Sometimes when you take photos of an event, you get one or two decent shots, but the rest are a little bit blurry and not exactly 'stars of a scrapbook page'. But you really want to include them because they tell a story that you want to remember. At other times, you take photos of an event where everyone is wearing different, clashing colours and not even the most colourful scrapbook paper will help you tie them all in together.
The papers I used were My Mind's Eye Bloom and Grow "Bloom" collection - a gorgeous range with lots of orange, green and light blue tones which are my favourite colour combinations at the moment. The chipboard pieces are from the Basic Grey Offbeat collection - you get so many in a pack and they help add the finishing touch to all sorts of layouts.
On these occasions, one thing to do is to convert some photos to black and white. Whilst it can work to combine all your photos to black and white, sometimes its nice to have some colour on the page. When I want to combine both black and white and colour photos on the same page, I find it helps to make one photo a definite focal point. I normally keep this one in its original colour. I then convert several smaller images to black and white, helping to add to the story without taking too much focus from the main image.
You can use all kinds of photo-editing software to convert images - you may have installed one with your printer or camera, but I find that Picasa 3 is a very simple and easy to use free software provided by Google which allows you to organise and edit your photos. Once you have uploaded your library of photos, you simply need to double-click on your chosen photo and an editing menu will appear, allowing you to change your photo into black and white easily (or into sepia if the mood takes you!). Here is a link to the software.
On this layout, most of the photos I took of this impromptu board game were of very poor quality - the main photo was the best of a bad lot thanks to poor lighting and drunken camera handling! So I kept the supporting photos small and converted them to hide the flaws.
The papers I used were My Mind's Eye Bloom and Grow "Bloom" collection - a gorgeous range with lots of orange, green and light blue tones which are my favourite colour combinations at the moment. The chipboard pieces are from the Basic Grey Offbeat collection - you get so many in a pack and they help add the finishing touch to all sorts of layouts.
Just to show how much you can do with just a few sheets of paper, I created this second layout, a simple 6 by 12, using only scraps of paper and some more of the chipboard pieces - the papers are so vibrant, they are just perfect for this holiday snap.
Thank you so much for all the tips - I am just starting out in scrapbook layouts and just don't have a clue where to get all the 'extras' that make it. Like the chipboard embellishments
ReplyDeleteA good tip about the photos - will have a go at downloading the software
Once again - huge thanks
Good tip on turning photos to black and white when they are less then perfect. I find that to work well when the colors in my photo really aren't right. LOVE your layout and all of the neat accents.
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