row of 3×4 cards are basically a support of the bottom 6×4 cards. As I did not have journaling here on the cover page, I used the cards from the Midnight collection, again always matching the palette from the pictures. So the first 3×4 card pairs the colors from the soft toys of the picture from the next one. The picture is a full photo of the toys while my daughter was playing with them on the floor.
On the next 3×4 I used an element from the collection. To me it really looked so clean, simple, direct to the point in the center of the card. The black circle with the letter B and the word ‘beginnings’. Perfect!
The last 3×4 card from the collection just shows the repetition Happy New Year over and over so, it was spot on to think of adding a wood veneer banner that said ‘move forward’ to the year ahead!
The next 6×4 is part of the cards from the collection. Nice and big ampersand (always so appropriate!). I simply added a little black banner from the elements that said New Year and stitched it down beside the ampersand.
The last 6×4 card shows a full picture of my daughter’s smallest soft toys (that are actually magnets I bought long time ago and my daughter has ‘borrowed’ from the fridge!). The joy of seeing my daughter enjoying them seems enough to use the ‘joy’ hand written word from the Midnight collection of elements. One little wood veneer more and the spread is done!
And this is how it looks on my album!
Hope you guys have enjoyed it!
And now, as part of my introduction, as it is the first post I write as a Creative Team Member for Sahin Designs, I would like to tell you briefly about how I get done my spread through a hybrid process.
It is quite similar to the traditional way of scrapbooking but I usually start with the computer.
As soon as I have the pictures I want to use for that spread (and remember I try to pair palettes, themes, etc so I tell one story on it) I open Photoshop and open them all in the program. The orientation of the pictures gives me a fair idea of where they might be but I do not choose the final location until I have the rest of the cards chosen. Only then is when I start playing around with location of cards and pictures! 🙂
The next step for me is to go through journaling cards, decorative cards, elements and papers. This on traditional scrapbooking means a huge mess on your desk hahaha but on hybrid only means that I open a folder for every type of items I want to use like cards, elements and papers for example. After going through the files on every folder, I usually pick the ones that I think might match my pictures and drag them into Photoshop again. So far, my laptop screen looks more or less like this:
It might look messy but it really is easy and quick to manage as I can move around windows, overlap the elements just dragging them onto photos, cards, etc.
From here, my next step is playing around with what I have and the best way that works for me is to create a new 12×12 blank page where I can drag in all the photos, elements and cards I like. This is like the 12×12 plastic pocket spread but with the advantage of moving things around with a click of the mouse so much quicker! and without losing any time the same perspective.
This is the fun time for me 🙂
Once I am happy matching and moving and showing and hiding elements with Photoshop that I am unsure about, I come back to edit properly the cards so I can print them out and finish them up with some dimensional touches.
I like my spreads clean and bright so I do not really like overdoing the spread with the embellishments. Small touches here and there and I place them inside the pockets. The satisfaction of seeing the spread after having a preview of it on my computer is worth every second of fun!
Hoping I have showed to you guys how I am inspired with this brief tutorial and looking forward to seeing you on my next post!
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