DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING LAYOUTS

I was thinking just the other day that digital scrapbooking could be compared to sandwich making. I?m sure that every reader has at some point made a sandwich for themselves or for someone else. Of course, different occasions call for different sandwiches, but all sandwiches utilize layers of ingredients, just as in digital scrapbooking, people use various layers to create a layout.

The Peanut Butter and Jam Sandwich
A mom or dad may quickly spread two pieces of bread with peanut butter and jam to give to a child for an after school snack. This type of sandwich provides necessary protein, grains, and fruit (in the form of jam) and is quick and easy to assemble. A simple layout can be made in much the same way by utilizing a background paper, a photo, and a matte for the photo. To complete the layout, add one simple embellishment, a title and journaling, as desired.

In Moments, I used a very simple format - one background paper, a photo on a matte with coordinating paper strips behind it, a snowflake embellishment and a one word title.

Fancier occasions demand fancier sandwiches.

The Ribbon Sandwich
Quite often, local churches or community organizations offer some form of ?Tea? during the course of the year. Common to be served there are finger sandwiches. These are sandwiches made by slicing a whole loaf of bread into long, thin slices and carefully removing any trace of crust. The bread is lightly buttered to seal the bread from the moist fillings. The bread then has a filling applied (egg salad, tuna salad, cream cheese and cucumber to name a few) and the bread is either rolled up or further slices of bread and different fillings are added to create layered sandwiches. The rolled or layered sandwiches are then sliced into individual ?rolled? or ?ribbon? sandwiches.

These sandwiches are definitely fancy and take a lot longer to make than the simple peanut butter and jam sandwich mentioned earlier, but the effort is well worth the final result. A fancier layout may also be created by taking the time to add more details to your layout. Perhaps you could use a scalloped or torn matte to dress up a plain paper background. You could use a mixture of coordinating plain and patterned papers. You could embellish with stitching, flowers, or flourishes to give your layout that added ?fancy? look.

The following layout is page one of a double page layout - page two carries the title of Grade 1. I made use of a number of coordinating papers to frame the photo. To make the papers and photo ?pop,? I used an action from Atomic Cupcake to ink the edges. The layout was ?fancied up? by adding a flourish and cluster of flowers.

The Club Sandwich
One last sandwich that I will mention is the club sandwich. This is a sandwich with cooked chicken breast, bacon, lettuce and tomato. These sandwich elements are layered between two, possibly three slices of toasted bread, and topped with mayonnaise. This sandwich is definitely not for the small appetite! It packs a real punch and has a lot of flavour-enhancing ingredients. A scrapbook page of this sort also contains many layout ingredients. It probably makes use of two or three background papers and uses these to create the base for the layout and/or combines them with assorted shapes and sizes of mattes for either photos or journaling. Once these basics are in place, a host of elements can be employed to embellish the page . . . ribbons, lace, flowers, bows, glitter, clusters, memorabilia . . . whatever you deem appropriate to suit the theme or mood of the layout.

In Grade 3, I employed four coordinating papers, one of which was cut to form a border around the layout. On top of the border I used a border consisting of leaves, flowers, butterflies, and glitter. To highlight the border further, I inserted lace just under the edge of the border. The picture was placed on a round matte and given an actual frame. Flowers were layered behind a corner of the frame to draw more attention to the photo. In the open top right area , a jewelled flourish was added to provide even more glitz to the layout. The title, though small, was highlighted by the use of an alpha frame. To finish, the layout was topped with a matching ribbon and bow.

To conclude, if you can build a sandwich, I believe that you are capable of building a layout. You can choose the type of ?sandwich? you wish to construct and then employ a series of layers to carry out your layout recipe. While some layout ?chefs? may be quite happy with peanut butter and jam, others may prefer fancy finger sandwiches or a hearty club sandwich type of layout. Whatever sandwich model satisfies your layout palate, I wish you great success with your scrapbooking pursuits! And make sure you check out our digital scrapbooking software page for help on picking and downloading your digital scrapbooking software!