Saturday, March 18, 2017

More ABout Creating Boy Pages --- Using What You've Got

So you say that papers, embellishments, etc. are more geared to the feminine than the masculine?  Well, perhaps.  Today I wanted to critique several of my older pages, looking for the things that represented a compromise in working with what I had at hand, rather than running out to look for, say stickers that fit the theme of the page(s).  

In the page just below, I found anything I grabbed that had a red and black print overpowered the photo.  It was way too dark.  So then I started looking about at silver, gray,  and metallics.  Better.  But all the papers I had available at the time that contained metallics seemed to be wedding related! Um, not going to work for a motorcycling page!   


What I did have in my stash was washi tape in gold and silver.  And I had them in various prints and widths!  Even better.  Using a distressed printed paper for the background, I lined up row after row of the tapes and used that as a resting place for the photo.  Tucking a couple of kraft colored tags behind the photo also added a bit more visual interest and depth.  

The next page, ECO racing, relied on a couple of medium blue printed papers. The grayed blue colors coordinated nicely with the "car", racing suit, and the denim blue of the boys jeans.  The black printed, tire tread looking tape was a vellum strip that was really just a herring bone kind of pattern.  Torn and lightly distressed, I thought they looked like tire tracks. 


The other pieces (reduce speed, restricted lane, and the red dotted piece) were all cut from a scrap of travel related paper.  The page was pretty full, since I hadn't cropped the photos a lot, so embellishing more would maybe have been over-kill. 

The next page uses next to nothing for embellishment, just papers and a small snippet of lace.  Yes, lace on a boy page--- it was the right color and used in such small pieces, doesn't really look much like lace. 


The blue papers were printed with the waves  and swirls... but to use the sheet as a whole  would have meant that blue would have fought with the blue of the sky.  Plus with scrapping multiple photos, they would have covered much of the wave pattern.  The solution?  Cut out the most prominent wave shapes and use those to accent the photo blocks. 


Repeating the water theme by cutting large water droplet shapes and adding white pen work highlighted both the water drop and wave shapes, as well as contained the photo and journaling blocks. 


Tip #1:  work with the patterns in your papers, cutting out shapes, patterns or text to use as embellishments.  Tip #2:  Take a good long look through your washi tape (or ribbon, or border strip stickers) to provide coordinating colors and patterns to use collectively as you would a sheet of paper.  Tip #3:  Tags, buttons, and yes, even snippets of fabric or lace can add just the right accent. 

The biggest lesson is to challenge yourself to look at the supplies you have right at hand and see if small modifications can make them work for you rather than against.  Fussy cutting, distressing, tearing, pen work are all small things that can make a large impact. 

Go forth...make a guy a page! 

best,
Cheryl 

1 comment:

  1. all great layouts and great solutions to using what is in your stash - awesome post!

    ReplyDelete