Get Crafty Friday #3

It's Friday once again, TGIF!  This time of year is cold, snowy, and icy for a lot of us and on these cold days and nights, I prefer to stay inside.  This is the perfect time to do all those indoor activities.  For me it is crafting, and I do love a nice big cup of steaming hot chocolate.  I plan on getting some scrapbooking done this weekend and since I won't have football to break up my time, I really should get some things done.  I seem to have five or more scrapbooks going at one time.  I feel it helps me with my creativity.  Right now I have a book about Oliver (my cat), Bailey (my bird), my grand children, my youngest grand daughter, my dad, and my life scrapbook.  I also need to start a heritage album and and ABC book for my youngest grand daughter.  And in between, I am doing books for other family members along the way.  Wow!  now that I wrote that down that sure is a lot!  Do you do one book at a time or do you have many books going like I do?  I would sure like to know I am not alone..................lol! 

My tip for today is matting.  For you scrapbookers out there I recommend that you always mat your photos in some form or fashion.  What happens when you mat your photos is,  you ground them so they are not floating in space.  More often than not when someone asks my opinion about a layout and tell me they think something is missing, its mats.  Matting also helps ground your other elements like titles, embellishments, borders, etc.....  Matting is nothing more than putting a border around your photograph.  It does not have to be boring as you can get creative with double and triple matting to add to the theme and colors.  You can color block where you add different shapes and colors to your matting.  You can also use your dies to mat.  These are just a few of the many ways you can mat photos.  Here is s photo I double matted to bring more of the colors together:






And here is a photo using my dies to mat:





And here is my project where I used both single and double matting to make my focal picture stand out:


I believe the background paper is K&Company, the border punch is Martha Stewart, my title is thickers by American Crafts, the journaling tag is from Anna Griffin's Totally Tags collection, and the ribbon is from my stash.  When I use a whole piece of decorative scrapbook paper as my background, I tend not to embellish too much as it looks like my craft room sneezed on my project when I do that.  After all, the focus should be on your photos and story and not on all the extras.  They should be there as a supporting roll to help your story along and not cover it all up. 

I hope you enjoyed my tip and project today!  I know I will be crafting this weekend, will you?  Please leave me a comment and let me know.



Comments

Judy Garrelts said…
More fantastic tips!!!!! Love the visuals too!
Thanks for sharing,
Judy

Popular Posts