Book Review: Designing with Details

Designing with Details - How the little things make all the difference in your pages
Publisher: Autumn Leaves
Contributors: Leslie Lightfoot, Renee Camacho, Cathy Blackstone, Marilyn Healey, Jackie Bonette, Jennifer McGuire, Lisa Russo, Kelli Crowe, Jamie Waters, Mellette Berezoski, Gillian Nelson, Rhonda Bonifay, Patricia Anderson, Margie Scherschlight, Ashley Calder, Danielle Thompson, Robyn Werlich and Candice Carpenter
104 pages
£15.99

Designing with Details explores the idea that the 'wow' of any layout comes in part from the little details. The book aims to show us how to add these irresistible touches to our own layouts. There are four chapters: Handmade, Everyday Delights, Unexpected Treasures and Gallery of Miscellany.

The Handmade chapter opens with a comment about the joy of finding a handmade treasure and then goes on to show ways to create a treasure of your own. Handmade touches such as stitching, quilting, knitting and knotting are just a few of the ideas demonstrated here.

Everyday Delights focuses on the inventive use of older products in your stash. Let the designs inspire you to rummage through your stash for that pack of embellishments you bought on impulse some time ago but never found the perfect photo for. Here you'll see that maybe you do have the perfect photo after all.

Unexpected Treasures will have you looking at hardware stores, haberdasheries and even your kitchen cupboard in a totally different way. Wooden mouldings, hooks & eyes and washers all get a look-in as the designers use things which would not usually find their way into our stash

If you're looking for an inventive way to use that particularly vast collection of something or others, this is the section for you. Pages with hundreds of buttons or tags or brads or just about anything really. Each spread in the chapter sees the designers challenged to use a particular element. And use them they do! Of course, you may not have a vast collection of something or others, in which case, you may find yourself heading out to buy one!

Of all the books in the 'Designing with...' series, this has to be my favourite to just sit and browse through. It keeps me coming back for a second (and third and fourth!) look, poring over the detail in every layout. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the hardware store...

Here are a few samples of how you can scraplift pages from books from our design team...

This one is done by Deb. The first page is from the book...

This one is the scraplift that Deb did. As you can see she kept alot of the same elements as the page from the book but gave it her own touch.



This lift is done by Chloe. This is the page from the book...

Chloe's decided to take the tag elements from the top of the page and use them as the basis on her own page.



I chose to scraplift this one by Jamie Waters...

I turned the page round to accommodate my portrait photo but otherwise lifted it pretty much as is.


Cardstock: Bazzill; Patterned paper: Fancy Pants True; Ribbon: Basic Grey Hang 10; Buttons: foof-a-La Dad's Ties; Rub-ons; Gin-X and American Crafts; Other: clip, stamps, Versamark and Staz-on.