Assignment 2

So, I really like all of the feedback that I received on my first layout. It was really helpful. I think I may try creating my own striped paper to replace the bottom strip at some point, but for now I need to move on and focus on assignment 2.

My husband has actually been really helpful on this one. I started the assignment by choosing an event and trying to fit the photos I had into the layout. Needless to say, it wasn't working! I took a step back and spent some time enjoying all of the wonderful layouts that have been posted in the class gallery. While looking at them, I would stop from time to time on a layout and mention to my husband that I really liked this or that about that particular one. After three or four of these, he stopped and walked me through the components of the design I was enjoying and help me to see exactly what it was about it that I liked.

Next, I took a step back and started over. Instead of picking an event and trying to fit it into the layout, I looked through some of the events that needed to be scrapped and tried to find one that I thought might work well in the design I was trying to make. Specifically, I was looking for two really powerful images that would look nice side by side and in a fairly large size. Then I wanted to find three images (or pieces of images) that would work well for the little squares. I found that in order for them to work well for me, they needed to be visually very different so they didn't run into each other when placed directly side by side.

After placing the photos, I started looking at what I wanted to use for background paper and embellishments. Because the photos I chose had a Christmas theme, I first looked through all of my Christmas papers. I knew from my mistakes on my first try of this layout that I didn't want something with a strong pattern, but a basically solid color with a texture. I tried various shades or red and green without finding something I liked. I realized that there were too many comflicting shades of red for a red background to work and there was absolutely no green in my photos, so green wasn't working either.

I saved my partially done layout without any papers added whatsoever and loaded it into a website that shows you the colors that occur the most in your photos. What I found surprised me. Yes, the bright red and the dark red showed up as more frequent, but the next color found was actually a really nice shade of dark navy blue that was found in my son's coat. I went back into Elements and recolored a red paper I loved to be a matching shade of navy and much to my surprise, it worked great! Who would have guessed!!!

So the layout is coming along nicely now. I made the journalling box a slightly lighter shade of the navy by using the eyedropper to pull the lighter color from the background paper. Now, I was off to find the right title font. I was still looking for something that said "Christmas" to my eyes, and found a great free font called Santa's Sleigh.

Here is what I ended up with: