I absolutely LOVE digital scrapbooking – such a creative and fun hobby for me!  I used to really enjoy graphic and art classes when I was in school, even though I never considered myself to be naturally talented in those subjects.  I still remember learning about ‘rules’ of design in those classes and I found that by following those rules (and putting in lots of effort) I could create some pleasing pieces of art work.

Well those rules (or design principles you could also call them) I studied back in school, naturally transfer over to scrapbooking.  They are also closely followed in interior design/decorating, floral arranging, print advertising and even architecture – to name just a few.

Being aware of these design principles can really help you pull together an eye-catching layout and today I would like to explore in detail one of those design principles .  It is called the ‘Visual Triangle’.

The Visual Triangle is a concept that involves an imaginary triangle on your scrapbook page.  It is created by placing three similar elements (eg:- embellishments, clusters, photos, colours, text etc) at the corners, or points, of the imaginary triangle.  It helps create balance on a page (you could even liken it to the number and arrangement of legs needed for a stool to be stable.  3 = balance).

Our brains have a tendency to perceive images in familiar shapes and when you place elements on your scrapbook pages in a triangle, it allows your brain to see the page as a whole, rather than being distracted by one or two items on the layout. It brings your eye all the way around the layout.  It can also direct you to the one area of your page you want your viewer to focus on.  It’s a fairly simple technique that can take your pages from looking good to looking great in a jiffy!  I also believe it’s a technique you can use on every layout – it won’t get old or ever stop having an effect.

There are a myriad of ways you can create visual triangles on a scrapbook layout.  You could create them with:-

• Photos
• Clusters
• Colours
• Text (title, journalling, date)
• Repeated single elements or embellishments

I think the best way to illustrate what I am talking about is to take a look at some example layouts from our team gallery, that use the technique of the visual triangle perfectly.

I hope these 3 examples (remember 3=balance!) have highlighted this technique for you.  There are plenty more layouts in the team gallery that use this technique – next time you are browsing through, take a closer look and see what appeals to you about each particular layout.  It may well be that elements/colours/photos are placed within this visual triangle format!  Subconsciously, we are drawn to designs that use familiar shapes as they are visually appealing to us (eye-candy in a way!  LOL!!).

Why don’t you try this technique out yourself on your next layout – you might be very surprised with the end result!  We’d love to see you post some new pages in the gallery that use this concept.  You may have already been following this design rule and we’d love to hear your thoughts as well.

I do hope you’ve enjoyed reading along today, just as I hope you’ve enjoyed reading all my posts here at the Shabby Shoppe Blog.  I have loved being a part of this wonderful team, but it is now time for me to take on some new ventures and I will be signing off from here as a current team member.

A huge thank you to SP, Kylie and the fabulous team for having me here!  I’ve loved every minute!   I will still be ‘lurking’ around in the gallery and reading along with you all though – you can’t get rid of me that easily!!  LOL!!

Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll see you back here on Monday with our latest LOTW winner.  Until then, happy scrapping to you all, THANK YOU and bye for now :)

So I’m taking a break from the action (LOL!!) and browsing through the gallery to find a stand out layout from the previous week….

Looking… looking… far too many gorgeous layouts to narrow down to just one….

But just as there can only be one gold medal winner, there can only be one LOTW and I am so happy to award it to dwilbanks with her fabulous page called Swim Lesson 2011.

Congratulations dwilbanks!  You’ve created an awesome layout here and I really like the way you’ve angled the photo blocks down your page.  Terrific use of  Sandbox elements and alpha here and your swim lesson photos are wonderful.  You may just have a future Olympian on your hands there!

To reward you for your talent (and for sharing it with us in the gallery) you’ve been emailed a $10 gift certificate to the Shabby Shoppe (check your SPAM folder if you don’t spot it straight away).  We look forward to seeing more of your great layouts – congrats again!

So that’s all from me for today – thanks so much for stopping by.  Please pop by again tomorrow when Kim will be spotlighting a well-loved product (quite darling really…wink.. wink…)  from the Shoppe.  Bye for now!

Have you guessed which kit it is yet?  Of course you have!  It is our Splash Coordinated Kit and it is ON SALE for a limited time only in the Shoppe for just $4.25!

