Fast and Fabulous Layout Ideas

It’s almost that time of year…we’re on the brink of the holiday season and life just gets busier and busier.  With a few of my speed scrappin’ tips, you’ll be able to spend more time making memories and less time scrapbooking them.  The result: Fast and Fabulous layouts that accommodate lots of photos. 

You may notice something that all of these projects have in common is that the photos are placed down on the page FIRST and then you decorate or embellish around them to create a balanced design.  So easy!  If you don’t already scrap this way, I challenge you to try—start with the photos and go from there. 

QUICK TIP:  I always suggest hand-journaling on strips of paper.  This way, less time is spent deciding on typography options and with your handwriting; you’re adding a very personal touch.  If you’re brave you can journal directly on the page, but the strips are much more forgiving…if you mess up, toss it and start over!

It’s hip to be square—with your photos, that is!  One layout, six photos, a few fun embellishments:  this is how speed scrapping is done, folks!  Simply cropping photos into squares makes putting a layout together SUPER fast.  This is a great way to design a page with chaotic photos: think birthdays, holidays, or school events.  The clean lines help tone down all the fuss in the pictures.  Just remember to keep the background pretty neutral and add a few coordinating embellishments to take it from simple to super!  With the time saved designing the layout, you can spend a bit more time adding special touches like machine stitching.

 

 

Wallet size photos are a great way to add some photo BANG to your layouts.  You can print these yourself or have them printed at your photo processor.  This layout features—yep, COUNT EM--eight photographs!  The tricky part is that you are better off to use all vertical or all horizontal photos—mixing it up makes designing the layout a bit more work.  Keep these small photos corralled by grounding them on a solid block of cardstock (the red).  Create a focal point by matting or printing your larger photo with a white edge.  Just a few decorative touches (machine stitching, the scalloped border and word stickers) will take this layout from fine to fabulous! 

 

 

Line it up!  Create a quick layout that features seven photos on one page with this simple design.  By cropping all of the horizontal photos to the same height, the photo border could stand alone. But because I had so many pictures, I decided to add the vertical photos as well.  The result was simple yet striking.  There’s plenty of room for journaling if you have lots of memories to jot down or keep it simple with just the facts as I’ve done.  Again, I like to use a plain background (when there is so much going on in the pictures) with just a few colorful touches that coordinate with the photos. 

 

 

Cut the corners and go with photos cut into circles.  The Fiskars ShapeCutter makes quick work of cropping circular photos and creating designer elements such as this heart frame.  These cropped photos are a nice way to highlight specific details of your images like I’ve done here with these precious baby parts.  It’s also a good strategy when scrapping those not-so picture perfect photos…it takes the emphasis off of the photography.  Place the photos in a simple square design and voila! -you’ve created another super quick page layout.  You can have fun embellishing the heart frame with machine stitching, sticker titles, journaling or other embellishments. 

 

Keep these designs simple or dress them up depending on your scrapping style.  These are ideas that you can tweak a little, insert your own creativity and hopefully, keep going back to again and again…like I do!

By Janna Wilson