Layout Tips #2

Here's a photo of my crazy son. He's found this great place in Minnesota with all this graffiti under a bridge. As a poor college student, he could not afford to buy much as Christmas gifts, but he did surprise me with a very thoughtful gift. He made a cd of photos he took of the graffiti as layout backgrounds! It did not cost him anything, but the thoughtfulness meant a lot.

So, I finally was able to use one of the photos in a layout! Here's the layout. Isn't it guy cool?

Plus, I can share the background for you to use in your layouts!

Download Graffiti Paper

Join me in the Use This! Challenge in the forums! Use this in a layout, upload it to the gallery, and share it in that thread. I think I am going to have fun with these new Use This! Challenges, as long as people participate.

I also made a video for you! I had to break it into two parts for YouTube purposes, but these videos share some techniques I used in making this layout, including ripping the photo and applying a custom drop shadow, placing the highlight under the bottom right-hand corner photos, and how I made the mat.

Please note that this layout uses no digital kits. Yes, you can scrap inexpensively!

I am so happy to be finally just scrapping and sharing techniques and ideas and trying to inspire now that I am keeping my New Year's resolution. I went a bit crazy last night with the two layouts, two freebies, and two videos. I was up until 2:00 a.m.! I just could not stop fulfilling my scrapping withdrawal!

I just want to encourage people to scrap and to experience the contagiousness of how people inspire each other. I am already seeing it spark in the forums and it makes me feel good.

Here are some tip techniques I gathered for ripping photos which were inspired by the ASDR layouts done for the challenge here at Hummie's World.

1. When paper is ripped, the white torn part generally only shows on one-half of the rip, so only apply it to one of the two pieces.

2. Use color isolation. Make one of the ripped pieces in color an the rest in black and white or tinted.

3. Try ripping in shapes.

4. Bind the ripped pieces back together with staples, tape, bows, twine, stitching or ribbons.

5. Rip off the part of the photo that has a blank area or just texture on it and journal in that part of the photo.

6. Frame the torn photos or mat them for realism.

7. Use custom drop shadows to life the torn pieces off the layout.

8. Mat the photo and make the tear through all layers.

9. Tuck ripped pieces into an envelope.

10. Turn an stack the torn pieces or scatter them.

11. Use other elements to hold down the pieces, placing them under and over the torn pieces.