Splash is such a fun kit to scrap with – a real mix of shabby/ornate/casual – helping you create wonderful beach or pool layouts from your lazy summer days.  The textures in the papers are brilliant and they lend themselves really well to blending.  And I love all the little chrome beach elements – they really stand out against the blues and greens.  Oh and the labels – how cute are the labels?!  I reach for them a lot in my summery pages.

So, enough talk already!  On to the inspiration!!  First up is my layout using Splash (and a couple of other Shoppe goodies – I will outline them in my Shabby Artist gallery post).  I had lots of fun creating this and really loved the effect of the textured background paper.

Kim has wowed us yet again with her scrapping mastery.  Splash is showcased beautifully here in this layout of her youngest little man – what a cutie!  I love this photo!

I love how Casharina has ‘sprinkled’ some pink throughout her layout, perfectly complementing the blues and greens of Splash.  A gorgeous summertime page!

Rosy has highlighted perfectly how Splash can be used for non-beachy layouts.  What a beautiful baby boy page she has created here!  I also can’t help but notice that Rosy has used her trademark blending techniques here with the background paper.  You can check out Rosy’s blog post on soft light blending modes here if you missed it last week.

And to finish off, a delightful fun-in-the-pool layout from Kylie.  I just love that title!

I hope these layouts from the team have helped inspire you to get creative with your latest scrapping projects.  You can check out layout credits and more details in our Shabby Artist gallery as we upload them throughout the day/night.

Along with Splash, we also have the Splash Piece-a-Cake Album ON SALE for a limited time in the Shoppe for only $5.50 – such a quick and easy way to get all your summer photos scrapped.  Easy-peasy!

Well, that’s all for today folks!  Thanks so much for dropping by today.  Please check back again on Thursday, when Kylie will be sharing another of her gorgeous (and free) desktops!  We’ll see you all then!

I’ve chosen Amber’s fabulous page called Funny Faces – how cute is this!

So much to admire here!  I love the way Amber has layered all those strips of paper and the tree cluster with the heart ribbon and flowers is just perfect!  And, of course, these photos are just priceless ~ totally adorable and the whole layout really makes me smile!   And while browsing Amber’s gallery (what a beautiful family you have there Amber!) I noticed that this layout is a partner page for another little cutie – you can check it out here.

Congratulations to you Amber!  We hope you enjoy spending your $10 gift card in the Shoppe and we look forward to seeing more of your beautiful pages.  (Don’t forget to check your SPAM folder if you can’t find our email in your inbox).

Thanks for checking in today.  Be sure to visit again on Thursday when Kylie will be sharing the newest Template Challenge with you all!  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

This week, I’ve chosen a layout called Just Married by the very talented mcmoran as our LOTW and here it is… just look at all that fabulousness!!!

First up, I adore the colour scheme mcmoran has chosen to complement this wonderful B&W photo of her parents on their wedding day (looking oh-so-stylish I must add!). Combining the Twirl and Darling papers, along with SP’s Just Married stickers is a perfect scrapping match.  I also really like the way mcmoran has added her parents’ names to the wedding cake.  This fabulous photograph is still the main focal point on this page and these pops of red are the perfect embellishment in my opinion!

Congratulations mcmoran, you will be emailed a $10 gift certificate to the Shabby Shoppe today.  Have a great time shoppe-ing and we can’t wait to see another fabulous layout from you in the gallery soon.  (Don’t forget to check your Spam folder if you don’t see our email in your inbox.)

Thanks for checking in today.  I’d really like to encourage you all to continue posting your Shabby Shoppe layouts in our gallery as we are always on the lookout for stand-out pages.  And you’ve got to be ‘in in to win it’ , right?! And if you haven’t yet made that big leap and posted your first layout yet, why don’t you give it a try?  We’d love to see how you use SP’s wonderful products in your memory keeping.

Kylie will be back here on Wednesday with our latest edition of Focus on Photos, so we’ll see you all again then.  In the meantime, happy scrapping!

I’m certainly going to re-iterate SP’s words when I say that this kit is super fun, quirky and a little whimsical.  Perfect for all types of layouts and themes ~ baby, family, indoor, outdoor, boy, girl – you name it!  It works for everything.  Such rich, vibrant colourings and those chic little birdies are definitely my favourite element from the collection.  Have you seen them popping up on pages in the gallery – they are just too cute aren’t they?

