It’s All Going to the Dogs!

Happy Monday! It’s nice to be back with another Make It Monday and a process video to boot! Don’t get used to all this, I’m sure the wheels will fall off my schedule bus again soon – LOL!

My partner in the store, Amanda, and I are trying to flood our social media feed with Valentine’s inspiration right now. Well, flood may be a strong term. “Fill”. “Sprinkle”. “Randomly post”. Those may all be a tiny bit more accurate. We didn’t bring in any new themed lines this year and that’s okay. There is only so much you can do with products that are overly cutesy, right? So today I want to show you how you can take a non-Valentine collection and make a very heart centred layout.

Watch it come together.

Did it help that Vicki put an all-over hearts pattern in her collection? Yes. Yes it did. I think you’ll find that in most collections these days there is at least one heart patterned paper. Here’s a closer look at the layout.

Is it wrong that I am having more fun scrapbooking my dog than my kids right now? This was a fun layout to put together – partly due to this collection. Vicki always designs amazing collections and her papers have such depth. She adds texture wherever she can. It’s awesome! See all the Print Shop products we have in store (as well as everything else from Viki Boutin).

I was disappointed that when I cut off the top of the paper (where it attached to the pad) it left it short of the 12″ height by about 1/4″. If you have this pad of paper too, be aware of that. Is it a deal breaker for purchasing other pads from her? No. It simply means I will have to make sure I have other full 12×12 papers I can use as a background.

In this case it lead me to back everything onto a piece of black card stock and I really love the frame it gives the layout. Plus it helps all the black accents make sense.

I won’t say that the title gave me trouble, it didn’t, but it did require a bit more fiddling than I initially thought. In the end though, I am super happy that I had fun with the word ‘awesome’, AND that I popped it up. Once I gave it the dimension it needed, it all started to make more sense and the rest of the design came together easily.

And it brings me to a point I feel doesn’t get said enough – don’t be afraid to cover up elements that aren’t working for you, and move other elements around until they do! I wanted the red of the journaling card but the sentiment printed on it really didn’t work. Cutting out the banner image from another journaling card and using that as both a way to cover the unwanted words, and a grounding spot for my title was the perfect solution to my design problem.

And finding a new home for this red sentiment strip helped tie in another element. I moved the phrase strip around a lot before trying it in the top left corner. As soon as I moved it, I knew it was meant to be. And once it was in place, the black banner die cut started to make sense there too. Popping this black banner die cut up reinforces the black accents throughout and helps your eye know where to look.

Because my background paper is so bold, your eyes could be tempted to roam all over the page and not know where to focus. Since the top left – where we traditionally start reading pages in Western Society – has two elements that stand out from the background, your eyes know to start there and move down the photo. Then they naturally move over to the journaling and title.

It’s a little bit like I planned it!

Thanks for joining me for another layout inspiration. If you liked this I’d love to hear about why. Leave a comment here or on YouTube so we can start a conversation – about layout design, dogs, Valentine’s Day … you name it!

Until next time, have a great week.

If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it with your friends.
This entry was posted in Make It Monday, Scrapbook and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.