How To Tuesday

First things first, I have a winner to announce from last week’s “Friendship” giveaway. Thank you all so much for your comments. And the lucky winner is …

Congratulations! Please email your full name and mailing information (including your phone number for shipping purposes) as well as your choice of current Pebbles collection to pebblesincdt(at)gmail(dot)com and put “Friendship Winner” in the subject line.

Design team member Stephanie Baxter shares how she finds inspiration for her layout designs.  Here’s what Stephanie had to say … “Hello lovely blog readers! I’m so thrilled to be sharing a ‘How to Tuesday’ post with a little bit of a twist. Today I’m going to be showing you how to take an inspiration piece and use it to inspire you to design a layout.” 

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Pinterest, but from what I’ve seen, there has been a definite growth in using it to find all sorts of inspiration.  It’s a great place to collect all the things you find on the internet that you love, from home decor to fashion to photography. I also use it to collect things that I see online that I think would be great to incorporate into my scrapbook pages. It’s a great little time saver when it comes to getting your scrapbook pages done, because a lot of the thinking is done for you already!

So, the first thing to do is to find an inspiration piece that you like. You will see that mine immediately translates well into a scrapbook page because of its square design.

One thing I really loved about the inspiration piece I picked was the banner with the text on it. I’m definitely having a love affair with banners right now, so I knew that I wanted to utilise that particular design element and use it for my title. Look for ways in which you can adapt the design and make it your own. I added a journaling spot behind the banner and embellished it with Candy Dots to make the title stand out even more, for example.

Anything that uses blocks in its design translates really well into scrapbook pages because you can simply cut out pieces of patterned paper or cardstock, or even use photos. Things online or in magazines will have been designed in an aesthetically pleasing way, so you already have a go-to placement for all the main parts of your layout. If you’re anything like me, you often spend hours pushing the photos and paper around or your page trying to decide in which position they look best, so doing a layout this way definitely saves you a lot of time and a lot of hassle! This inspiration piece is a perfect example of that…the four blocks of colour were so easy to replace with four squares of patterned paper on my page.

You can get a really good idea about the quantity and size of photos to use on a layout when using an inspiration piece like this. The main image on my inspiration piece is quite sizeable, so I chose one large image for my layout and layered it on cardstock, leaving a border around the edge just like on the image I found online.

All that’s left to do is to add some embellishments and maybe a strip of patterned paper here and there to make it your own. It’s such a great way of doing things if you’re a little short on time or stuck in a bit of a rut design-wise. I’d love to see how you use an inspiration piece to help design a scrapbook page!

Pebbles supplies used:
Floral Lane With Love (751122)
Floral Lane With Delight (751124)
Floral Lane Memory Lane (751119)
Floral Lane My Darling (751126)
Floral Lane Dimensional Icons (732056)
Happy Go Lucky Dandy (751089)
Happy Go Lucky Purple Candy Dots (747080)
Happy Go Lucky Paper Flowers (747070)
Happy Go Lucky Buttons (747069)
Ever After Royal Banner (751115)
Layered Embellishments Girl (747037)


Other supplies used:
Cardstock (American Crafts)
Thickers (American Crafts)
Rub Ons (American Crafts)
Baker’s Twine 
Journaling Spot
Image (Jack Wills catalogue)