I often reach for this kit (well, click for it really!) as I find I am really drawn to the colours.  I am also a big fan of those leaves and branches.  They come in very handy when decorating a page and I love the effects they give when you add some shadow work to them.  From the folded and creased papers to the gorgeous ‘fairy wing stamps’, there really is so much in this collection to keep you scrapping year after year (I know I have!)

Here’s a baby layout I created using the Gabby collection – my little Nick when he was a wee 6 months old – where have those 7 years gone?

And here are two masterpieces from Kylie (well, would you expect anything less?!?!?) using this wonderful kit.  I am in LOVE with the word art on Kylie’s ‘Together’ page…it is one of the pre-made clustered titles from the FAMILY word whimsy collection.

Rosy has created two beautiful layouts with a real tropical theme (Gabby is perfect for this as well!)…  It’s funny – I always think of Rosy when I use this kit.  Those little birds always look so gorgeous on her pages and she always uses them to perfection in my opinion!

Kim and Casharina have also showcased the collection beautifully with their latest layouts.  I adore the pink grid paper Kim has used as her backing paper – it looks so effective!  Casharina’s title work is amazing using the brilliant alpha from Gabby.  Stunning work ladies!

You can have a closer look at these layouts in the gallery as we upload them throughout the day/night.

Want more Gabby?  Then check out these gorgeous coordinating products when you stop by the Shoppe.  First up, we have the Gabby 12 x 12 Album – a stunning piece-a-cake album complete with ten 12 x 12 pages, a cover and a bonus printable card and envelope.  Perfect and EVER so easy!  In addition, we also have the Gabby Badge Album and the Gabby Blogwear.

Here is a layout I created in a flash using one of the pages from the Gabby 12×12 Album.  It was as simple as adding a photo and some text.  Imagine how quickly you could put a book together using this piece-a-cake album?  Perfect for Mother’s Day photos over the years, as I discovered…

Well I think that wraps up the spotlight for you today – I do hope you are feeling inspired by all this Gabby-goodness!!

Please join us again tomorrow when Rosy has a little inspiration for you all – a post not to be missed!  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

I do have a lot of fonts installed on my computer, so it is hard for me to remember them all.  However, I recently discovered a neat little trick to make the sample size larger in my preview screen.  Now,  I can get a good look at all the font styles I have available.  It is as simple as tweaking a few settings in your Photoshop program.

• From the Menu Bar, choose Edit>Preferences>Type
• Check the ‘Font Preview Size’
• Choose ‘Large’ or ‘Extra Large’ from the drop-down menu (options will depend on your version)
• Click OK

Now you can really see all those font styles you have on your hard drive!!  I find it much easier to browse through them when they’re set at the largest size.

Also, have you noticed that some fonts come ‘packaged’ in sets with further options to make them bold and italicized, while others don’t offer you these options?  Never fear!  Your Photoshop and Photoshop Elements programs give you these options –  even when the font package doesn’t.

In Photoshop, all you have to do is :-

• Click on the Text Tool
• Highlight the text you’d like to alter
• Click on the Toggle the Character and Paragraph palette icon in the options bar
• Choose from Faux Bold, Faux Italics, Underline, Strikethrough, All Capitals (+ more) options.  They are each represented by the row of ‘T’ icons
• Then tick the check mark in the options bar to confirm your alterations

To undo the effect, simply highlight the text and click on the corresponding icon again.

Thanks for stopping by today ~  I hope this post has given you a few more tricks to add to your digi-scrapping repertoire!

Please join us again tomorrow, when Kylie will be sharing our newest Template Challenge.  We’re up to number 24 already!  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

Today, the team and I are going to lift a stunning layout from the gallery of our very talented Shabby Artist, Rosy.  A gorgeous page, titled ‘This Memory’.  Here it is.

I have had this layout of Rosy’s in my favourites folder for a while now – there is so much to admire, but I especially love the way Rosy has framed this precious photo of her gorgeous children reading books together.  Placing the frame off-centre and weaving her photo though it really adds interest to the page and drew my eye right in.  Then there is the inked edge around the photo, the brushwork around the frame and the placement of the filmstrip diagonally across the page.  A visual masterpiece that we all had so much fun studying and then lifting!

I enjoyed experimenting with different frames, brushwork and layering behind my photo and came up with this lift of Rosy’s design – I pretty much kept to the same formula, I loved her page so much!!

Just look at the gorgeous colours in Casharina’s lift – so vibrant and I just LOVE that this layout combines dirt bikes and mud with flowers, hearts and glitter!!!

Kim has created fabulous depth here with the framing of her photo and layering of 12×12 papers.  What a sweet, sweet memory to scrap too – love this pic!

And Kylie’s lift is genius with all that beautiful brushwork and clustering flowing across the page.  I am in love with those little curls and cheeks!!!

So, as you can see, we have all drawn inspiration from Rosy’s wonderful layout and then tweaked it a little with our own style and memory keeping.  Scraplifting someone’s work is a great way to learn some new techniques and really gets you studying what makes their page visually appealing and trying to incorporate that into your own scrapping style.  I have learned so much from lifting other scrappers’ pages and I’d like to thank Rosy again for allowing us to lift her page today.

We’d love to see your take on Rosy’s design too – just upload it to our inspiration gallery so we can all see how you drew inspiration from Rosy’s layout.

Thanks for checking in today ~ be sure to visit tomorrow when Kylie announces the winners from Game One of our Blog Birthday Bash.  Yay!  I love competitions!!  Until then, happy scrapping everyone.

A little birdie recently told me, that when scrapping using PSE, you can click anywhere on your layout with your move tool and it will automatically highlight that layer in your layers palette.  Oh, not fair for me who uses Photoshop – this would save me so much time!!  I am forever getting lost in my layouts, scrolling up and down trying to find the right layer for an element I want to move/edit etc.  I am so bad at naming all my layers (I usually do the first few and then forget!!!) so this can be really frustrating.  I end up ticking/checking the auto-select box to find  the layer I want but then I forget to go back and uncheck it and I end up moving things I didn’t want moved!!!

But alas, this happens to me no longer.  I have discovered a neat little trick for all the Photoshop users out there, like myself.  All we have to do is select the move tool and then right click directly on the element in our layout we are trying to locate (command-click on a Mac I believe also works).  A little dialog box then comes up with the names of all the layers involved in the specific area we’ve clicked on.   From there, we can then left click on the name of the layer we want and it will highlight that layer in our palette.  Oh the time I have saved using this trick!!

Here is a screenshot to illustrate.

I hope this little trick has helped some of you Photoshop scrappers out there and saved you some time when creating your layouts.  I use it all the time now and, if anything,  it encourages me to name layers, even if it is just with abbreviations.

Thanks for stopping by.  Please check back tomorrow when the wonderful SP brings you the next instalment of our Project Scrap Check-In.  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

I asked myself these very questions (and also our gorgeous team here at the Shabby Shoppe) and we then set about re-creating some of our very first digital layouts, just to prove how much we’d all grown as a digi-scrappers.  You’ll love seeing our ‘before’ and ‘after’ pages.  I guess you could call it a digi-makeover!!!

Ok, so here’s one of my first attempts back in 2008, using a freebie kit from Shabby Princess and Carrie Stephens called Spontaneous Delight.  I really liked the idea of blending photos on a layout, but I think I may have taken it a bit too far in one of my first attempts!!!

So after looking at this in more detail (basically I critiqued my whole layout) I’ve realised that I have now learned the following things:-

• That I’m not afraid to leave a bit of white space on a layout these days!!  Creating a border around a page also makes it more visually appealing (plus I don’t lose part of my design when it is cropped at the print shop!)
• To use drop shadows accordingly.  I think I just added the default drop shadow settings for every element (and font) on my page back then (that was if I actually remembered to use a drop shadow).
• To make sure the text/font is clear and readable.  Now I make my titles/headings bigger and try to make them stand out more on my pages.  Mixing up fonts adds more interest to a layout too.
• That a simple edit on my photos can make a big improvement (lighten images, get rid of shadows on faces, crop them, play around with levels/colour balance etc).  Running a photo treatment over my images can also make a big difference and produces a really pleasing effect.
• To not stick with the one bold colour on a layout.  I think I’ve used WAY too much green on this one and it is also probably the wrong shade of green for my photos.  In re-doing this layout, I’ve focused more on the browns and tried to make my colours a little softer.
• That mixing photographs up a little creates an interesting layout.  Instead of a whole page of blended photos, I’ve gone with a mix of  one blended image and a series of framed images on my digi-makeover below.  Having a mixture of colour and black and white photographs is another good effect I’ve learned.

So here is my new version of this layout.  And I have to say that I am much happier with this one!